Your Paid Social Budget Is Burning (Here’s Why)

A lot of business owners create their paid social media campaigns with the expectation that conversions will happen right off the bat. We would all love to press a button that generates leads within 24 hours. However, running paid social campaigns through the inbound methodology takes a different approach. Just like investing in your retirement, your social ads need time, a fair budget, and planning. Slow growth is the way to see tangible results.

To understand how to run paid social campaigns through inbound marketing, we’ll use the Flywheel method for demonstration. Attract, Engage, Delight. To learn more about this, check out this article from our team.

Why Most Paid Social Campaigns Leave Money On The Table

As a marketing agency with decades of experience in social media marketing, we see three common issues for businesses running their own social ads. It’s easy to skip over these steps and not take the time to do your research. But if we’re keeping with the retirement analogy from earlier…you’ll look up when you’re older and wonder where your investment went and why you’re still struggling.

• Common issue #1: Your audience is set up incorrectly. If you don’t get this part right, the entire Flywheel breaks, and your pipeline will suffer. So how do you make sure you get this right? Let’s break it down.
  • Your business might serve all 50 states, but it may not be a good idea to target the entire country. For example, if your budget is $1,000, it will be spread very thin if it’s trying to hit every person in the United States. Instead, get very specific about your targeting. Maybe Ohio is where your largest customer base is…great! Let’s narrow it down by using your buyer personas (cities, gender, age, interests, etc.). Now that $1,000 has a very clear focus and way more power behind it. Just because you service multiple states doesn’t mean you need to target all of them at the same time.
• Common issue #2: Your creatives are speaking to the wrong audience. Have you ever seen an ad and thought, “I don’t even own a dog…stop selling me expensive dog food.” No? Just us? Regardless, the ad is meaningless to you. Well, that business just lost money because you counted as an “impression” but had no interest in learning more. Yikes. As a business owner, you need to make sure that every aspect of your social ad speaks directly to the buyer persona you’ve built for the product. The wrong creative being presented to the wrong audience can do damage to the brand.
• Common issue #3: Your budget is unrealistic. Too many people underestimate their social ad budget. There is no one number to use for every campaign, but there is a formula that we would recommend. Start with your revenue goal, work backward to find your required leads, multiply by your cost per lead—that’s your budget. Please know that trying to start with a smaller budget to “test the waters” is not a good long-term strategy. Just like any other arm of your business, you’ll need to spend money to make money.

How To Make Your Dollar Go Further Through Inbound

Inbound marketing is all about helping people who have seen your company for the first time become brand advocates who want to tell more people about your services. By running your paid social campaigns through the Flywheel method, your budget will go further and your creative elements will be optimized to meet your audience at whatever stage they’re at through the buyer’s journey.

• The Attract Stage.
  • Brand awareness ads are perfect for this first stage of the Flywheel. At this point, we’re just trying to make your offer the most relatable and enticing as possible. You’re not asking for a sale at this point but rather just sharing who you are and how you can help solve your audience’s pain point. This is where the bulk of your budget should be spent. Remember, even at this stage of the process, you should be targeting your specific buyer personas and not everyone you can reach.
• The Engage Stage.
  • At this point, we can now further narrow down your audience by retargeting people who have previously engaged with your brand awareness ads. This is a perfect time to run traffic ads that lead to a dedicated landing page on your website that connects with the messaging of the ad and uses language that your buyer personas will connect with. Now is the time to have a specific call to action (CTA) on your ads that asks someone to check out your website, download a whitepaper, subscribe to your newsletter, etc.
• The Delight Stage.
  • If the other two parts of the Flywheel are set up correctly, this is where you will start to see real traction and revenue for your business. It’s important to focus on creating the best offer possible for your audience. Don’t offer a generic whitepaper or promote a blog post at this stage. This is where you should lead with delighting your audience by offering your best promotion possible. Maybe it’s 25% off for a limited time or a $50 Amazon gift card if they schedule a consultation with your team. Make it something that would stop you from scrolling on your phone if you came across it.
  • Remember to retarget those who engaged with the other two ads since they have already expressed interest. This is your best shot at reaching the right people at the right time with the right offer.

“Slow growth is the way to see tangible results.”

You might be asking when this Flywheel method will start to pay off. The answer to that depends on your budget, your offer, your creative elements, and the way you have set up your buyer persona information. 

If you skip any of those steps, we can almost guarantee that it will become a slower process for you and more expensive. Take your time with each step to make sure that you’re focusing on each stage.

An Easy Starting Point

This is a new way of thinking about social media marketing for a lot of business owners. It will take some time and effort to leverage inbound marketing correctly in order to grow your business. However, we would recommend that you start small. The first and most important next action you could take is to make sure that your buyer personas are specific and that you truly understand their pain points. Listen first and sell later. Your audience will thank you for it.