How can you properly utilise paid social media without blowing your budget?

With social media ad revenue in the UK alone expected to increase from $7.9bn to $11.8bn by 2025, it’s no wonder companies can feel lost and disillusioned with organic social media considering the widespread use of paid boosting.

It seems every other tweet now carries the ‘Promoted’ tagline when scrolling through your feed, further emphasising the reach and impact of paid promotion. It’s easy to look at and feel jealous if you’re one of those brands who either can’t afford to spend big on paid, or can’t get the budget - but it’s not all lost. Utilising paid correctly in conjunction with organic can lead to promising results.

This is a sentiment echoed by Chris Reeve: “How much you spend vs what results you get back completely depends as there are so many variables with the platforms that are out there to utilise.

“One viral post on any platform could change the fortunes of your business forever. From an organic social media perspective - patience, platform and trend knowledge and content creation skill are essential when it comes to getting more return from your social media.”

A badly run paid campaign, or one that isn’t paired with a strong organic strategy, will lead to companies wasting money that could have been better spent elsewhere. ‘Winging it’ isn’t really an option when you’re potentially spending hundreds or thousands of pounds. Getting that right strategy in place and knowing your target audience is essential, and that knowledge takes time to acquire. 

Don’t rush into doing paid just because it seems every other brand out there is. Do your research, spend time looking at what your competitors are doing, and come up with sets of creative and copy that can be measured against each other. Utilising both qualitative and quantitative data is essential to optimising your content and really stretching your budget as far as it will go.

Putting hard-fought budget behind social media content will always carry the caveat of increased performance and ROI, so optimisation will allow you to tweak and change aspects of your campaigns as you go, maximising results. Expecting it to be perfect first time is a sure way to fail. 

Paid social media also carries the prospect of increased visibility and with it, responsibility.

“If you’re worried that a piece of content could harm your brand’s reputation, it’s usually not the right thing to be publishing to your audience,” warns Chris. “However, pushing the boundaries and really being brave can pay off in a big way.”

“If you want to test something, why not have a brainstorming session with your team, bounce ideas around, or ask someone you know that fits your target what they think of the content. If it doesn’t fit in the brand culture or help towards pre-agreed KPIs, does it have the right risk-reward balance?

“Once you’ve hashed out the details, make space in your diary to monitor the response and listen to the feedback.”

Jumping on trends, such as sportswear manufacturers making the most of Emma Raducanu’s exceptional US Open triumph, is more of a hit than if they were to try and get involved with politics. That doesn’t mean there isn’t an angle in every story though, but forcing your brand onto something where it doesn’t fit and likely doesn’t have an audience will look desperate and doesn’t play well. 

Properly scouting out opportunities will enable brands to position themselves as a thought leader and an influential profile in a sphere that is likely to house potential customers, so will yield returns in the long run. 

Providing true value to your brand’s audience is the best way to do this, so creating content that helps inform and shape decision making will help people understand topics that they’re interested about. 

Now more than ever on social media, it’s key to be kind. Good deeds go a long way, so helping out is always a good move in making someone’s day. Footballers offering shirts to kids they seeing doing good in the community, for example, costs nothing but provides a lifetime of joy for that child. Building your brand should be secondary to that and you’ll find that will come naturally if you’re doing and saying the right things.