Yes. I’m going to recommend yet another marketing tactic you need for your digital arsenal: paid social media advertising. That’s because it’s important!

Brands continue to increase their budget for paid social media ads. In fact, brands spent $43 billion on social media advertising in 2020. Why? Because paid ads are extremely effective at raising brand awareness, attracting qualified leads, closing sales, and improving your digital marketing strategy as a whole.

Whether you’ve dabbled in ads or not, here are the nine reasons all small businesses like yours should invest in paid social media advertising in 2022.

1. Paid Social Media Advertising Converts

Social media is the most effective channel to inspire potential buyers to purchase from brands. Especially if you’re ready to invest in video.

Basically, your audience is on social media and primed to buy. Strategic social media advertisements pop in front of people at the right time—educating them about your product or service and motivating them to make a purchasing decision. Plus, Instagram ads in particular offer extremely enticing and user-friendly click-to-shop previews which make closing sales easier than ever. Just don’t forget to enable Amazon Pay or express checkouts on your end to seal the deal and avoid bounces. Nothing like a forgotten UX journey to throw a wrench in your otherwise successful paid social media ads.

2. Your Competitors Do It

This year in America, brands will spend over billions and billions on paid social media advertising. Yes, billions. Your competitors are most likely a part of this group.

To keep up with the Jones’ (and get ahead), you have to incorporate paid social media advertising into your digital marketing strategy. Much like how you need social media presence and responsive website design. Paid media is non-negotiable.

3. Small Businesses Like Yours Can Customize a Paid Social Media Spend For Practically Any Budget

Most marketing tactics and projects come with a barrier of entry—usually hundreds or thousands of dollars. A brand new website, for instance, will set you back a few thousand or tens of thousands (albeit, money very well spent). Social media management, probably about $500 per month. But for paid social media ads, you can set your budget.

While we do suggest you start with a minimum of $1,000 in ad spend per social media channel, feel free to experiment with less than that to test campaigns and see what works before you seriously commit. We love social media ads because while they can be pricey, they offer loads of customization and targeting and they’re fantastic at generating results. If you need help budgeting for social, check out our Ultimate Social Media Guidebook!

4. Social Media Marketing is Pay-To-Play in Many Ways

Gone are the days of free marketing. For instance, Facebook favors social media profiles that run social media ads. And in a lot of cases, if you don’t run some advertisements on Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, you won’t rank for your organic content.

You may have seen the option to “boost” posts. Personally, we think you should steer clear and spend your ad dollars on targeted ads. Social media algorithms are a tricky beast, and unless you pay, they won’t let you play.

5. Complement Your Organic Social Media Efforts

Social media marketing has two components: paid social media advertising and organic posts and videos. It’s like diet and exercise. Sure, one works fine on its own, but when paired, the duo helps you reach your wellness goals much faster.

Before you begin your organic and paid social media advertising initiative, come up with relevant content and assets for your audience. Also, ALWAYS make sure you have an active presence on each social media channel for at least three months before starting paid ads.

Since those ads drive directly to your website and social media profiles, you want to impress your audience with your content, show them who you are, and convince them further as to why they should do business with your company or practice. Nothing scares off a new lead like a sporadic or inactive social media profile.

6. Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy

Warning: we’re going to drop a little jargon here. You’ve heard of the “marketing funnel” right? Basically, you want to build upon that funnel as your budget and business goals allow—starting at the broadest point and bringing your customers closer to a point of sale. Okay, the jargon coast is clear.

In layman’s terms, what that means is when you add another marketing tactic, like paid social media advertising or PPC, you extend your reach and expand the mouth of your funnel. You reach more potential clients, customers, and patients to start them on their customer journey to becoming a patron.

Think of a marketing funnel like a spider’s web. A spider will catch more flies when it builds a bigger web versus a few lonely, sticky strands. Your marketing is just like that.

Paid social media ads are typically on the outer edge of your web; attracting new customers and building awareness about your brand so they can take the next step. Data backs this up. Reports show non-customers are three times more likely than current customers to visit retailers from social media ads.

7. Narrow Your Targeting

Paid social media advertising for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn—any social channel—allows you to customize your target audience. Depending on your budget, you can get super specific with ad targeting to reach qualified customers and patients. Or, you can use broad targeting to raise awareness amongst a larger customer base.

A general rule of thumb: The more niche your audience segmentation, the more expensive your cost per lead; The broader, the cheaper. That’s because if you’re a plastic surgeon who targets 40-50-year old divorcees in Tampa, Florida, those people will be easier to tailor a direct message to and convert to clients versus a general nationwide audience of happily married 30-year olds who might not need your services.

There’s a time and place for broad and hyper-targeted campaigns. Use them wisely to generate the best ROI and results. If you need help coming up with this strategy, feel free to reach out. Or, read on for some tips to get you started!

8. Build Brand Awareness and Extend Reach With Millenials, Gen Z, and Gen X

Social media is the most relevant advertising channel for Generation Z, Gen X, and millennials. These younger audiences are open, responsive, and primed to receive advertising messages as they browse their feed. If you want to target this younger demographic, paid social media advertising will help.

9. Paid Social Media Advertising Builds More Data for Analytics, Optimization, and Insights

Whether you love numbers or not, data drives better business decisions and sales. And paid media delivers a TON of invaluable insights to get to know your customers or patients better, discover new audiences, and improve your marketing funnel.

Unlike softer KPIs like engagement and likes for organic social media posts and blog content, social media ads show the cause and effect of running campaigns. Our word to the wise? Invest in paid social media advertising now!

However, if you’ve gotten to the end of this article feeling deflated because you don’t have the ad budget, don’t despair. We specialize in helping brands focus on their digital marketing priorities—making the most of every dollar to generate the best results. Get in touch for a free consultation to see how we can help you.