Paid Social Media: Worth The Investment?

Every year, billions of dollars are spent on advertising on social media in the United States — in fact, by 2025, advertisers are expected to spend over $82 billion promoting their products on social networks. So, what does this mean for marketers like you and me?

If you ever doubt the power of a paid social media ad campaign, think again.

Paid social media helps target audiences and drive sales just as organic social media does. It correlates to speed to market, campaign sustainability, and good old-fashioned message frequency.

In this article, we’ll discuss what paid social media is, the components of a paid social media strategy, and the top social media platforms for running paid ads.

Table of Contents

• What is paid social media?
• Pros and Cons of Paid Social Media
• Paid Social Media Strategy
• Scaling Your Paid Social Media Strategy

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Pay-per-click advertising, branded or influencer-generated content, and display ads are all examples of paid social media. You’ll know a paid social media advertisement when you see one based on the “sponsored” or “promoted” tag near the post.

Pros and Cons of Paid Social Media

While paid social ads are a popular form of advertising, there are reasons to weigh before you commit your team's budget to launching your next campaign.

Pros of Using Paid Social Ads

1. Targeted Reach: Marketers can tailor ads to specific demographics, interests, and behaviors, ensuring their message reaches the intended audience effectively.
2. Quick Results: Paid ads can generate immediate visibility and engagement, allowing marketers to promote products or services and achieve their campaign objectives swiftly.
3. Control Over Budget and Frequency: Marketers can set clear budget limits and adjust the frequency of ads, providing flexibility and control over spending and the extent of audience exposure.

Cons of Using Paid Social Ads

1. Cost: Continuous investment is required to maintain visibility and engagement, which can be expensive, especially for small businesses with limited budgets.
2. Ad Fatigue: Overexposure to the same ads can lead to ad fatigue, where audiences start ignoring or disengaging from the content, reducing the effectiveness of campaigns.
3. Ad Blockers and User Resistance: If you're anything like me, you may install ad blockers. The increasing use of ad blockers and a general wariness of ads can limit the reach and impact of paid social media promotions, no matter how much money you pay to get your campaign rolling.

Every social media channel is different. TikTok offers short-form video content, Instagram focuses heavily on reels and photo content, Facebook has its marketplace for shopping enthusiasts, and LinkedIn is the home of networking professionals.

As such, paid social media on each platform differs and should, depending on the campaign and audience.

Here, we'll explore some quick strategies to help you decide how to use paid social media to benefit your brand.

Paid Social Media Strategy

A solid paid social media strategy can optimize a marketing budget that might need to be more substantial to promote a large brand through traditional media channels. Look no further if your business is working with a limited budget to reach hefty ROI goals. We've gathered the essential things you’ll need to know about using paid social media ads.

To create a paid social media strategy, you’ll want to start with two critical items: An objective and a budget.

Paid Social Media Strategy Objective

Setting the objective for your paid social media strategy gives your subsequent tactics a direction to work with and a goal to achieve.

Think of this strategy as a road trip. You start your journey at your house intending to make it to your destination by a certain time. Paid social ads work the same way — your audience is starting their journey with your brand on their newsfeed and your goal is to lead them to the destination — a content offer on your website, an email subscription form, or even your social media profile itself.

To begin the journey, narrow down your target audience so that everyone you target is starting from a similar place they frequent. This doesn’t have to be a physical location (although it can be). You can target people by their age, their hobbies, and even their occupation.

Once you have your starting point, it’s time to define your destination. Different social media ad platforms have their own conversion tools, but the end goal is almost always the same — get people to share their contact information with your business. You might do this with a form fill or a visit to a landing page on your website. Either works to reach the destination, but depending on your business’s strategic needs, you might prefer one.

Paid Social Media Strategy Budget

Paid social media advertising is one of the least expensive types of advertising available in the traditional and digital markets. The pay-to-play model for these channels makes them flexible enough to target only the people your business wants to attract; therefore, you only have to pay for those you can reach.

Unlike TV or radio ads that are priced based on the length of the spot and the time the ads will air, social media ads are priced based on the campaign length and the potential number of impressions you'll be working toward with your ads. This gives these ads a much more favorable KPI to track — cost per acquisition — as opposed to traditional ads that can only vaguely track cost per million impressions.

