How To Run A Paid Social Campaign With Video

Never run a paid social media campaign but think it’s high time more people saw your video? The truth is, sometimes organic posting only goes so far, so we’ve broken down paid video campaigns into their most simple form to help you get started.

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If you’re wanting to take your impressions to the next level and get in front of more potential customers, paid social is a fantastic tool to help pull in new audiences.

Let’s split it up into platforms, starting with Meta which covers both Instagram and Facebook.

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META

When you run ads on Meta, you will first be asked to set an objective for your campaign. If you are targeting a cold audience, we recommend video views or engagement as the objective, and if you are targeting a warm audience, a sales/conversions objective is your best bet. 

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You’ll then have the option to place your ads in seven areas across Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger, but for video we just recommend Facebook and Instagram! Don’t select Audience Network - it will waste your budget despite how much Meta tries to tell you otherwise. 

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Meta will give you the option to use advantage + or to manually select your placements. Manual placements are useful if you want an IG-only or FB-only campaign; however, remember that you can customise your creative for each placement within your ads. For example, you can upload a vertical version of your video for Instagram stories and reels and a square version for Facebook. This will ensure that your ads look native to each platform.

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You can get super specific with your targeting on Meta - interests, education, location, job titles and more. Additionally, you can also create custom audiences, such as site visitors, by installing the Meta Pixel code to your website to remarket to those who are already familiar with your brand. Another custom audience we love is 'video viewers' - aka anyone who has watched 3 seconds, 15 seconds (Thruplays), 25%, or even 75% of your TOF video.

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In an ideal world, a fully optimised Meta funnel is when you get at least 50 'results' (results being whatever you've optimised for - leads, engagement, video views, conversions) every seven days per Ad Set. That's going to give Meta the optimal amount of data to find the right people faster. If you are segmenting out your audiences with lots of different ad sets/targeting layers it's going to make it a lot harder for Meta to learn. You'll be stuck in the "Learning Phase" forever! Also keep this in mind when setting your budget - the less you spend, the longer it’ll take for you to exit the learning phase.

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If you need a hand getting started with your Meta campaigns, Facebook Blueprint is another handy resource. 

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TOP TIP:

Mobile ads take up much more real estate than desktop ads, meaning the mobile user has undivided attention directed towards your brand for as long as it takes them to scroll past. So it’s VITAL that you make sure your video is optimised for vertical ratio placements. That goes for any image ads you create too!

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LINKEDIN

If you ask any B2B digital marketer, they'll likely tell you that they get more quality leads through LinkedIn than other platforms. This is because the targeting capabilities are more specific to things like company name, business size, job titles, member groups (and so on) which makes getting your message to the right person within a company easier, esp. if you’re a B2B business.

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LinkedIn also has an Audience Network feature for targeting, but most top LinkedIn advertisers say that the Audience Network actually dilutes your spend and reduces results (just like Meta). 

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Something super interesting about LinkedIn ads is that vertical placements (being inclusive of 9:16 AND 4:5) won’t actually appear on desktop. So, much like Meta, it’s important to consider optimising your video for all placements (1:1 is currently the best option for desktop ads).

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When selecting your campaign objectives, we recommend video views for your top-of-funnel campaigns and website visits or conversions for your retargeting campaigns. And if you want to track conversions that come from the platform, you’ll need to install the Insight Tag on your website too. 

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LinkedIn currently requires advertisers to spend a minimum of $15/day per campaign, so make sure  you put aside the necessary budget (aka enough to run at least a single TOF campaign and single BOF campaign - a minimum of $30/day). In addition, you can’t blend image and video ads into the same campaign on Linkedin which will also impact your ad spend.

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If you’ve never run ads on this platform, LinkedIn has some really great resources to help get you started. Take a look at their Marketing Solutions hub!

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YOUTUBE 

When you’re marketing with video, YouTube ads should be a no brainer, especially when it was the second most used social media platform of 2023.

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To run ads on YouTube, you’ll need both a YouTube channel and a Google Ads account, so make sure you have these set up first.

The ad pricing models are either CPC (cost per click) or CPV (cost per view), and whichever you use will depend on your objective. Brand awareness? You’re looking at CPV. Website traffic? That’s CPC.

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YouTube ads can be super effective for a couple of reasons. One, you can get extremely specific with your targeting using audience segments such as:

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• Demographics
• Affinity audiences
• Channels
• Your data and similar segments (great for retargeting)
• Keywords
• AND topics.

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And secondly, YouTube is still a very underrated platform and therefore, it is much cheaper to advertise on than other networks.

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Make sure to include more than one video in your campaigns. Three is good, but five is ideal. This will give the algorithm a few options to work with to try achieve the goal you set at the start.

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Also be sure to mix in a variety of video types like long form (videos over a minute), short form (15 - 30 second videos), and different ratios too.

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YouTube Shorts is a new campaign type that was introduced in 2023, making it a great campaign to experiment with whilst competition is low.

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Hubspot offers a great beginners guide to YouTube ads, too! 

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TIKTOK

TikTok is a whole other ball game. Their consumer journey model is actually described as an infinite loop, as opposed to what most would consider the traditional marketing funnel. This new way of looking at things is more specific to e-commerce, as it considers the post-purchase stage as a part of the funnel - which occurs when customers go to TikTok to post or talk about their experiences with the product.

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At a glance, the TikTok ad formats are much more catered for e-commerce, retail brands, and apps. In fact, TikTokkers are 1.5x more likely to immediately buy something they discovered on the platform when compared to users of other platforms. For example, Spark Ads are TikTok’s version of boosting content, but a brand can actually boost another user’s UGC with their permission, so it can be very lucrative for building trust in your audience! There are also multiple forms of Video Shopping Ads, where you can shop directly in-app, even through live streams.

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On top of that, if your brand works with a TikTok sales rep, you have access to various branded assets such as challenges or full screen ad takeovers (sort of like unskippable ads).

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When it comes to what you should be considering for your ad content if you choose to advertise through TikTok, 9:16 is the best ratio for video, and the sweet spot is 9-15 seconds long. And the style? You’re going to want a more organic feel if you’re advertising on TikTok. If you ever watch training videos about TikTok ads, one thing you’ll hear consistently is: “Make TikToks, not ads.” This means that the more native you can make your ads to the platform (or at least make it feel native), the more likely someone will pay attention as opposed to scrolling past.

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Wrapping it up

The nature of social media means that a lot of this is subject to change over the next year, even months. So, the best thing you can do for your business and your campaigns is to consistently monitor their performance, and experiment with the new features that will inevitably be released within the platforms.Overall, it’s a mammoth task, and you’ll likely benefit from hiring a digital marketing specialist to help you out, but if you’re ready to take it on yourself, hopefully this article will give you everything you need to kick things off! If you’re wondering how much cash you might need to contribute to a paid campaign, check out our handy guide here!