Social media marketing spend increases each year in the United States. Compared to the mere $15.6 billion spent on paid ads in 2016, businesses in 2020 spent about $40 billion, and we’re expecting a steady incline through 2022. The nationwide adoption of social media marketing comes in response to more and more active social media users and better market research that comes from it. 

Social media is unique compared to other forms of advertising, primarily because it’s extremely personal. We use social media to connect with friends, families, and colleagues, but we also use it to follow our favorite brands and stay up-to-date on trends and influencer culture. Compared to air time on television and radio, some forms of social media marketing are entirely free, and if done well, it isn’t really seen as advertising at all. Instead, it’s seen as connection. 

Facebook launched its ad platform back in 2007, and social media has changed a lot since then. We’ve been introduced to the concept of career influencers and giveaway marketing that businesses were forced to adjust to. 

Even streaming has affected traditional marketing. Television viewership has steadily declined because consumers would prefer to watch ad-free television or listen to ad-free music on streaming platforms. With so many changes, where are advertisers supposed to go? 

Lucky for us, businesses still have an impactful place on social media. So how exactly does it work? Well, first, you’ll need to understand the difference between organic and paid social and determine what combination works best for your business. 

What Is Organic Social Media? 

Think grassroots, but on Instagram. Organic social attempts to create a unique brand image that draws consumers to buy your product or service. It refers to free content such as posts, photos, videos, memes, and stories that you add to your profile. Your content can be liked, shared, quoted, and reposted on any other user’s feed from here. 

Organic social media appeals to a company’s existing following, mutual followers, and interested third parties. Your followers see your content on their feed and share it with their friends, and your hashtags, location tags, and replies are seen by pretty much anyone else who seeks them out. One of the hardest tasks as a social media marketer is convincing people to press the follow button. Once that’s done, you have an impressionable audience (a marketer’s favorite thing). 

Organic social media is meant to establish an authentic connection between a business and its followers at its core. You aren’t necessarily pushing a product but adding to your company’s brand image by creating more content surrounding it. Businesses use organic social to do the following: 

• Create and foster a brand personality
• Interact with followers and customers
• Customer service
• Share informative, inspiring, and entertaining content
• Build relationships
• Omnichannel marketing

What Is Paid Social Media?

If you haven’t already guessed it, paid social is advertising that costs money. It’s when a brand pays a social media platform to have its content shared with new social media users. Promoted posts and advertisements would fit into this category. While you will gather some valuable data from your organic posts on a Facebook or Instag

ram business account, paid social gives you more. Paid ads are the best way to convert new audiences to customers. 

When you use paid ads, your target market includes existing followers, but it’s aimed at people who don’t already follow you or engage with your content. Because social media platforms are constantly collecting information

 about their users (i.e., interests, hobbies, location, age, etc.), they can promote your ads to individuals who are likely to be interested. 

For example, if you decide to promote an ad for a camping stove on Facebook, it’ll probably pop up on the news feeds of people who post about camping and follow other camping accounts. As long as you provide some information about your business and your product in your ad campaign, Facebook can help blast it. 

Paid ads are usually shared in the form of full advertisements or promoted posts. These

 posts will be marked as “Sponsored” to create transparency. Paid social also gives you access to features meant to increase your CTR, like the “Scroll up” and “Learn More” buttons. Here are a few reasons to use paid social:

• Reach a larger audience and attract new followers and customers
• Promotion of a sale or event
• Target ideal customers
• Drive leads and conversions
• Omnichannel marketing (again)

What about influencer marketing?

When a brand pays an influencer to promote a product (either by sending it for free or paying per post), that’s influencer marketing. Though it seems like a form of paid social, we don’t really think it fits into either category. It’s grassroots in the way that you’re using reviews and an influencer network to promote sales, but it’s paid because you’re probably paying for it in some way or another. 

If you’re thinking about incorporating influencer marketing into your marketing strategy, remember to stay consistent with your brand. Work with influencers who reflect your company’s values and be specific about how you want them to post. Though it can be tricky to navigate, influencer marketing is a great way to attract genuinely interested and engaged followers. 

What’s Better: Organic or Paid?

The truth is, you want to adopt a combination of both organic and paid advertising. Cultivate an organic brand on social media that draws engagement from your followers and repeat purchases. Try to encourage followers to share your content and make good use of hashtags and location tags. 

At the same time, create paid ad campaigns that are aimed at bringing in new followers. Your paid strategy will bring in new customers, and your organic strategy will keep them with you. 

