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By Gabrielle Diepenbrock, Account Manager and Social Media Manager

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In 2016, 40% of marketers reported social media has become more challenging — with changes in search algorithms, emerging trends, and a decline in organic traffic.

Organic traffic has especially become difficult for marketers. A Facebook page with over a million likes averages a 2.27% engagement rate, and organic tweets reach approximately 10% of their followers. These changes have made it critical for companies to implement paid social campaigns.

Here are 7 steps to take when executing a paid social campaign:

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Every brand is different, and so is its target audience. A brand should carefully review each social platform and see where its target audience is.

A few examples of demographic statistics specific to platforms are: 81% of Pinterest users are female, and 59% of Instagrammers are 18-29 years old.

Of course, the breakdown of a brand’s target audience goes much more in depth than gender and age. A brand should take time to consider target audience specifics (interests, lifestyle, income, education, etc.) when determining what platforms it should put its marketing dollars in.

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What is your brand trying to accomplish? There are many goals a brand can accomplish with paid social — brand awareness, website traffic, lead generation, etc. Once a brand determines its goals, it should create a plan to measure whether or not the campaign meets the objective.

One useful tool for marketers is Facebook pixel. If a brand installs this before a campaign, it can monitor actions Facebook users take after seeing an ad. There’s also other tracking software brands can invest in to measure ROI.

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Before blindly throwing content on these chosen platforms, a brand should also create content that works well in those specific platforms. For example: Infographics get the highest engagement on LinkedIn; video content does extremely well on Facebook; planning/how-to blog-based content is highly successful on Pinterest.

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Social media has given marketers unparalleled targeting capabilities. On Facebook you can target based off beliefs, interests, demographics, connections, life events, age ranges, languages, locations, etc. A brand should take full advantage of these targeting features to reach its target.

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Brands should test ads before blowing their entire media budget on an ad they think will be successful.

First, brands can look at their organic posts that are already doing well. These posts are perfect candidates to use in the paid arena.

Brands can also do A/B testing for a few ad options with a small media budget and sample the audience to determine the best ad to use in the main campaign.

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Don’t forget to make it easy for the recipients of the ad you put out. A brand should make it clear and simple, so the targets can easily do what the brand wants them to. Include clear calls-to-action on each ad post. Do you want them to sign up for your newsletter? Do you want them to go to an event?

Brands should also lead their targets to landing pages with content specific to the ad. If targets are led to a webpage that does not match the content or call-to-action a brand was advertising, it leads to frustration on both sides — the targets didn’t go where they were hoping to go, and the brand didn’t meet its full objectives.

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Never get stale. The social media world is constantly changing and evolving. A brand should keep in tune with all these updates and take advantage of new opportunities. Here are some trends brands should watch for in 2017.

Interested in implementing a paid social media campaign? Reach out to Ryan Laffler, digital director, at ryan@thegossagency.com to see how The Goss Agency can help! You can also read about our digital services here.