Having a social media presence as a business is a necessity. Yet, posting, engaging, and building an audience alone will only get you so far in reaching your overall goals. Aligning your organic social media strategy (ie: unpaid) with a paid social media strategy is the best way to get maximum results from  your efforts. I am a huge advocate for paid social media advertising, as it is the best bang-for-your-buck advertising option available, highly trackable, and inexpensive to get started. When crafting your ad campaign, make sure you have your overall social media strategy handy, as it will guide you in many of your decisions through this process. What to do after that? Read more to find out.

Platforms

The first step in crafting your paid social media strategy is to choose what platforms you will use to advertise. The choices  should align directly with your overall social media strategy; wherever you implement a paid social campaign, an organic social presence should be on the same platforms. Providing valuable content on your page shows consistency and reliability for your overall brand, along with paying to get a message across to your audience.

Budget

The second piece of the puzzle is choosing your budget for the campaign. Social media advertising works on a pay-per-view or a pay-per-click basis, depending on how you craft your campaign. In other words,  the more money you put into the ad campaign, the better results you will achieve. Each social media platform has a different minimum for a campaign spend, but I typically recommend no less than $100-$200 to start, and then the budget can be adjusted over time, depending on outcomes and objectives. The ad budget should be incorporated into your overall marketing budget.

Targeting

Once we have established platforms and budget, it’s time to narrow down the targeting for the ad campaign. My favorite part of social ad campaigns is working with the target audience. Organic social media posts don’t allow specific targeting, but paid ones do! Targeting options will vary per platform, and you won’t be allowed on any platform to reach groups based on protected classes, but overall you have plenty of options to ensure your message is shown to the right people. For instance, within Facebook and Instagram, you can target based on job title, interest, and income level. You can even set-up Lookalike Audiences based on who is already viewing your page or visiting your website. This is where the creativity kicks in for these campaigns.

Design

Once targeting has been established, the fun begins as you  focus on visuals! Unlock your creativity as you design your ad. Craft the copy, including any photos or videos, and make sure the links direct people to where you want to send them. I always recommend designing more than one ad per campaign, because the social media algorithms will measure which ones are performing best to your target audience and show those more often. Thus, you’ll yield better results in your campaign. If you are creating graphics for ads, keep in mind that the text you’re allowed to use in visuals is highly limited. Your ads will get rejected if you use too many words in your design. Also, pro tip, make sure you design each visual to best fit the format of the platform where your ad will show. For example, your Instagram feed ad should look different than your Stories ad, which should look different than your Reels ad. It’s more effort, but you'll be rewarded in the end when you look at the data.

Track

Speaking of data, you’ll want to make sure you track the results of your campaign to measure your success. After all, you put time and effort into making your paid social media campaign happen, so you’ll want to reap the rewards. Plus, you’ll be able to see what worked best and what could be tweaked for next time. The measurement options for each ad platform vary on how to view and what they track, but each will show you the main pieces of information. What should you track? That goes back to your overall social media strategy, your goals, and what you're tracking in your monthly organic analytics.

Quite a few steps go into a paid social media strategy. Yet remember, the effort you invest today will sow the seeds of success in the future. And as always, we are here to help you if you need it!