Integrating Paid Social with Your Overall Marketing Strategy

Social media has become an undeniable force in today’s marketing landscape. But with organic reach on the decline, many businesses are turning to paid social media advertising to amplify their efforts. When integrated with your overall marketing strategy, it becomes a powerful tool for achieving your marketing goals.

Organic vs Paid Social:

Organic social media and paid social media are two sides of the same coin for advertising on platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Organic social involves content shared for free, relying on engagement and algorithms to reach your audience. It’s great for building brand loyalty and a community but can be slow to gain traction.

Paid social, on the other hand, uses advertising fees to target specific demographics and get your content seen by a wider audience quickly. This is ideal for immediate reach and conversions but requires a budget. Many businesses find success with a hybrid approach, using organic content to nurture existing followers and paid ads to target new ones.

Why Use Paid Social?

Unlike PPC, where users actively search for terms related to your product, paid social allows you to strategically place your brand in front of entirely new audiences. By leveraging powerful targeting tools, you can reach people who haven’t heard of your brand but exhibit interests and behaviours that suggest they might be receptive. This is distinct from email marketing, where users have already opted in to receive information. Paid social bridges the gap, allowing you to proactively introduce your brand to those who haven’t actively sought you out but share characteristics with your existing customer base.

There are several compelling reasons to integrate paid social into your marketing mix:

Targeted Reach: Paid social allows you to laser-focus your message on a highly specific audience. Demographic details, interests, behaviours – you can target exactly who you want to see your ad. This ensures you’re not wasting resources on irrelevant viewers.

For example, if you are using paid social marketing for a travel agency:

• Goal: Generate leads for upcoming adventure tours.
• Targeting:
  • Demographics: Age range based on typical adventure traveller demographics (often 22-48)
  • Interests: Travel, adventure sports (rock climbing, hiking), backpacking, nature documentaries
  • Behaviours: Follows travel influencers on social media, engages with travel blogs, has recently booked flights or accommodation.

This campaign targets individuals who demonstrate a strong interest in travel and adventure. By showcasing visually stunning destinations and highlighting the unique experiences of tours in different countries, the travel agency can entice potential customers to inquire about booking.

Boost Organic Efforts: Paid social can act as rocket fuel for your organic content. Promote your best-performing organic posts to a wider audience, increasing engagement and brand awareness.

Organic reach continues to decline, so boosting allows you to strategically amplify your best content in front of a wider, targeted audience. You can leverage the same powerful targeting options available in paid social campaigns – demographics, interests, behaviours – to ensure your boosted posts reach the people most likely to engage with them. This translates to increased brand awareness, targeted engagement, and ultimately, achieving the goals of your social media strategy – whether it’s driving website traffic, generating leads from a specific demographic, or fostering stronger brand loyalty with existing customers

Data-Driven Decisions: Unlike traditional marketing, paid social offers real-time data and analytics. You can track key metrics like clicks, conversions, and engagement to see what’s working and what’s not. This allows you to optimise your campaigns for maximum impact.

Faster Results: Organic social media success takes time. Paid social delivers quicker results, allowing you to see a return on your investment (ROI) sooner.

Making the Integration Seamless

Here’s how to seamlessly integrate paid social with your overall marketing strategy:

Define Your Goals: What do you want to achieve with paid social? Increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, generate leads, or boost sales? Aligning your paid social goals with your overall marketing goals ensures everything works together.

Choosing the right paid social platform: We wrote a blog about choosing the perfect social media platform for your target audience which you can read here.

Know Your Audience: Understanding your ideal customer is key to crafting effective paid social campaigns. Leverage the audience insights you’ve gathered from other marketing channels to create targeted ad campaigns.

Content is King (and Queen): Don’t just create ads for the sake of advertising. Use high-quality content that resonates with your audience, whether it’s a thought-provoking blog post, an engaging video, or a captivating infographic.

Align Your Messaging: Ensure your paid social messaging aligns with your overall brand voice and messaging. Consistency is crucial for building brand recognition and trust.

Retargeting Power: People who have interacted with your brand online are more likely to convert. Use retargeting campaigns to stay top-of-mind with website visitors or app users.

Track and Analyse: Don’t set your campaigns and forget them. Regularly monitor your paid social performance and adjust strategies based on data insights.

The Dream Team: Paid Social and Other Marketing Strategies

The beauty of paid social lies in its ability to work synergistically with other marketing channels. Here are some powerful combinations:

Paid Social + Pay-per-Click (PPC):

1. Audience Building and Refinement:

• Leverage Paid Social for Audience Insights: Paid social allows for highly targeted campaigns. Run campaigns targeting specific demographics, interests, and behaviours. Analyse who interacts with your ads to understand your ideal customer profile.
• Refine PPC Targeting with Social Data: Use the insights gleaned from paid social campaigns to refine your PPC targeting on search engines. This ensures your PPC ads reach users with similar characteristics to those who engage with your social media content.

