What is Paid Media? 5 Simple Ways to Create Paid Media Strategy in 2024

In the last year, the world has changed a lot, and so has our dependence on social media and web content for entertainment. This dependence has caused a sudden influx in the paid marketing channel on social media and websites. Before we begin, let’s discuss the basics like what is paid media and how to create a successful paid media marketing strategy. 

What is Paid Media?

By definition, paid media is the mode of marketing that involves the paid advertisement of products and services. Back in the day, paid media was only limited to television, newspapers, and other print media. However, social media has its presence in every aspect of our lives and paid media marketing on websites like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc., has become increasingly popular. In fact, it is the need of the hour for every business, as it increases visibility. 

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Now since we know what is paid media, let’s discuss what it can offer. Over the last few years, the ability to conduct an entire business online has given small business owners a means to expand their clientele beyond their home city. For the most part, with the help of the internet, the world is their oyster, and with the right strategy, they can build a huge client base, regardless of the boundaries.

When content is often called the king, it is necessary to make sure that paid media marketing content is reliable and helps achieve the goal. Many brands and companies want to sell and market their products via social media influencers or paid advertisements on social media.

However, paid media marketing strategy is not limited to social media. Have you watched a movie or series where the characters talk about a particular brand or mention the name? You might also be able to catch them somewhere in the shot. This is also a part of paid media marketing strategy. The product isn’t the central part of the scene, but it manages to deliver the impact. Now, this is where the right content is essential. 

Creating informative content that is eye-catching and serves the desired purpose isn’t easy. The result from a well-written and executed content results in sales boost and increase in revenue. It doesn’t come as a surprise that most B2C companies invest a lot of time and money in creating these content pieces.

However, just marketing your product in one channel of media is not considered wise. As humans, before making a purchase, we like to know the opinions of our friends and families. Hence, it is also essential to consider investing in communities and groups. 

This brings us to our next question:

How to Create a Paid Media Marketing Strategy?

Suppose you are asked to promote a brand, which paid media marketing strategy would you choose? Social Media, Print Media, or any other means? And how much revenue you wish to drive from the marketing strategies?

Paid content on social media quickly grabs attention and reaches wider audiences. There are ways with which you can target your audience, down to their location and zip code. A lot of people live in the belief that if content needs to be paid for exposure, then it’s not good.

The marketing gurus would wholeheartedly disagree with the statement. A lot of things are responsible for a successful paid media marketing strategy, and it is always not possible to predict why a particular campaign worked, while others didn’t.

Creating a Paid Media Marketing Strategy

1. Partner with Creators

Not everyone loves seeing advertisements, and most users already use ad blockers to block the ads that show up while surfing the internet. So how can one reach the audience if the audience has already blocked the ads?

Teaming up with the content creators is the best strategy. Let’s say you are a company that makes notebooks with handmade paper, and your notebook is perfect for taking notes and journaling. It will make much more sense if you team up with the creators who have journaling and note-taking blogs and channels. This will help you reach their worldwide audience as well.

2. Get in Touch with Influencers

Social media reach is far,  wide, and diverse. Getting in touch with influencers of different platforms will increase your brand’s visibility by folds. Also, the social media influencers are skilled in marketing the product using the right tools and storytelling.

People often look for recommendations from their favourite influencers and often invest in the products. A recent survey found that 79% of people agreed that they get influenced by other people. This makes it even more necessary that a company should hire influencers to promote their brand. 

3. Use the Comments that Users Leave

As discussed, people trust another individual’s comment more than the brands promoting their product in every way they can. It is a clever strategy to add a quote with the review that your customer has left. This will not only increase trust in your brand but also increase organic sales. When you quote your customer’s reviews in your promotion, you tell them their feedback is important to you and that you want to build your brand with their input. Your customers will feel a part of the community you are building. 

4. Videos are the Easiest Way to Get your Word Around

You can write long blog posts or articles talking about why your product/ service is unlike any other in the market but let’s get honest here; not everyone has time to read the posts. The quickest and easiest way to get your information around is to use the power of videos. Many social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, etc., give you the option to create and upload videos.

Here’s the catch, to make your product effective make sure it has all the necessary information within a limited time frame. Animoto’s recent reports show that over 64% of users preferred watching short videos to reading the post. 93% of companies have reported that they have received new customers through video advertising.

Before jumping on making videos, it is necessary that you understand what your customers are looking for in the video and then create the content that answers the questions your users have.

5. Take Advantage of Stories and Fleets

Facebook and Instagram have stories while Twitter has fleets, the purpose of both stories and fleets are similar. They let users upload a picture or video that lasts not more than 3 seconds. This is an excellent option to drive traffic to your written blog post or the video on your channel. 

Read: How to Create Social Media Content Strategy? Everything You Need to Know

The stories are not limited to posting a picture and conducting polls and asking questions. This is an excellent feature that lets you understand what your users are looking for and answer some of their questions. According to the study conducted by SocialInsider and Wave.com, it was found that Story ads that have accompanying videos with them have a higher CTR (0.59%) than the story with only images (CTR- 0.29%).

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Conclusion

What is paid media marketing? Well, in simple terms, paid media marketing is nothing new and has been around for years. However, with the paid marketing strategies moving to social media, we get to see them more around us. Creating a paid media marketing strategy isn’t easy. A marketer must look into what the user wants and what you want them to know and cleverly design the plan accordingly.

Paid media marketing strategy finds its place in social media now. Those who are not promoting their brand on social media are surely losing out on big bucks that their competitors are making through it. To answer, what is paid media marketing in daily life, the ads that you see on your social media channels and the products you see the influencers marketing are all examples of paid media marketing strategies. 

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