Paid social media ads can start as low as $1 because of the bidding model and lottery system some platforms use to bring ads onto users’ newsfeeds. Spending for this type of advertising is virtually unlimited, but you can set a limit to stop the campaign from spending more money than you’ve allowed.

Each paid social media platform has unique features that set it apart from competitors. However, you’ll want your platform of choice to support three key characteristics of a converting paid ad: visual content, easy access to lead capture forms, and enough space to include enticing ad copy.

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• Easily calculate total spend
• Analyze performance and revenue
• And more!

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Facebook

When advertising on Facebook (Meta), using Facebook Targeted Ads is a good idea. It’s the most robust ad platform available by far, and that’s not for nothing. This feature is run on a bidding system — a type of advertising buying process where advertisers bid on some ads based on their preferred target audience. Then, that bid will be put into a lottery for a chance to be picked and displayed to that audience. Facebook ads can narrow an audience down to just a few hundred people based on geography, interests, demographics, and more. And while that may not be beneficial for most large corporations, it can be the difference between a slow month and a sold-out day for a small business.

Besides the lottery, Facebook Ads lets you show advertisements to your customers based on their behavior. This is helpful because you can keep advertising to your existing Facebook customers based on what Facebook tells you about their use of the app.

Using Facebook Ads helps you build new leads and generate brand awareness. Facebook provides reports and analytics that are perfect for experimenting with variables like post time and content type, so try using different ad formats and see what your audience engages with most.

Facebook Ad Example: Network for Good

Source

Network for Good has a strong paid social media strategy and has for a few years. As a servant leader in several nonprofit organizations, I’m targeted often with their checklists, templates, and guides on Facebook.

Why I Like It

1. It keeps users on the platform. When a user clicks through to download the checklist, they’re not redirected to an external website. Facebook offers businesses the option for in-app form fills (that's a lot of words to say that users remain on Facebook while they convert on the ad.) That means the user doesn’t experience much disruption when they interact with the ad and can finish their Facebook session as soon as they’re done downloading the checklist.
2. There’s a prompt to drive conversation. There’s no question about what this ad wants me to do — download the Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Checklist. Simple, clear copy like this makes it easy for the user to convert on this ad because they don’t have to think about what their next step should be. They can either keep scrolling or download.

For more information about running your own Facebook Ads that can convert just like this one, check out this checklist for lesser-known tips about running successful ad campaigns on this platform.

TikTok

As an avid user, advertisements on TikTok tend to blend with the content I'm already enjoying seamlessly.

The platform‘s ads seem like natural extensions of regular TikToks—a marketing dream come true. This subtlety allows advertisements to gather more engagement without immediately alerting users that they’re being marketed to.

But why choose TikTok for your advertising needs? TikTok boasts over 1 billion active users worldwide, giving a vibrant canvas to showcase your brand to diverse audiences. Furthermore, TikTok’s advertising tools allow you to tailor your campaigns to reach a specific audience, ensuring your ad resonates with those who matter most.

TikTok Ad Example: e.l.f. Cosmetics

This brand launched a “Eyes Lips Face” campaign that performed very well on this social media platform. It's presented as a catchy music video using a custom song and encourages users to create their own videos using the track.

The result was a viral challenge that amassed over 4 billion views and a significant increase in brand awareness and product engagement. This campaign exemplifies the power of integrating creativity and consumer participation into advertising strategies on TikTok. By encouraging user-generated content, while supported by e.l.f. paid ads passively seen on a regular basis on the app, e.l.f. successfully made users feel like active participants, driving higher engagement.

Why I Like It

The key to TikTok's success as an advertising platform lies in its ability to engage users with relatable and entertaining content that feels less like traditional advertising.

• It turns ads into trends: Brands can become part of the TikTok community by using trends, music, and participatory challenges.
• Precise ad-targeting: TikTok’s algorithm ensures that ads are targeted effectively, using diverse user behaviors and interests to deliver content uniquely aimed at individual users. This precision targeting means your ad spend is more effectively utilized, as you reach users who are more likely to be interested in your products or services.

Instagram

84% of people discover new products on Instagram — up from 64% just four years ago. With growth like this, it probably isn't a bad idea to pay for a spot in front of the 1.16 billion accounts in the platform’s advertising reach.

To run ads on Instagram, you’ll need a business profile — this allows you to set up an ecommerce store right on the app. (That’s a plus if you don’t have a website prepared to accept payments or if you’re testing out ecommerce for the first time.)

