Social Media Buying in 2023.

With over 4.74 billion users, social media serves more than half of the world's population and is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world. Although several social networks had a tumultuous 2022, with brands and advertisers slowing their use of paid social advertising due to macroeconomic challenges and iOS privacy updates, social media buying remains a compelling trend in 2023.

During the second half of 2022, Meta's revenue gradually declined, while TikTok achieved record performance. This has created new dynamics that provide marketers with excellent opportunities to capitalise on lower advertising costs on Meta and to benefit from TikTok's growing power among other platforms.

In 2023, strategy and diversification are key. Ensuring that you communicate with your clients where they are, even as their behaviors continuously shift, is essential. While most businesses heavily invest in Meta only, it is key to diversify your ad portfolio across other platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc... On top of this, ads diversification enables you to navigate into shadow ban and blocked ads. Do not hesitate to contact us to help you overcome bans and run your ads.

What is social media paid advertising?

Paid ads on social networks are a way for companies to promote their products or services to a targeted audience - it gives businesses guaranteed reach. Companies pay Meta (Facebook, Instagram…), TikTok, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, or other platforms to share their content with a specific, targeted audience. This can be done by either "boosting" organic content or creating unique ads.

Why use Social Media Paid Ads?

Social Media Buying gets brands in front of their target market. It enables companies to expand their reach and connect with a more targeted audience than they would through not boosted organic posts. Indeed, ads can be customised based on different criteria depending on the platform, such as:

Demographics;
Location;
Interests;
Other profile information.

To optimise further, brands need to focus on context and creation of original content that subtly fits into the targeted customers’ feed. If we look at Tik Tok’s algorithm, for example, users will see certain categories of videos depending on how they interact with them. Also, your ad content will not interrupt the user experience and will generally be better received.

To stay relevant, focused, and effectively communicate with their customers, savvy brands will leverage the use of specific audience targeting combined with contextual audience targeting.

First Step Toward Media Advertising is Media Planning

Media buying aims to achieve the highest number of impressions from the target audience while keeping the cost low. On the other hand, media planning is concerned with the strategic aspect of the campaign.

Unlike organic social media, where users are searching for your content, outbound strategies require a well-thought-out plan to be effective. Therefore, it's crucial to define your marketing goals first to succeed and maximize the impact of your ads.

Before you start advertising, you need to figure out the best way to reach your target audience. Once you've done that, you can start buying the ads you need to reach them.

Tips for Successful Campaigns?

Paid advertisements on social media are an excellent way for businesses to reach a wider and more relevant audience. However, it is important to plan and implement an effective strategy to maximize the impact of your advertising campaign. There are four key steps to follow for a successful social media advertising campaign:

1. Define your Strategy

Before launching an advertising campaign, it is important to determine the campaign's objectives and targeted KPIs that motivate your investment in this ad campaign.

What are your objectives? Do you want to increase traffic to your website, improve brand awareness, or boost engagement on social media?

What are your targeted KPIs? Clearly defining these KPIs will help you with the next steps as some platforms will guide you accordingly. For example, Meta objectives for Facebook and Instagram ads include:

Awareness.
Traffic.
Engagement.
Leads.
Application promotion.
Sales.

2. Define your Target Audience

Once the strategy has been defined, you need to clearly state who you want to reach with your advertising campaign and choose the most suitable channels to reach your target audience. Each social has its own specifications, and some will better serve your goals.

For instance, LinkedIn will be very interesting for recruitment purposes thanks to the use of the following parameters to target ads:

Company.
Industry.
Education.
Job experience.
Group or member interests.

3. Create unique content

It is important that your content is original. High-quality content generates more impressions, clicks, and conversions. On top of this, the type of content you create should fit seamlessly into the platform you are using. To help with creation, various SaaS options, such as Canva, make creating quality content quite easy. However, if you are not familiar with content creation, it may be worthwhile to work with a freelancer through Upwork or Fiverr. Though there is an initial cost, it can help you achieve better results with your campaign, so it's worth considering.

4. Allocate Budget and Set-up Your Campaign

After defining your strategy, audience, and content, you can start allocating your budget. You can choose between a lifetime or daily budget. Lifetime budgets are spent over the duration of your campaign and are ideal for ads with a specific start and end date. Daily budgets will limit your daily spend. It's important to define your budget early on, but also be flexible enough to adjust it later based on which social media platforms and ad campaigns are driving the most leads for your business. Once the budget has been defined, depending on the advertising platform used, you will need to enter the details of your campaign, such as the type of campaign, target audiences, and bidding strategies.

5. Results Tracking and Optimisation

The last but certainly the most important step is the tracking of the results. The various platforms will provide you with reporting with standard cost-benefit analysis of your campaigns. Tracking your campaigns weekly and/or monthly will help you determine your ROI/ROAS based on the number of several metrics you generate. This phase will allow you to make adjustments along the way. You can reallocate funds to the most effective ads and channels.