Paid Social Media: A Complete Guide

Paid social media allows advertisers to expand their reach through sponsored posts and other content on social media platforms. Learn what paid social media entails and how to get started.

Whether you’ve trained the TikTok algorithm to serve you a perfectly tailored FYP or you barely remember to check your LinkedIn messages, social media has become much more than a place to connect with friends.

It’s where people discover products, compare brands, read reviews, and increasingly, make purchasing decisions.

And with AI-powered targeting, social commerce features, and increasingly sophisticated ad platforms, paid social has become one of the most effective ways to reach new customers and drive measurable business results.

In this guide, we’ll explain how paid social works, compare the major platforms, share real campaign examples, and cover best practices for building campaigns that deliver results.

What is paid social media marketing?

Paid social media marketing is a form of digital advertising where businesses pay to promote content on social platforms like Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, and YouTube.

Paid social media is useful for every step of the funnel but can be particularly effective for reaching new audiences without previous knowledge of your brand.

“Paid social reaches audiences at scale,” says social media marketing expert Magnolia Deuell.

“It brings people into a brand’s consumer funnel vs. reaching people already in that funnel,” explains Deuell.

How does paid social media work?

Paid social media works by showing sponsored content to targeted audiences on social platforms.

Set up: Advertisers select a campaign objective, audience, budget, and creative assets (ad copy, video, and images).

Targeting: Platforms use audience signals, first-party data, AI-powered optimization, and machine learning to deliver ads to people who are most likely to achieve the campaign goal — such as brand awareness, website traffic, leads, or sales.

Bidding: Like paid search, paid social media uses an auction system. Advertisers set a budget and bidding strategy, and the platform determines which ads appear based on factors like audience relevance, bid amount, and ad quality.

Payment model: Advertisers are charged when a user clicks on their ad (cost per click, or CPC) or for every 1,000 views the ad receives (cost per mille, or CPM), per video view, or per conversion.

Organic social vs. paid social: What’s the difference?

Organic social media is a brand’s unpaid presence on social media, where content is shared without any promotional spend.

Paid social involves buying ad space to promote content, reach a wider audience, and achieve specific marketing objectives.

While paid social allows for precise targeting and immediate brand visibility, organic social relies on organic reach and engagement without a direct advertising investment.

Benefits of paid social

Paid social media advertising allows brands to instantly increase their reach and conversion rates through targeted ads.

Paid social advertising offers:

Advanced targeting: Paid social allows you to reach highly relevant audiences using demographics, interests, behaviors, first-party customer data, and remarketing lists.

Platforms also now use AI-powered audience expansion to identify people who resemble your existing customers or are likely to convert.

Expanded reach: Additionally, paid social can help you reach new audiences and expand your reach beyond your organic following.

“Paid social gives brands the unique opportunity to engage with their audiences in authentic, unique ways to build a community of loyal followers,” says Deuell.

“Because of this, social platforms have the capability to keep the brand top of mind throughout a user’s journey.”

Improved performance across channels: Social media can enhance your pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies by increasing quality traffic and branded searches, as well as generating new interest to support PPC retargeting efforts.

Measurable insights: Paid social allows advertisers to track and measure performance metrics, giving you insights into what’s working and what’s not.

Pro tip: While most platforms have campaign tracking capabilities, it’s a good idea to independently track performance as well (you can use your host site’s tracking or a program like Google Tag Manager). This ensures your tracking is accurate and offers a true set of data once your program is fully ramped up.

Paid social media marketing platforms

The paid social platforms you choose to advertise on will depend on a few main factors:

• Your product or service
• The type of ad you want to run
• Your audience

While the list isn’t stagnant or set in stone, the main players in this space include:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook (owned by Meta)
• Instagram (owned by Meta)
• X (formerly Twitter)
• Pinterest
• YouTube (owned by Google)
• TikTok
• Snapchat
• Reddit

Paid social ad formats

While the ad types you can choose from vary from platform to platform, these are some of the most common social media ad formats:

Image ads: Single-image ads that showcase a product, service, or promotion.

Short-form video ads (Reels, Shorts, TikTok): Vertical, full-screen videos designed to capture attention quickly and encourage engagement.

Carousel ads: Swipeable ads featuring multiple images or videos in a single unit.

Collection ads: Mobile-first ads that combine a featured image or video with a catalog of products, allowing users to browse and shop without leaving the platform.

Shopping ads: Product ads that display images, pricing, and product information, often linking directly to a checkout page or in-app shopping experience.

