What is Paid Social? Understanding the Basics of Paid Social Advertising

Paid social advertising involves promoting your business through social media platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and TikTok. These channels allow you to target audiences based on their interests, location, browsing behaviour, and even your uploaded email lists. This approach is ideal when you want to create demand and educate potential customers, making it a great channel for products or services with low search volume. Paid social complements other advertising channels and is unique in being able to be used at all stages of the marketing funnel.

How Meta Ads and TikTok Paid Social Platforms Target Audiences Effectively

Meta Ads provide granular targeting options based on demographics, interests, online behaviours, and past interactions with your business. Similarly, TikTok offers precise audience targeting with the added advantage of TikTok Shop, where users can purchase products directly within the app, streamlining the buying process.

Using Shopping Feeds and TikTok Shop for Social Commerce Success

Uploading shopping feeds to Meta Ads and leveraging TikTok Shop can significantly enhance your social commerce efforts. Shopping feeds allow your product catalogue to be showcased dynamically across your ads, making it easier for potential customers to discover and buy exactly what they’re interested in. TikTok Shop integrates seamlessly within the platform, facilitating in-app purchases that reduce friction and boost conversion rates. These ads are a great way to have easy to create and dynamic ads, which get less creative fatigue than other video and images.

Best Ad Formats on Meta and TikTok: Images, Video, and Carousel Explained

Paid social campaigns thrive on creative variety. Meta and TikTok both support multiple ad formats including static images, carousel ads showcasing multiple products, and engaging video content. Videos are particularly effective for storytelling and product demonstrations, while carousel ads allow users to browse products and product features without leaving their feed. Using a mix of these formats helps maintain audience interest and improves overall campaign performance.

Tracking and Measuring Paid Social Campaign Performance on Meta and TikTok

Effective tracking is essential to understand how your paid social campaigns perform. Conversion campaigns require monitoring actions like sales, enquiries, and sign-ups directly attributed to your ads. For brand awareness or upper funnel objectives, metrics such as impressions, video views, and landing page views provide insights into engagement beyond simple clicks. Both Meta and TikTok’s ad platforms offer analytics to help optimise your campaigns for better results.

Paid social is great for being able to spend as much or as little as you like, but one thing to note is that you need a decent amount of conversion data in the platform to ensure the algorithm has enough information to optimise your campaigns effectively. It’s generally recommended to aim for no less than 30 conversions, with 50 or more being ideal. This volume of data helps platforms like Meta and TikTok better understand which audiences and creative combinations are driving results, allowing your campaigns to perform at their best and deliver a stronger return on investment. Without sufficient conversion data, optimisation can be less precise, which may impact the efficiency of your ad spend.

The Importance of Creative Refresh in Paid Social Advertising

Social media users consume vast amounts of content daily, which means your ads need regular refreshing to stay relevant and effective. Updating creative elements, whether images, videos, or messaging, keeps your campaigns engaging and prevents ad fatigue. Investing time and resources into creative refreshes on Meta Ads and TikTok can sustain performance over longer periods.

Retargeting Strategies Using Paid Social Ads on Meta and TikTok

Retargeting using paid social is highly effective for converting interested users who visited your site but didn’t complete a purchase or enquiry. Offering personalised promotions or special deals through Meta and TikTok retargeting ads can bring these users back, increasing conversion rates and making efficient use of your advertising budget. Using CRM lists can re engage lapsed customers or you can even create look a like audiences based on these to find more people like your high value customers.

Getting Started with Meta Ads and TikTok Paid Social Campaigns

If you’re new to paid social advertising, start by defining clear goals, whether awareness, lead generation, or sales. Use the detailed targeting tools on Meta and TikTok to reach the right audiences based on behaviours and interests. Incorporate shopping feeds and TikTok Shop to streamline product discovery and buying experiences. Track relevant metrics depending on your campaign objective, and plan for ongoing creative updates to keep your ads fresh and effective. One of the great benefits of paid social is that you are in control of budgets, so you can spend as much or as little as you like, but always remember the rule above to ensure you get a minimum of 30 conversion a month in you conversion based campaigns. If you think you will struggle to get 30 conversion a month, have a think if there are any other valuable events which you could optimise towards, such as an add to basket.