Building a social media paid strategy

Creating an effective social media paid strategy can bring a wider audience to your brand, amplifying your organic content and influencer collaborations along the way.

We outline the steps to take in ensuring your paid social plan maximises in reach, engagement as well as the all important return on investment (ROI). 

Having a clear purpose for your campaigns alongside specific goals that align with your overall marketing objectives is a sensible starting point. Working back from what your need to achieve will provide a roadmap for success. 

Whether the goal is increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic or boosting sales - clarity in objectives (and how they rank in terms of their priority) is key at the outset. 

Paid social advertising provides the tools to narrow down your target audience into segments based on demographics, interests and behaviours. Creating and refining those segments ensures ads resonate with the most receptive audience and drives performance.

Start by interrogating the data from your eCommerce store to generate a small number of audience groups. Then use the tools of the ad platforms to continually refine these down to those offering the strongest return on ad spend (ROAS).

Select platforms where your target audience is most active to optimise campaign performance. Consider factors such as demographics and audience behaviour to gauge where your audience will be spending their time, as well as what role the platforms have in their life - are they there for product inspiration or just to be  entertained? 

Thinking about the need your audience has for each social channel will ensure you show up in the right spaces.

Determining an appropriate paid social budget that will hit your campaign goals depends on your brand, industry and the objectives you set out above. 

However, common practise is to scale-up budgets by starting will smaller test spends and then gradually increasing those amount as your campaign starts to show performance against your KPIs.  

Planning paid social creative is a similar process as for your organic social calendar. Content needs to resonate with your target audience, brand messages need to land effective, copy and call-to-action need to be on-point.

There are some specific considerations, however:

• Create for the funnel - where each ad sits in your funnel has influence on what form it takes. Is this the first time the person has seen your brand? Have they interacted previously? What did they see?
• Prioritise video - it doesn't need to studio-quality, in fact UGC often lands best. Inspiration can come from TikTok trends as well of content created in influencer collaborations.
• Tailor each placement - make sure that the content created fits the platform it is going to be served in, that can be as simple as ensuring you create in the correct dimensions. 

Take advantage of advanced targeting options offered by social media platforms, such as custom audiences, lookalike audiences, and retargeting, to reach highly relevant users and maximise campaign effectiveness.

Regularly monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and return on ad spend (ROAS) to evaluate campaign effectiveness. Analyse data insights to identify trends, optimise targeting, and refine ad creatives for better results.

Paid social is often simply a sophisticated form or trial and error. Experimenting with different ad formats, messaging, visuals, and CTAs will help you find the slickest funnel to start scaling the budget. 

Only, be wary of making changes too early - give creative the opportunity to build data for you to be able to draw conclusions. 

Being able to attribute ROI to your paid social advertising will help with future budget allocation, so make sure to set up conversion tracking to attribute website actions such as purchases, sign-ups, or downloads to specific ad campaigns. 

Based on the insights you are picking up from your campaign, you should be continuously optimising your paid social campaigns. Refining targeting, adjusting ad creatives and reallocating budgets to maximise ROI helps ensure that your funnel delivers better ROAS with each month.