Let’s talk about paid and organic social shall we?

Do you feel like your business’ social media strategy is not as effective as it used to be? 

Some businesses since the pandemic are struggling with getting the right engagement and organic reach on their Facebook and YouTube posts despite their digital marketing efforts. 

If you are one of those frustrated businesses where people keep liking your posts on a social network but don’t buy anything from your business, keep reading. 

If you’re not seeing the kind of conversions you would like from your paid and organic social, you’re not alone. In that same breath, tweaking your approach to social campaigns, paid content, and combining your organic social media efforts with your paid social campaigns could turn into warm leads and real growth for your business, brand, or agency.

In this article, we’ll discuss 5 best practices that will help get more results by combining paid social media marketing and organic posts as a powerful duo.

Let’s dive right in.

What is Paid and Organic Social Anyways?

Ever since Facebook monetized and acquired Instagram, agencies and businesses have been scrambling to keep up. 

The definition of organic social media is simply posting either natively or through a social media management tool for free. Organic marketing on social media is a great way to reach your followers, but with roughly 2.85 billion users on Facebook and YouTube right behind with 2.2 billion active users, it’s becoming more challenging to reach your audience organically. 

Paid social media has a targeted budget spend invested in a social platform to reach a broader or targeted audience. 

Analyze Findings from Paid Ads to Implement Organic Strategy

Getting the most out of your marketing budget is a major goal for any business, and it can get frustrating to see that you’re spending money on paid advertising while not seeing many conversions. 

But, what if we told you there’s a way to optimize your social media ad spend? 

The key lies in measuring performance effectively – in this case, it would mean analyzing data from the ads themselves and using this information to iterate on your organic social media strategy. 

This may include looking at which types of paid social media ads are performing the best, or trying out different ad copies to see what resonates with your customers most; as well as testing how the data differ between social media platforms.

Use Information About Organic Audience to Target Audience on Paid Social

Due to the algorithms of social media platforms, it can be difficult to target the right audience with paid social ad campaigns. This is where organic audience data can help marketers get in front of their ideal customers. 

Organic data includes information like gender, age, location, and interests which may not be available on ad managers. Once you have the data, you can put it to good use by finding the best audience for your ads and seeing if there are any demographic differences between people who click on organic posts and those who buy from an ad.

If the difference is significant, you know that certain groups of people react differently to paid social media campaigns than others, so it would be a good idea to adjust your paid social media advertising strategy and offer something that appeals more to those who don’t click on your ads. This way you can drive more conversions and save money at the same time. 

Promote Organic Content That Resonates with your Audience

For your paid ads to be effective, they need to match up with your posts on the social media platforms. 

Therefore, promoting content that already resonated with your audience can prove to be beneficial. 

Moreover, this strategy can help you get in front of your customer more consistently and they’ll be able to see the value in what you offer because it’s something they want. 

This type of advertising is also highly targeted so these posts will perform much better than ones that are just advertised with no context in mind! 

Facebook Targeted Ads

Paid social media advertising has grown and evolved in the past few years. 

For example, amongst many of Facebook’s advertisement options, they also have an option for ad bidding. This allows for easier fine-tuning of expenses and testing the waters of new strategies based on the research you had done previously. 

Namely, this system functions as an auction – you place the bid on how much you are willing to spend on the specific action you want to happen, as well as the maximum budget. For example, you can bid for cost per click or cost per 1000 impressions (CPM).

This type of Facebook ads is a successful paid social ads method that constantly integrates the demands of marketers with those of Facebook users. As a result, advertisers may realize improved (ROAS) return on ad spend. 

However, this requires a lot of work and in-depth knowledge about the way ads and digital marketing work. 

Therefore, it might be advantageous as a small business to enlist and partner with a Facebook ad agency to handle your paid ad strategy which may prove to be the best solution for your business and the paid social media strategy you had in mind.

YouTube Video ads

There are tons of different platforms where you can utilize paid social media marketing, but YouTube ads have some distinct advantages. 

One of them is the fact that they can include a strong call to action that will prompt viewers to take you up on your offer right away. All they have to do is click on the link provided and it will take them directly to where you want them to go. 

That way, you won’t lose any customers who want to move quickly with your offer.

Additionally, YouTube offers different advertising to different types of audiences: intent-based, custom intent, and remarketing audiences, which all can be of help in tailoring your paid social campaign further. 

With that in mind, here are 9 ways to get the best ROI from your video ads!

Utilize Retargeting Advertising Campaigns

If someone went onto your site but didn’t end up buying anything it’s safe to say that they might need something a bit more persuasive to convince them to buy. In this case, it would be a good idea to utilize retargeting ads that do just that.

For example, Facebook ads offer an option called Facebook Custom Audiences. 

This tool enables you to micro-segment your audience based on your current client database by uploading customer email addresses and targeting those individuals with personalized Facebook advertisements. 

Here’s some more good news – utilizing this tool is one of the ways you can double your conversions on Facebook!

Optimize The Strategies Using A/B Testing

A/B testing is a great way to optimize the strategies you have in place. There are many benefits of using this strategy, including being able to test two different versions of content that may appeal better to your target audience as well as knowing which one has more engagement or conversions from those who see it. 

In order to make sure that A/B testing is right for you, here are some things we’ve found out about it: 

• A high percentage of conversion is required in order to say that one ad is more effective than the other (ex: 70% conversion);
• Don’t test too many different elements simultaneously or you won’t have an accurate record of what’s working; and
• Figure out what times are best for your audience to engage with your ads so you can tailor them to be seen more often.

As you can see, there are numerous benefits to A/B testing and the better you know your target audience, the more effective it will be. Additionally, you can use tools such as SpyFu to find out how your competitors generate traffic and tailor your approach even better!

Conclusion – Paid Ads and Organic Social go together like PB & J

Combining paid and organic social can help you increase conversions, improve engagement rates, and grow your customer base by leaps and bounds. No matter what strategy you decide to start with, making sure that both are working together is crucial.

It is also important to remember that social media is not going anywhere anytime soon. With millions of users, social media platforms have become a staple in almost everyone’s internet routine. This is why it’s important to make sure that you’re utilizing both so your business is reaching as many people as possible!

If you are not sure how to start, companies like Core Digital Expansion can be of aid – they help raise brand awareness by using comprehensive cross-channel strategies. Specializing in paid digital ads, they support a wide range of businesses ranging from Fortune 500 companies to SMB tech startups.

A well-optimized campaign will take some time and patience, but it can be extremely rewarding in the end.

Once your campaigns are optimized and running efficiently, you can spend more time focusing on other areas of your business, so don’t be afraid to get help from the experts!