Boosting Your Brand: How Paid Social Can Increase Your Reach

Branding: it's one of the most important things you can do as a business to ensure your audience understands who you are and what you do. For the most historic and influential organizations out there, it’s achieved in a single look. For the rest of us, it requires a little more work.

Building a brand is no small undertaking. For this blog, we’ve previously discussed the history and impact of branding, how to define your brand’s values and the keys to creating a winning brand. If you’re curious about how to build a brand, I highly recommend checking those articles out to learn more.

If you’re in a place where you’re confident in your brand and its value proposition, it’s time to reach new audiences and gain market share. This can quickly and effectively be done through the power of paid advertising. 

In the digital marketing ecosystem, there are three ways that organizations can communicate with their audience, known as owned media, earned media and paid media.

Owned media in digital marketing encompasses channels that you have full control over, such as email, websites and social media. Typically, audiences that are already familiar with your brand are engaging with owned media content — for example, this blog post is owned media.

On the other hand, earned media requires engagement from an outside source. Press releases and social media interactions from your audience are both examples of earned media and are fantastic for proving the value of your business. Think about earned media as the “word of mouth” of digital marketing — having users that recommend your business is commanding in the fast-paced online landscape we live in today.

The last piece of the digital marketing ecosystem is paid media, which has become increasingly necessary as the competition for online attention increases year over year. One of the easiest ways to amplify your brand is to invest in paid social channels.

Paid social is an excellent starting point for your brand’s paid media strategy because you can quickly and deliberately create ads that are targeted to reach new audiences who are interested in what your business has to offer. Paid social platforms are incredibly powerful, relatively user friendly and can fit into whatever budget you set. Not only can you choose which audiences to target based on the many options available within each advertising platform, but you can also choose to serve ads based on your brand’s goal: awareness, consideration, or conversion.

So, what paid social channels should you use? This depends on both your brand and where your audience is. B2B organizations are likely to invest in LinkedIn advertising, while B2C brands may opt for Instagram ads. There are other options too, like Facebook advertising, Twitter ads, YouTube ads, and advertising with TikTok. Just think about which social media platforms users who would be most interested in your business typically utilize, and start there.

With the platform usability, targeting tools, channel options, and relatively easy operationalization, the power of paid is not to be ignored. While owned and earned media are both essential for brand strength, it is important to keep in mind that the digital space has increasingly become “pay to play”. Don’t sit this one out — set aside an investment to boost your brand through paid social to reach new audiences. And if you have any questions on the above or need help building a strategy for your brand, we’ve got you covered. Contact us below to start a conversation with our team of experts.