Lead generation ads: Ads with built-in forms that let users submit their contact information without leaving the social platform.

Conversation/message ads: Ads that encourage users to start a conversation with a business through messaging apps like Messenger, LinkedIn Messaging, or WhatsApp.

Creator partnership ads: Ads that boost content created by influencers or brand partners using paid promotion.

AI-powered optimization: Rather than building dozens of individual ads manually, advertisers can upload multiple creative assets and allow machine learning to optimize delivery over time.

Different ad formats will help you achieve different business goals and will resonate more with some audiences than others.

It’s always best to stay on top of the latest trends and conduct A/B testing to find the optimal ad format for your brand.

Paid social media marketing pricing

From our years of experience, you can typically expect to spend around $2,500 to over $10,000 on paid social media marketing each month.

However, the amount you should budget for paid social depends on your business goals, industry, target audience, and the platforms you advertise on.

While many businesses invest anywhere from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars per month, there’s no universal budget that fits every campaign.

How to build a paid social media strategy

While each social platform and campaign will look different, there are some best practices you can use to build an effective paid social strategy.

1. Identify your goals

Before launching a campaign, assess your overarching business goals and align those with key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can track and measure.

Common paid social media goals include increasing:

• Brand awareness
• Traffic
• High-quality leads
• Sales
• Engagement

2. Define your audience

Identify who you want to reach based on demographics, interests, location, behaviors, and purchase intent.

Pro tip: If you already have customer data, use it to create custom audiences or lookalike audiences. The more clearly you understand your ideal customer, the easier it is to deliver relevant ads.

3. Set a budget

Determine how much you’re willing to invest and how you’ll measure success. Consider your total budget as well as how much you’re comfortable spending each day or month.

As campaigns collect data, monitor metrics like return on ad spend (ROAS) and cost per acquisition (CPA) to decide where to increase or reduce spend.

4. Choose your platform

Brands typically thrive on one social platform — and not every platform is the right fit for every business.

For example, B2B companies tend to leverage LinkedIn, while ecommerce brands may prioritize TikTok, Meta, YouTube, or Pinterest.

Choose platforms based on where your audience spends their time online.

5. Develop ad creative

Create compelling visuals and messaging that align with both your brand and the platform.

Strong creative should capture attention quickly, communicate your value proposition, and include a clear call to action (CTA).

Consider testing multiple images, videos, headlines, and copy variations to find what resonates best.

6. Launch, monitor, and optimize your campaigns

Once your campaigns are live, monitor performance.

While social platforms and Google Ads continue to lean on AI-powered optimizations for improved performance over time, it’s still important to review key metrics regularly and make any necessary adjustments when performance begins to plateau.

This might include adjusting budgets, refining audience targeting, or refreshing creative.

Paid social media success: Case studies

Wondering what strong paid social media campaigns can look like in practice?

Let’s take a look at some real-world examples of how HawkSEM has helped brands use paid social media to drive measurable business results.

Honda Motor Co. leverages YouTube ads to reach 30 million people

Honda partnered with HawkSEM to enhance its SEM and SEO strategy using YouTube pre-roll ads and display advertising. The result: a 200% increase in traffic.

Apotheke Co. grows return on social ad spend by more than 60%

The Brooklyn-based luxury lifestyle fragrance brand partnered with HawkSEM to boost paid search efforts and help drive social strategy.

By implementing social shopping, expanding into social formats that humanized the brand, and working with influencers, our team was able to help Apotheke grow year-over-year ROAS by more than 62%.

Timbuk2 increased AOV while decreasing cost per order

San Francisco-based accessories brand Timbuk2 wanted to grow its social presence while scaling revenue and marketing spend.

After optimizing campaigns, refreshing landing pages, and refining the ecommerce brand’s marketing funnels, HawkSEM helped increase average order value by 21% and decrease cost per order by nearly 18%.

There is a balance when it comes to getting your target audience’s interest.

“Whenever you’re designing ad creative, you really have to find that balance of standing out while also hanging with native content on the platform so the creative doesn’t scream, ‘I’m an ad!’ because then users will scroll right by it,” says social media expert and HawkSEM Lead Strategist Nicole Goodnough.

The takeaway

Those who find success with paid social advertising platforms do so by having a solid strategy laid out and an idea of the right platforms for their brand before they start building.

Need a little help with your paid social media management?

HawkSEM’s team of experts yields an average 4X return on investment for their clients.

Reach out today.

This article has been updated and was originally published in February 2020.