Paid Social Media Can Power 2024 Growth
If you don’t think your business needs paid social media advertising, or you want to cut back your budget in 2024, your marketing plan is headed in the wrong direction. It’s important to understand how fundamental paid social has quickly become and how well it works when married with your other marketing efforts.
“I can promise your competitors are on social media, and you don’t want to be left behind,” said SA Digital Marketing Manager Taia Veren. “There are millions of people who use social media multiple times a day.”
If you don’t have a paid social strategy at all, get started in 2024. “Everyone’s on social media,” said Jayne Durnin, an SA digital media specialist. “Facebook has a huge audience, so if you’re looking to start advertising on social, that would be a great place to start.”
Why does a business need paid social strategy?
It’s a simple equation. If your rivals are leveraging paid social and social media in general, and you’re not, you risk losing your customers to businesses using the power of social. Social media, as Durnin points out, is versatile. It allows businesses to prospect new customers, retarget existing ones, and tailor campaigns to various audience segments.
Organic and paid social: a winning combination
Today, the only way to consistently grow your social media audience and customers is with an integrated approach — where organic and paid strategies complement each other for long-term growth, Durnin said. Organic social is important because it helps build trust and authenticity. “If you’re only running paid, users always have the option to click to your page, and if they see you haven’t posted in years or even in months, that’s a red flag,” Veren said. Potential customers may wonder if you are running a legitimate business.
Target diverse audiences with social ads
One of the big advantages of paid social ads is the flexible options in targeting. From demographics like age and location to specific interests, behaviors, and job titles, you can tailor campaigns to maximize your goals. There are also options to use data your business already has to finetune your ad audience targets.
“We have a lot of clients in the home industry, so there’s a lot of homeowner interests and behaviors that we target like household income, recent movers, things like that where you can really get specific into people and what they’re doing,” said Veren.
The value of paid social: business goals and metrics
The SA paid social team takes the goals and budget a business brings to them and crafts a custom plan. The goals of paid social can vary, ranging from increasing engagement to driving leads and sales. Veren emphasizes the need for customized strategies based on individual business goals. Metrics to watch depend on the campaign type — but may include reach for awareness, lead volume and cost per lead for leads campaigns, and web traffic metrics. Integration with CRM systems allows attribution of sales to specific campaigns.
Setting budgets and campaign duration
Budgets for social campaigns depend on a number of factors like market, audience size and campaign goals. While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, a basic budget of $50 to $100 a day is a good starting point for some businesses. The time an ad is allowed to run is also important. Turning ads on and off in short spurts typically isn’t as effective as ongoing campaigns allow for optimization over time, but short-term, event-focused campaigns can achieve results.
Looking to the future: innovations and challenges
The SA paid social team is constantly tracking trends and innovations to keep our customers’ strategies and campaigns ahead of the curve. AI continues to be an emerging force with a shift towards AI-driven optimization, while still maintaining human oversight. Another big digital trend is the pending end of support for web browser cookies that companies use to track customers online. Durnin emphasizes the significance of first-party data, clean CRM data, and preparing for more social platforms, ad types, and innovations in the future as businesses adapt to not having third-party cookie data.
Success stories and best practices
While SA customers expect results from ads, many have been shocked by what the SA team delivers for them. One success story with a local retailer saw purchases increase by more than 41 percent while, at the same time, ad costs decreased by 16 percent. Another customer with branches throughout the U.S. saw a jump of 160 percent in lead volume, a 35 percent cost per lead decrease and a 229 percent pacing above forecasted results for 2023.
“When we have all the right pieces together, we can produce some really great results, and it’s exciting to see that growth really take off,” said Veren. The team stresses the importance of a comprehensive strategy, testing and adaptation to changes to drive results over time.
SA is here to help
Whether you are starting from scratch or building a better strategic plan for 2024, SA’s team can help. A robust paid social media strategy is no longer an option but a necessity and a strategic investment, especially when paired with organic social. Bring your big business goals to us, and we’ll help you develop a custom plan to get there.
Taia Veren is Digital Marketing Manager and Jayne Durnin is Digital Media Specialist. Learn more about our services.
