Pay to Play
- stephaniehatala
- Aug 16, 2021
- 3 min read
Paid social media advertising has become increasingly important. It looks like it’s going to play a big role in the future of advertising, considering 20% of all advertising is already online. With so many different brands and people logged onto the web, organic social reach has begun to decline. It’s still important to cultivate a social community through organic posting, but paid advertising can take content that does well within a community and present it on a larger scale. Paid ads make it easier to scale a brand’s organic presence.
Roughly 84% of people discover new products on Instagram, which means there’s a huge market and target audience for advertising that actually works. With access to so much data and with so many tools available to measure performance indicators, brands can fine-tune their marketing to target increasingly niche demographics. No longer stuck paying for television advertising and hoping the right people see it, companies can reach exactly who they want to reach with tailor-made content.
There are, however, some drawbacks to paid posts. Having access to so much data about certain demographics is useful for businesses but often personalization attempts come across as creepy and invasive. We’ve all done that thing where we Google a product, and then our Instagram feed is nothing but ads from different brands that sell that product. It’s such a common occurrence that it’s become a meme.
When an ad for something you just searched for pops up on instagram pic.twitter.com/3gWHzAQozO — *grabs mic* (@0JaedeDaJuice) June 25, 2017
Many businesses have found a good balance between organic and paid content, creatively thinking of ways to make promoted posts blend seamlessly into consumers’ feeds.
An example of successful paid advertisement is the Calm app. With so much time spent on the internet during the pandemic, it’s understandable that people are feeling stressed out. Calm uses paid ads to ask readers to take a few seconds from their scrolling simply to breathe. They combine colorful, well-designed posts with video ads that showcase features of the product right on the timeline. It allows potential customers to experience the app without having to leave the digital space they’re already in. Calm addresses the buyer’s pain point (stress) by guiding the viewer through relaxing techniques. They demonstrate value before asking for a sale.
This resulted in 21% of their traffic coming from Facebook and 13% of their traffic coming from Instagram.
Another example of successful paid advertising is Hulu’s Live Sports campaign.
The paid ads posted from different athletes’ accounts allows the posts to have a far reach across the brand’s target demographic. “Sports fan” is a broad demographic, so partnering with particular athletes and having them post on their own accounts, as well as posting on Hulu’s main account, gives the campaign further and more specific reach.
81% of consumers believe brands have a responsibility to be transparent when posting on social media. Hulu took that to heart and made a campaign out of blatantly selling subscriptions. The posts are big, loud, and to the point. The videos posted by athletes and on the main account are tongue in cheek, and the copy lets the viewer feel like they’re in on the joke while directly selling them on a streaming service. It’s obviously an ad but Hulu’s tone doesn’t feel like a sales pitch; it’s more like they’re just stating a fact. They subtly address the customer’s pain point (limited sports options with cable) and offer a free trial week. These ads had the most success on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
What we can learn from these examples are both the importance of integrating into a potential buyer’s timeline, and the importance of not selling too hard. Both provide examples of their product’s value without outright telling you to buy it, and both examples use a casual tone that is natural to their target demographic.
It’s important to make your paid content seem organic, even when you’re using paid tactics to target specific viewers and potential users. Just because organic reach is becoming harder to achieve doesn’t mean the benefits once enjoyed by the spontaneous discovery on a social platform can no longer be used. There are certain steps to take to make sure advertisements are successful and they all revolve around a combination of subtlety and knowing your audience.
Photo by camilo jimenez on Unsplash
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