If you’d like to learn more about the perfect mix of paid and organic social and how it can increase your sales, fullfunnelservices is here to help. Send us a message!

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On apps like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, we can create brand personas and identities that are more in tune with social trends and better understand our specific markets. Of the 82% of Americans on social media sites, almost all of them follow and engage with at least one brand. 

Your company’s social media followers make up an extremely lucrative market. You’ve already found individuals that are interested in your product so now, you can focus on conversions and sales. Plus, they will see real-time matched interests from other followers who are liking and commenting. 

So how has social media revolutionized the marketing world? Well, it’s playing a critical role in our ability to bridge the customer experience gap, which is the gap between what customers want and what a business offers them. 

Most business owners considerably overestimate the success of their marketing efforts, meaning their gap can be pretty significant. A variety of factors can be responsible for a company’s customer experience gap, including:

• Lack of information about a product
• Poor customer service
• Not enough product variety
• Poor market research
• Inconsistent brand image

According to one study, 80% of CEOs believe they provide an effective customer experience but in reality, only 8% of their customers agreed! So, where are these businesses missing the mark, and where should they seek out an improvement? 

Based on the efficacy and advances in social media marketing, we think a great social strategy is the answer. Here’s why. 

Social Monitoring

Many businesses fail to meet their consumer needs because they aren’t caught up with what the market even wants. 

For example, let’s say you own a small healthy snack brand and your Instagram page has 10,000 followers. If you’re engaging with other pages and profiles within the health food industry, you’ll start noticing peripheral trends that you can get involved in, such as gluten-free snacks. Your followers may be interested in the type of content that, while not directly connected to your brand, follows a social trend that will probably pique their interest. 

Following trends can be a slippery slope since they are as quick to enter the market as they are to lose interest, but it’s good to stay on the pulse. Here are some social monitoring and listening tools to help:

• Rival IQ
• Semrush
• Talkwalker

Insights and Data

Perhaps the most important tool for bridging the customer experience gap is using social media marketing data. If you’re registered as a business account on Instagram or Facebook, the platform will provide useful insights about your content’s success. See which posts and stories are generating the most interest, gauge your approval rating in the comments, and see how your followers react to different posting schedules.

In addition to the insights tool on each platform, there are also a number of social media analytics tools you can use to gather more data. Here are some of our favorites:

• Socialinsider
• Socialbakers
• Hootsuite
• Sprout Social

Targeted Ads

You can also invest in social media marketing like Facebook and Instagram ads. With some ad spend, the platform will promote your content as a sponsored ad to anyone it thinks will be interested. This is a concept more commonly known as targeted advertising. 

Facebook and Instagram gather this data by analyzing each user’s activity on the app. Person A might spend a lot of time looking at makeup trends, follow makeup influencers, and might even purchase makeup through the app or look at pricing. If you’re a makeup brand marketing a sale or a new product, the platform might serve your ads to Person A. 

Targeted ads are mutually beneficial for your business, the social media platform, and the consumer, which is why they have such a significant impact on the customer experience gap. Though most of us don’t want to see advertisements, we’re more receptive and open to those that interest us. 

Test Your Marketing Strategies

Social media is a great place to test out new marketing techniques. As we mentioned earlier, your followers already have a vested interest in your business. You can see which techniques are effective using the insights and data provided by the platform. It’s a great way to decide whether or not you should launch a full ad campaign. 

More Direct Communication with Consumers

Social media puts us on a somewhat level playing field with consumers. Let’s forget about advertising for a minute and think about establishing a sense of familiarity and realness for your brand. Social media is meant to make connections between friends and strangers. 

As a brand, this allows you to connect with your audience in a more conversational way. You create a sense of trust that encourages conversions, and you take a consistent role in their lives where your content becomes interesting instead of annoying. Because of social media, your brand exists outside of transactions and advertising. 

Your brand needs an online presence to connect with its consumers. Social media allows you to connect like never before by establishing a presence in a person’s everyday life.

So many businesses struggle with understanding the wants and needs of their clients because they’ve been so far removed from the lives of their consumers. Today, businesses have the data and the means to know exactly what their customers want and exactly how they are feeling about what we provide. As social media becomes more effective and we find new ways to understand the trends of the market, the customer experience gap will continue to shrink. 

To learn more about how social media should be incorporated into your marketing stack, connect with the team at fullfunnelservices. 

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