Paid Social Media Ads: It's Time to Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

Since 2019, the amount of money spent on paid social media ads has continued to climb. Now, businesses are ready to invest heavily in this method to achieve business goals.

The thing is, every social media platform is different, both in terms of content and audience. Consequently, paid social media varies between channels. Twitter is well-suited to short-form content, while Instagram is heavily visual and Facebook is a haven for shoppers, with its own marketplace.

So, with all these differences, how can you successfully plan and use paid social media to your advantage?

What is paid social media?

Paid social media is a form of marketing in which a business buys ad space on popular social media platforms to target a specific audience. Examples of this include display ads, influencer marketing and pay-per-click advertising. If a social post says ‘sponsored’ or ‘promoted’, it’s a paid social media ad.

Where should you use paid social media ads?

Like anything in life, you need to understand the goal you’re trying to achieve before you set off. Paid social ads offer plenty of options in terms of where you can focus your efforts, from generating leads to creating awareness, or simply boosting website traffic - paid social ads can be the catalyst to help you reach your goal. 

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Twitter

Twitter is a great platform for those with a lot of interesting things to share and it allows marketers to tailor their reach to a specific audience or demographic. What’s even better is that Twitter boasts roughly 238 million global monetizable daily active users. In other words, that’s how many people could see your ad on any given day.

Twitter will offer customizable ad settings, based on your budget. Options include how frequently your ad will be viewed and where it will be seen by users. Advertising on this platform is great for increasing traffic and leads, as Twitter will allow your audience to quickly access and view your material with just one click.

Instagram

Research has shown that of the world’s 3.8 billion active social media users, roughly a quarter of those people are using Instagram regularly. As such, it’s not a bad idea to pay-to-play for a spot in front of an audience that large.

Instagram requires you to set up a business profile before running any paid social media ads, but this also means you’ll be able to configure an ecommerce store on the app. This is a huge bonus if you don’t already have a website that’s able to accept payments.

Additionally, Instagram is owned by Facebook, so you’ll be running your ads across both platforms. Simply choose a budget that works for you and, like Twitter, you’ll be able to scale aspects of your campaign to fit within your ad spend.

One of the best features of Instagram ads is the simplicity of the call to action. If you’re marketing a product or service, viewers can simply swipe up to see more and make a purchase. The key to success on this platform is creating visually appealing, succinct content to garner enough attention and interest that users feel compelled to swipe in the first place.

Facebook

Facebook offers targeted ads, a highly robust platform that runs on a bidding system. This means marketers bid on a variety of ads based on their target audience and these bids are entered into a lottery for a chance to be selected and displayed to the target demographic.

Based on the information you provide, Facebook can narrow a target audience down to an incredibly specific group based on factors such as geography, demographic, interests and more. You can also target users based on their behaviors, which means you can continue advertising to existing customers based on what information Facebook gives you about how they use the platform.