Why paid social media is important in 2022
It's no secret that social media platforms (looking at you, Facebook) are now pay-to-play spaces for most brands. Why? In my opinion, it’s because advertising is a significant source of revenue for social media companies and they know that businesses are willing to fork out to get their content in front of audiences.
All good social media managers know that generally speaking, organic reach has been in decline for years. The average reach of a Facebook post from a business page is estimated to be 5.20% currently; just 1 in every 19 followers will see a brand’s non-promoted content (Hootsuite). It's no wonder reports show a 60% increase in spending on paid Facebook and Instagram ads in Q1 of 2021 versus Q1 of 2020.
That isn't to say that organic posts don't have a place in your social media strategy. It's still the foundation of your social media activity and an essential part of building brand image, customer relationships and brand awareness. LinkedIn’s recent study found that LinkedIn Page followers who are exposed to both organic and paid content are 61% more likely to convert.
However, as more businesses put money behind their content to promote their brand and their initiatives, genning up on the benefits of paid social media can give you the power to use this tool in a strategic way to get your products or services noticed by potential customers.
What does "organic social media" mean?
Let's pause here and take it back to basics. What do I mean by "organic” social media posts, and how do they differ from paid social media posts?
In a nutshell, “organic” refers to social media content that's free to post, and no money has been used to sponsor or boost it. The majority of social media platforms, including all the big hitters like TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, allow brands to post free content. This content can be used to build brand image, create trust, develop relationships and so on.
Rarely - and I mean very rarely - an organic post will strike a chord and go viral, reaching a large audience for free. However, these days even some viral content gets an initial boost from some type of paid activity or influencer marketing. Usually, organic posts have a limited reach, but are still essential for day-to-day business as usual content and providing information/context to people who reach your profile from a paid post or ad.
Now you know what “organic” social media means, you've probably guessed that “paid” social media is any type of social media content that marketers have put money behind to reach more people and get a particular result. Social media adverts and profile posts that have been boosted or sponsored all come under the category of “paid” social media.
Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s crack on.
Paid Social media benefits
Reach more people
We've already touched on this one. As organic reach continues to decline, social media advertising campaigns or sponsoring key profile posts can help you secure visibility on potential customers’ newsfeeds, Stories, For You feed, etc.
Large brands with large budgets can afford to sponsor every post they put out on platforms like Instagram or Facebook. For smaller businesses, even putting £20 behind each post can quickly add up and become expensive. The good news is that you don't need to sponsor every post to reap the benefits of paid social media - especially if you’re strategic about it. Instead, you can opt to only sponsor posts that coincide with a key moment in a marketing campaign or are likely to have the most impact on your audience. For example, when you launch a summer sale or invest hero item of content such as an animation or a video.
Anecdotally, I've seen a "halo" effect happen when social media ads are running or once a post has been sponsored. While the paid activity is happening, my client’s organic posts also benefit from a higher reach. It’s likely due to more people visiting the profile after seeing an ad or sponsored post and it may not happen for every business. But when it does, because the person has interacted with the page’s content they are more likely to see organic posts in the future, thanks to how most social media platforms' have told us their algorithms work (in part anyway).
If you decide not to sponsor or boost regular profile posts, that's OK too. Some brands choose to forgo sponsoring posts and spend their budget on social media ads instead. They reach a larger audience by either running campaigns during key dates in their marketing calendar, having always-on ads run consistently throughout the year, or both depending on what they want to achieve.
Advanced targeting options
If you've read a few of my posts then you'll know that it's not just about reaching a lot of people, it's about reaching a lot of the right people.
Social media platforms have some of the most advanced advertising targeting options available to marketers, whether you're paying to sponsor posts to a B2B audience on LinkedIn or building brand awareness amongst a B2C audience on Instagram.
If you're clever about it, you can build detailed profiles of your target audience groups and send them personalised messaging that's most likely to elicit a response.
You aren't limited to the most obvious targeting choices either. For example, if you were promoting your yoga studio, you could build out your targeting to include relevant wellness and holistic health topics. Even with Facebook recently removing some of its targeting options, marketers can still be extremely precise with their targeting.
When you're ready to take your targeting to the next level, you can take advantage of the platforms’ advanced options such as Lookalike audiences for example. This feature allows businesses to tap into platforms’ intelligent AI and use it to reach people who are similar to those already in their most important custom audiences (i.e. people who made a purchase) and are also likely to be interested in your products or services.
It's no secret that social media platforms have become pay-to-play spaces for most brands.
Remarket to warm audiences
On a similar note, one of the most popular types of paid social media activity at the moment is running remarketing adverts; 77% of B2B and B2C marketers said that remarketing is part of their Facebook and Instagram advertising strategies.
Remarketing ads allow you to reach back out to warm audiences that already know your brand and drive them back to your site. It can be a highly effective way to target people who looked at a product but didn't buy, upsell to those who have already made a purchase, remind lapsed customers how great your brand is, and so much more.
Once you set up your remarketing audiences, you can also start building simple or advanced funnels and use personalised messaging or offers based on the relationship each audience has with your business.
Lower cost than some traditional advertising options
How much paid social media costs will vary from business to business regardless of whether you're running social media ads or sponsoring posts. Factors like competition, audience, past performance, etc. can impact how much you need to pay for clicks or impressions.
That being said, generally speaking, paid social media marketing campaigns tend to be much cheaper than traditional offline advertising tactics such as hiring a billboard or running a TV ad. To give you an idea, for some industries, the average benchmark cost per click for a Facebook ad is £0.37 (Wordstream). The lower entry cost can make social media advertising an appealing option for SME businesses that want to make the most of their advertising budget.
On top of that, paid social media gives you access to performance insights and the chance to test different elements of your ad like the creative and messaging, which isn’t available with most forms of offline advertising. This leads me nicely on to...
Access audience insights
The final benefit I’m going to shout about is that paid social media gives you access to a wealth of audience insights. For example, on LinkedIn, B2B brands can gain valuable information such as which companies clicked on their ads All this intel can be used to power your next social media advertising campaign and optimise ongoing campaigns for better results in the future. It can even be shared with other teams in your business that will benefit from gaining a better understanding of who is interacting with your business.
The list of benefits of paid social media activity goes on and on, but I’ll leave it there for now. Want to find out more? If you're interested in working with a freelancer to manage your paid social media including running adverts, audit your existing account or train your team on paid social media skills, get in touch to find out how I can support your business.