 

2. Multi-Stage Funnel Optimisation:

• Top-of-Funnel Awareness with Paid Social: Use engaging paid social content like infographics, videos, or polls to capture attention and build brand awareness. This positions your brand in the minds of potential customers.
• Mid-Funnel Consideration with PPC: When users search for terms related to your product or service, well-targeted PPC ads can appear at the top of search results, driving them to informative landing pages that address their specific needs.
• Bottom-of-Funnel Conversion with Retargeting: Retarget website visitors from both paid social and PPC campaigns with compelling offers, showcasing product benefits, or highlighting customer reviews. This nudges them closer to conversion.

 

3. Synergy and Brand Reinforcement:

• Align Messaging Across Platforms: Maintain a consistent brand voice and messaging across both paid social and PPC campaigns. This reinforces brand recognition and builds trust with potential customers encountering your brand at different touchpoints.
• Offer Exclusive Deals Through Social Ads: Promote special offers or discounts exclusively through paid social campaigns. This incentivises engagement and drives users towards your PPC landing pages for conversion.

 

4. Data-Driven Optimisation:

• Track Performance Across Platforms: Monitor the performance of both your paid social and PPC campaigns. Analyse key metrics like impressions, clicks, conversions, and cost-per-acquisition (CPA). This allows you to identify what’s working and adjust strategies for each platform to maximise ROI.
• Utilise Attribution Modelling: Use attribution models within your analytics platforms to understand the role each platform plays in the overall customer journey. This helps you determine which platform contributes most to conversions and optimize your budget allocation accordingly.

 

Paid Social + Email Marketing:

1. Building Your Email List with Paid Social:

• Targeted Lead Generation Ads: Run paid social campaigns specifically designed to capture email addresses. Target these ads to users who exhibit characteristics of your ideal customer.
• Retargeting Website Visitors: Use retargeting campaigns to capture email addresses from website visitors who haven’t converted. Showcase targeted opt-in forms offering relevant content or special deals in exchange for their email address.

 

2. Warming Up Cold Leads with Email Sequences:

• Segment Your Email List Based on Paid Social Data: Leverage data from your paid social campaigns to segment your email list. For example, group users who engaged with specific ads to receive emails related to those interests. This personalisation improves engagement and conversion rates.
• Nurture Leads Acquired Through Paid Social: Welcome new email subscribers acquired through paid social campaigns with a targeted sequence that introduces your brand, highlights your value proposition, and educates them about your offerings.

 

3. Amplifying Your Email Marketing Efforts:

• Promote Email List Signups Through Paid Social: Run paid social campaigns specifically designed to promote your email list. Utilise compelling visuals and messaging to highlight the benefits of subscribing, such as exclusive offers, early access to new products, or valuable industry insights.
• Retarget Email Non-Openers with Paid Social Ads: Reach out to subscribers who haven’t opened your recent emails with retargeting campaigns. Use social media ads to showcase engaging content or highlight a particularly relevant blog post they might have missed.

 

Paid Social + Organic Social Media:

1. Amplifying Your Best Organic Content:

• Boost High-Performing Organic Posts: Identify your most successful organic social media posts (videos, images, blog previews) that resonate with your audience. Use paid social campaigns to strategically amplify this content and reach a wider audience. This injects new life into valuable content and increases its potential for engagement and conversions.
• Targeted Distribution for Organic Posts: Leverage paid social targeting options to ensure your boosted organic posts reach the right audience. Target users based on demographics, interests, and behaviours that align with the content’s theme. This ensures your best content reaches those most likely to find it valuable.

 

2. Building Brand Awareness and Community:

• Paid Social Campaigns to Drive Organic Follows: Launch paid social campaigns designed to attract new followers to your organic social media channels. Utilize eye-catching visuals, compelling headlines, and clear calls to action to encourage users to follow your brand for valuable content and updates.
• Organic Content that Fuels Paid Social Inspiration: Analyse the type of organic content that sparks the most engagement (comments, shares) on your social media platforms. Use this data to inform your paid social content strategy, ensuring your paid campaigns resonate with your audience and encourage them to discover your organic channels.

 

The Takeaway

Paid social media is a powerful tool, but it’s most effective when integrated with your overall marketing strategy. By aligning your goals, targeting the right audience, and creating compelling content, you can leverage paid social to achieve remarkable results and take your marketing to the next level.

If you are unsure where to start with how to implement paid social marketing into your marketing mix, contact our team of experts where we can help you achieve your business goals with a range of platforms and channels!