Does your marketing strategy include a killer paid social campaign? No? Then, our team of social media specialists can guarantee that you are missing out on valuable conversions and bypassing your target audience more than you may realise. In this blog post, we will answer the question, 'What does paid social mean for brands?' And showcase how a paid social agency like Soar With Us can transform your business.

What is the Role of Paid Social?

What does paid social mean? Simply put, ‘paid social’ refers to advertisements that appear on social media platforms in front of potential customers as part of your social media strategy. Compared to organic social media, paid social media campaigns use sponsored content to reach your target audience based on their online behaviour and traits. 

Brands and businesses create advertisement campaigns by determining their objectives, performing audience research, setting an advertising budget, and creating assets/ad copy. Their digital advertising efforts, including their visual ads, will appear on the social media feeds of those who fit their targeting criteria.

These ads can appear in various formats, including image ads, carousel ads, text ads, story ads and short-form content like video ads. In other cases, these ads can be created using influencers to create influencer-generated content.

One of the most critical things about paid social media advertising that brands should be aware of is that it requires a budget that you must provide. This budget pays the social media platforms running your advertisements whenever someone sees or takes the desired action of clicking on your ad. You may also be charged for actions such as comments, likes and views when running paid social advertisements on other social media platforms. 

Paying for a simple click may seem redundant for small businesses. However, when it comes to reaching business goals and seeing a genuine return on investment, paid social media can transform businesses of all sizes.

What is Paid Social Used For?

Brands and businesses use paid social media to generate new business opportunities and increase brand awareness, sales, and revenue. Let's take a look at some of the most common uses for paid social media advertising. 

Improve Brand Awareness

When it comes to business, your brand should always be front and centre. It has been revealed that 61% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a brand they recognise, and 46% are willing to pay more for one they trust.

Paid social media advertising is critical to brand awareness because it offers vast targeting options, allowing businesses and brands to reach their target audience using demographic targeting, including location, age, gender, hobbies, previous behaviour, and interests. 

When you run paid ads, you're not just hiring an online billboard for uninterested internet users to scroll by; you can instantly place your ads in front of your target audience.

This is the beauty of paid social media advertising compared to organic social posts; you can choose who sees your brand and how it is marketed, building brand awareness within a specific demographic of users who would typically be interested in your products or services. 

Increase Sales and Conversions

Sales and conversions don't happen randomly; they are from customers who need or desire your products or services. Instead of casting your rod into a sea of unknown users (organic social posts), paid social media aims directly at those who have the traits of your buyer persona or have already shown an interest in services and products similar to yours.

These users are more likely to visit your website and purchase or enquire about your services. This is how paid social media advertising can increase sales and conversions by putting your business in front of the right people.

Research has shown that a quarter (28%) of SMEs in the UK generate more sales and conversions from social media than from any other channel.

Remarketing to Disengaged Customers

Remarketing is critical to a successful social media marketing strategy. Remarketing helps increase brand awareness, reach its ideal customers and audiences who have interacted with your brand in the past, and encourage them to take action via conversions such as enquiries and purchases - remarketing can increase ad engagement by 400%.

Customers you would be remarketing to may have visited your website and browsed but have yet to convert or previously added items to their shopping basket and left without ever completing their purchase. You can use paid social media advertisements to retarget these potential or past customers through key ad placements, visuals and ad copy.

What Does Paid Social Mean for Brands?

For brands, paid social media means discovering unprecedented opportunities to introduce themselves to wider audiences. In the fiercely competitive e-commerce space, implementing paid social media ads as part of a marketing strategy allows brands to leverage social channels' power and influence on consumers. 

Paid social media has exceptional benefits, including precise audience targeting using various demographics and traits. This form of social media advertising can increase brand awareness and reach users globally through social media channels. It can also produce quantifiable results, allowing brands to measure their campaigns' success and improve where necessary.

For companies looking to succeed in an online space as competitive as e-commerce, interactive social media advertising could transform your business.

What is a Paid Social Agency? 

A paid social media agency like Soar With Us will use its expert knowledge and industry experience to scale your brand by implementing advertisements on your social media platforms. Before researching your target audience, they will assess your brand, learning its purpose and current performance. 

They handle every part of your paid social media strategy from start to finish, working with influencers, creating dynamic visual ads, and writing compelling ad copy to encourage the right people to visit your website to achieve your business goals by increasing sales and enquiries about your products or services. 

Our Final Thoughts

Paid social media isn't just some flashy buzzword thrown around by social media specialists; it is a groundbreaking way for brands to discover new business opportunities and reach their goals. Through strategic social media advertising campaigns, businesses can boost their brand awareness, drive sales and conversions, and connect with a wider audience like never before.

Whether your business is a small startup or an industry giant, paid social media presents an even playing field for businesses to battle for brand exposure on social media.

So, if you want to take your brand to new heights, speak to one of our specialists to understand how SOAR With Us can help your business unlock its true online potential.

Our savvy social media specialists utilise dynamic social strategies to unlock exponential growth for ambitious E-Commerce brands. Check out our Paid Social Media Services today!

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