Since Facebook owns Instagram, you’ll be running ads concurrently on both platforms and they're all managed on Facebook.

Using Instagram Ads, you can choose an amount of ad spend that works for your budget starting as low as $1. This amount is tied to the timeline of the campaign and the size of your audience.

I compare Instagram ads to filling up a gas tank — you get the amount of gas you pay for. On Instagram, your ad campaign runs during the amount of time you pay for.

Instagram Ad Example: Aveeno

Source

Aveeno utilized Instagram's ad platform to target consumers with their product. The simple design is eye-catching without becoming overwhelming and distracting.

Why I Like It

1. It's visually appealing. The neutral colors and clean design draw our eyes to the product. (The pointing hand is a bonus that keeps our eye on the CTA—the shopping cart!)
2. The call to action is simple. One of the great features of Instagram ads is the ability to swipe up to see more about the product or make a purchase. When you‘re done, it’s easy to close out of the Aveeno website and continue consuming other Instagram content.

LinkedIn

On LinkedIn, millions of professionals have found a wealth of professional connections, their dream job, or both. The platform lets you reach thousands of people in your industry including thought leaders, hiring managers, and decision-makers.

Fortunately, as a marketer, LinkedIn’s paid ads let you reach those same individuals on behalf of your business.

There are 740 million professionals on LinkedIn, and four out of five of them drive business decisions —like business purchase decisions. This is a B2B advertiser's dream come true. With the potential to reach 60 million decision-makers on the most popular social platform for lead generation, it's good to consider LinkedIn as an optimal platform for B2B advertising.

Source

LinkedIn‘s targeted ads let you type in keywords and select audiences by category. So, if you’re posting a job for a certain role, LinkedIn can help you find a pool of diverse candidates with relevant experience.

LinkedIn Ad Example: ON24

Source

On24 uses short and sweet copy to start a dialogue with its target audience. By focusing on business use cases for its product, the ON24 can position itself as a thought leader on the topic of buyer journeys to entice LinkedIn users to register for the event.

Why I Like It

1. It keeps users on the platform. Similar to Facebook, LinkedIn uses in-app form fills to make the exchange between businesses and LinkedIn users who register for the event. That way, after they’re done registering, they can continue seeking their next opportunity, networking, or engaging with other content creators.
2. There’s a prompt to drive the conversation. No matter how much money you spend on ads, there isn’t a way to buy engagement on those ads. Comments, likes, and shares still need to come organically which means the captions, copy, and headlines you choose for your ads should make the most of the limited space available. ON24 does a great job of this by asking a question that everyone has an answer to in the caption of this promoted post.

You can also play around with ad formats on LinkedIn to find which one is most effective. To find out more about the ad types on LinkedIn —such as sponsored, message, text, and dynamic — check out our post about creating an awesome LinkedIn Ad campaign.

Scaling Your Paid Social Media Strategy

When you put money behind a campaign, no matter how much or how little, you’ll want a sustainable ROI that shows the budget, effort, and resources you expended were all worth it. That ROI growth means you’ll be able to scale your campaigns in the future, and paid ads can fuel your success.

Now that you have a solid understanding of the most popular paid social media ad platforms on the market, you’ll need to track all of your hard work to realize that ROI. The native platforms we mentioned earlier do offer reporting and analytics, but what happens when you run a campaign across several different social media sites? I’ll give you a hint — it gets very messy very quickly.

HubSpot’s free ad tracking software gives you one hub in which to manage all of your social media paid ads. That means you can report the success of your campaigns in just a few clicks rather than spending an entire day hunting down the information in each native platform. You’ll also have one source of truth for the combined total impressions, reach, and clicks. That’s paid social media at scale.

Investing in paid social media — the verdict is in.

It's easy to think ad spend is just for the big brands, but making informed purchase decisions benefits every business.

The truth is, social media channels are making advertising accessible to large and small businesses alike. Once you learn how to plan, create, and position your ads to your target audience, you’ll have a much smoother time proving the ad campaign’s ROI to your stakeholders.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in February 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Free Paid Media Template

Track and organize your media planning and media buying with this free paid media template.

• Organize your paid media placements
• Easily calculate total spend
• Analyze performance and revenue
• And more!

Download the Free Template Learn more Download the Free Template

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You're all set!

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