What is paid social media? A complete guide

Over the past two decades, social media platforms have transformed from basic networking sites into sophisticated marketing channels, used by individuals and brands alike. While many of the most popular social networks started as purely organic platforms, as digital marketing has evolved, so too has the paid side of social media advertising. For this reason, whether you’re trying to boost brand awareness, drive traffic and increase conversions on your site, or you simply want to stop wasting time shouting into the social media void, mastering the art of paid social has become an essential skill. However, if you’re new to digital marketing, this is much easier said than done.

In this guide, we outline the fundamentals of paid social media, helping you understand how it works and why it’s important. We also provide our top tips when it comes to implementing paid social media strategies that can help boost visibility and increase conversions.

What is paid social in digital marketing?

Put simply, paid social media means any advertising or sponsored content that appears on social platforms. While organic posts reach audiences naturally based on platform algorithms, paid social content is strategically delivered to specific target audiences because you’ve paid for that visibility.

Paid social comes in many forms across different platforms. However, the most common forms of paid social ads include:

• Image and video ads
• Sponsored posts and stories
• Carousel ads you can swipe through
• Collection ads showing multiple products
• Lead generation forms
• Interactive polls and quizzes
• Shoppable posts where customers can buy directly.

Naturally, each major platform offers its own unique advertising options. Platforms owned by Meta (Facebook and Instagram), for example, typically give you detailed targeting based on demographics, interests, and behaviours – this is ideal for ecommerce advertising. Similarly, TikTok offers immersive full-screen video ads that blend right in with organic content, giving ecommerce, B2C and subscription service-based businesses the perfect advertising platform for the masses. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is better for B2B focused brands, enabling them to target potential customers and clients with professional attributes.

What is the difference between organic and paid social media?

Understanding the key differences between organic and paid social is crucial for developing an overall social strategy that actually delivers results.

While paid social relates to any advertising or sponsored content you have to pay for in order for it to appear on a social platform, organic social refers to everything you post on your profiles without direct promotional spending – your regular posts, stories, videos, and conversations with followers. Organic content is at the mercy of each platform’s algorithm, which – if you are a smaller brand – typically only shows your content to a small percentage of your followers based on relevance and past engagement.

Paid social, on the other hand – which involves investing money in targeted advertising – can better guarantee visibility among specific audiences. When it comes to the benefits of paid social, you can expect better:

Reach and visibility: Organic reach has taken a serious hit over the years as platforms have started to put a bigger emphasis on paid content. Recent statistics indicate that organic reach on social media platforms has been declining across the board. For instance, Facebook’s organic reach has dropped significantly, averaging just 2.6% per post, with engagement rates around 0.07%. Similarly, Instagram’s organic reach stands at approximately 4%, experiencing an 18% year-over-year decline. Paid content, however, can reach precisely defined audiences whether they follow you or not.

Targeting capabilities: An extension of the first point – while organic posts can only reach people who already follow you or those who might stumble across your content through hashtags or shares, paid social lets you target specific demographics, interests, behaviours, and even create ‘lookalike’ audiences based on your existing customers.

Analytics and insights: While you typically get basic analytics for organic content, paid campaigns on most of the major social platforms offer much more detailed performance metrics, so you can see exactly what’s working and what isn’t.

Content lifespan: Organic content typically has a short lifespan in users’ feeds before disappearing into the void. On the other hand, paid content tends to stay visible for as long as your campaign runs.

Control over timing: Organic content is subject to algorithm changes and unpredictable reach, but paid content can be scheduled to appear at optimal times to target specific audiences. The best social media strategies – and the type we build for our clients here at Click – use a combination of both organic and paid approaches. Organic content builds authentic connections with existing followers, while paid strategies amplify your reach, drive specific actions, and bring in new followers and customers.

How does paid social work?

At its core, paid social platforms work through auction-based systems where you’re essentially competing with other advertisers for eyeballs. When you set up a campaign, you first need to decide what you’re trying to achieve – awareness, leads, sales, etc – and who you want to reach. When doing this, you can typically drill down into specific audience groups based on age, location, interests, online behaviours, and even past interactions with your business.

Once you’ve figured out who you want to target, you’ll need to choose how you want to pay. This can usually be per click (CPC), per thousand views (CPM), or per action taken (CPA), depending on what platform you’re dealing with and your business goals. You’ll also need to set daily or campaign lifetime budgets so you don’t accidentally blow through your marketing funds overnight. Behind the scenes, algorithms evaluate each potential ad placement based on three main things: how much you’re willing to pay, how relevant your ad seems to that specific user, and how likely they are to take the action you want.

All of this happens in milliseconds whenever someone opens their feed. If you win the auction, your ad will appear in their stream. The beauty of modern paid social is that you can watch how everything’s performing in real-time and make tweaks as you go – adjusting your targeting, swapping out creative assets that aren’t working, or shifting budget to the ads that are smashing it. The vast majority of platforms now offer automated bidding that uses machine learning to optimise on the fly, showing your ads to people most likely to convert based on their behaviour patterns.

Why is paid social important?

As discussed above, organic reach has declined slightly in recent years as platforms have started to prioritise content from friends and family, making paid social essential to commercial brand visibility. For this reason, paid social is an essential part of any good digital marketing campaign.

The precision targeting capabilities offered to paid users let you reach exactly who matters, eliminating wasted spend. For example, for UK businesses, the majority of social networks allow paid users to utilise postcode-level targeting with clear performance analytics – this is a powerful tool that cannot be used in the same way from an organic point of view. With 22% of businesses now regularly using paid social media posts to market their business, investing in paid social is becoming increasingly necessary to remain competitive in today’s digital marketplace.

How to optimise paid social campaigns

Effective paid social optimisation starts with crystal-clear objectives that directly connect to a business’ goals. With this in mind, it’s important to select platforms strategically based on where your audience spends time. If your business operates on a B2B basis, think about a LinkedIn campaign, for example. Alternatively, if you’re an ecommerce brand looking to target a younger audience with image/video content, Instagram or TikTok might be better options.

Once you have chosen your platforms, it’s time to fine-tune your audience targeting. This should be monitored and adjusted accordingly throughout the lifetime of a campaign. Test different segments, invest more in winners, and refine underperformers. It’s also important to always implement proper conversion tracking to see what happens after ad interaction. Off the back of this monitoring, you can even run structured A/B tests, changing just one element at a time, and regularly refreshing creative assets to prevent audience fatigue.

Remember – creative quality can make or break a social campaign. With this in mind, don’t skimp on your assets and make sure your visuals ‘stop the scroll’, your copy communicates value quickly, and your call-to-action makes the next step obvious.

To find out more about paid social media or for professional help with your social strategies, get in touch with our expert team today.