How to Build a Solid Paid Media Management Strategy

Sep 15, 2023
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If you’re looking for new ways to generate leads and boost sales for your business, paid media could be a wise strategy to adopt. It can be a crucial component of improving ROI.But if you don’t have the insight and expertise to run ads with confidence and make essential adjustments along the way, you could spend a lot more than you earn.That’s where paid media management comes in.By either hiring an internal team, a paid media specialist, or an ad and social media agency, you can start generating revenue while building brand awareness for your business.Today, we’ll dive into some expert tips for developing a paid media strategy that gets results. But first, let’s review the basics.

What is Paid Media?

As a reminder, there are three types of media: owned, paid, and earned.

  • Owned: Media you 100% control, like your website, blog, and social media content.
  • Paid: Media you pay to promote for greater exposure. Examples include pay-per-click ads, display ads, and social media ads.
  • Earned: Media exposure you gain via word of mouth. For example, let’s say you post an article that resonates with your audience on Facebook. People start sharing it with their friends who share it with their friends, earning you a lot more exposure than you would’ve gotten on your own.

Paid media management is a process of managing campaigns to drive growth online. It can involve creating ads and campaigns, monitoring progress over time, creating regular reports, and optimizing ads for better performance in the future.

How to Manage Your Paid Media and Improve ROI

By developing an effective paid media strategy, you can amplify your owned content and encourage more earned media. By combining these different elements, you can build a lead-generating machine for your business. Here are some pointers to help you start off on the right foot.

1. Establish Your Goals

What are your paid media goals? Before launching a new campaign, make sure you’re clear on what you want to accomplish. If you don’t have a clear direction, you could quickly get confused and lost throughout the process.Determine the primary purpose of your paid media campaign, then set SMART goals to help you reach it. They should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.Next, you can set metrics to track (key performance indicators or KPIs) to monitor your progress. Here are some to consider:

  • Click-through rate (CTR)
  • Cost per click (CPC)
  • Revenue
  • Return on ad spend (ROAS)
  • ROI
  • Conversion rate
  • Impressions
  • Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

2. Prioritize the Best Paid Media Channels for Your Business

Which channels are you already using? Which ones are getting the best results? If you don’t see success on the platforms you’re using, you may need to adjust your strategies or try new channels.Here are several options for running paid ads that allow you to monitor your progress closely.

Facebook Ads

On Facebook, advertisers can create ads on users’ news feeds or purchase carousel ads to showcase multiple products or services. You can place ads in Facebook Marketplace, the right sidebar, and in Facebook Messenger. You can also publish a Facebook Suggested Video.Facebook allows you to set specific objectives, pinpoint a target audience, and choose where you want to place your ads. You can also limit your budget so you only spend a certain amount.

Source: Facebook

Instagram Ads

Instagram is another great place to advertise. It focuses more on high-quality visuals than many other platforms. You can place photo, video, story, and carousel ads to reach your audience or expand your following.

Twitter Ads

Choose from numerous ad options on Twitter based on your marketing goals. Each one can help you solve a different problem. Increase brand awareness, grow your following, encourage website clicks, promote a new offer, or get people to install your app.You can set your objectives and target audience, then select the tweets you want to sponsor. Promoted tweets will appear on users’ regular feeds. They look very much like regular tweets.

Source: Twitter

YouTube Ads

Paid media on YouTube includes various formats:

  • Short 6-second bumper ads
  • TrueView in-stream ads (skippable)
  • TrueView for action ads (video with a CTA)
  • Google Preferred ads (non-skippable)

LinkedIn Ads

On LinkedIn, you can create ads that appear as “promoted content” on users’ feeds across devices. Sponsored InMail is another paid media option to deliver content directly to your target audience via direct message.

Source: LinkedIn

TikTok Ads

TikTok ads can be pricey and aren’t yet available in every country. But if you’re deeply invested in the platform, it could be worth it. Ad options include in-feed ads, pre-roll ads (that appear when users open the app), promoted hashtag challenges, and branded effects (custom filters).

PPC Ads

Pay-per-click advertising is a paid search tactic that charges you every time someone clicks on your ad. PPC ads appear at the top of search engines for specific keywords. If you work in a highly competitive industry and it’s challenging to rank organically on Google, PPC advertising can be very helpful.

Display Ads

Display ads appear on websites across the web, showing up as banners, video ads, wallpaper ads, and popups. Fortunately, display ads can be very affordable. They can help you increase brand awareness by appearing on other sites that are relevant to your target audience.The only downside to display ads is that many websites end up posting lots of them, so your ad can get lost in the clutter.

3. Create Your Ads

Each platform will have a different process for ad creation and setup. On Facebook, for example, you’ll need to have a Facebook business page and access to either Facebook Ads Manager or Business Manager. In Business Manager, you can manage both Facebook and Instagram.In Ads Manager, you can choose your objectives, name your campaign, set your budget, and schedule your ads to run. Then, you’ll select the audience you want to target, choose from various ad placement locations, and set brand safety and cost controls.Finally, you can create your ad! Hit publish when you’ve finished, then watch them perform.

4. Monitor Your Ads

After you’ve set up your ads on your chosen platforms, make sure to monitor them closely to track how they perform over time. Ad monitoring involves collecting data and insights from users, often via URLs, pixels, or cookies.

  • Tracking URLs: To create a tracking URL, simply add a tracking token to your landing page URL. That way, you can tell when someone has clicked on your link or engaged with your campaign. Tracking URLs are helpful for PPC and display ads.

Source: HubSpot

  • Pixels: You can use pixels to track conversion paths for online campaigns. Simply place your pixel on a webpage or in a display ad to notify you when someone views your page. Pixels can also collect data on user activity and help you optimize your ads.
  • Cookies: Before using cookies to track user activity, you must gain explicit consent. You can use cookies to create ad retargeting campaigns and build accurate user profiles. They can also capture information about user language, location, and browser configuration.

5. Measure and Report Your Campaign Performance

It’s time to start tracking the metrics you identified as you set your goals in Step 1. Track your performance and produce monthly reports to measure how your ads perform over time.

6. Optimize Your Ads to Improve Performance

Consistently check your ads and adjust things to improve their performance. To optimize your ads, you can perform A/B tests to compare different elements like:

  • Ad copy
  • Images
  • Videos
  • CTAs
  • Audiences
  • Keywords

At first, you’ll probably need to experiment to find the types of ads that resonate best with your audience. Aim to increase clickthrough rate, lower cost per click and cost per acquisition, and increase sales – all without blowing your ad budget.

Need Help Managing Social Media and Advertising?

If this already sounds like a headache, you’re in the right place. If you’re ready to hand off your paid ads management to a team that lives and breathes the stuff, we’d love to work with you.Kubbco is a bold-thinking social media agency that helps leading brands worldwide solve complex problems. Our process involves gathering data, creative thinking, production, distribution, and analysis.In other words, we leave no rock unturned when it comes to social media and advertising. If you’re looking for a friendly yet ambitious team of marketers to partner with, let’s chat and come up with a game plan.Contact us to get started.

Learn More About Social Media Ad Management and Marketing

Check out other articles we’ve published on the topic to dig deeper.

Hawra Hashem
Marketing Manager

I create and execute effective communication strategies and content based on data-driven insights and creativity.

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