The Value of Social Media Ad Spend

A successful paid social ad speaks directly to its target customers on a level they can trust. Of course, this is only possible if marketers know who that target customer is — and how they prefer to be spoken to.

Here’s how paid social is evolving, the trends we’re seeing command consumers’ collective attention, and key considerations when it comes to developing a paid social marketing budget.

Current Trends in Paid Social Advertising

Delivering the right message to the right audience (and at the right time) requires a thorough understanding of what the people who make up that audience are saying, feeling, and valuing. When enough advertisers grow attuned to audience wants and needs, distinct trends emerge and naturally attract ad spending to certain areas. Here are a few examples. 

Sustainability & Social Responsibility: You might have already noticed more of your favorite brands emphasizing eco-friendly checkout options and aiming to achieve company-wide carbon neutrality by a set date. Today’s customers have proven (repeatedly) their willingness to reward brands they see operating ethically.

Augmented Reality Advertising: Augmented reality (AR) will let you try on those new reading glasses from the comfort of your own home and spare everyone the hassle of a lengthy return process later on. With AR, retail sites can help users shop, compare prices, and make purchases by seeing how items look on them.

Influencer Marketing’s Evolution: Amassing millions of followers on social media isn’t always the key to a healthy ROI. Micro-influencers, producing content for their niche crowd based on a specific shared interest are often more effective brand ambassadors.

AI vs. Human-Generated Content: The surge of AI-generated content has sparked significant changes over the past year. While some brands lean into its ability to produce content at scale, others are more focused on how search and social algorithms are changing to prioritize quality organic (non-AI) material.

While paid ads on social media generally require some initial experimentation, brands that take the time to perfect their paid social efforts have never been in a better position to initiate new conversations, solicit user feedback, and cultivate a sense of connection between shoppers and brands.

How To Determine a Budget for Social

If you’re seeking a short answer, one survey of nearly 3,000 CMOs revealed companies spend about 8.7% of their total revenue on marketing, but there’s a reason digital marketing has very few hard fast rules when it comes to ad spend.

Because, as with any business’ budgeting decisions, it depends. 

Technically speaking, any budget can be a good budget if proven to produce a healthy ROI. Mammoth platforms like Facebook are seemingly always asking small businesses to “promote a post now” for small sums just to get the ball rolling. But for a full-on paid social strategy, getting the most out of paid social is a bit more complex.

Consider the critical components of your company’s marketing plan that require (or would most benefit from) paid efforts. Content creation alone encompasses dozens of smaller roles and responsibilities, including video production, graphic design, copywriting, photography, and other creatives at work translating the customer-facing side of your latest campaign into reality. 

Then there are software tools needed to build and manage these paid social efforts, services to analyze and safeguard secure data, compensation for influencers marketing the product, and all the back-end support needed to launch, evaluate, and optimize a campaign’s performance. Finally, there’s the actual budget allocated toward promoting content.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of paid social budgets, detailing precisely what your newest campaign will need at each stage of its development is a good place to start.

How To Optimize a Paid Social Budget

A simple promoted post on socials might produce a slight uptick in site traffic and engagement, but to ensure your well-laid marketing plan reaches your most qualified audience’s news feeds we recommend the following when approaching paid campaigns:

Set clear goals.

Before allocating any funds to a paid social effort, establish your campaign’s goal. Be sure it’s clear and measurable by defining which specific key performance indicator (KPI) will guide your strategy and help you evaluate the campaign’s relative performance.

Aligning your budget allocation with your overarching business objectives ensures every dollar spent contributes to meaningful outcomes.

Use past data as a baseline when available.

One of the most valuable resources at an advertiser’s disposal is historical data from past paid social campaigns. Analyze performance metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, cost per acquisition, and return on investment (ROI) to identify any common threads that might inform your next campaign.

By understanding what has (and has not) worked well in the past, your next campaign’s targeting, messaging, creative, and bidding strategies can all launch closer to the mark than if you were to build targeting parameters from scratch.

Prep your tracking and attribution for further optimizations.

Demonstrating a positive ROI is essential for securing future investments. That means being able to collect and rely on accurate campaign data, which is only possible if event tracking and platform attribution are firing properly.

Troubleshoot any event tracking mechanisms (such as conversion tracking pixels) beforehand, and commit to an attribution model that makes sense with your goal before the campaign goes live. Post-launch, track best and worst-performing keywords, A/B test different images and messaging tactics, and always be open-minded when an audience expresses interest in unexpected ways.

Paid social advertising isn’t meant to be a set-it-and-forget-it endeavor; it requires trial and error, optimization, and more than a little quick thinking when something breaks or an entire social platform suddenly goes down. By employing these strategies, marketers can position themselves for success in their social media efforts. 

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