More reach won't fix a message nobody cares about
What paid social can do for your business, and what it can't.
When businesses want more leads, one of the most obvious responses is to increase their advertising.
More budget. More reach. More people seeing the offer.
It feels logical.
And sometimes it works.
But there's an uncomfortable truth about paid media that's easy to overlook: advertising doesn't fix the thing you're advertising.
If your proposition isn't compelling, putting it in front of 50,000 more people doesn't make it compelling.
If your creative is easy to ignore, paying to put it into more feeds doesn't make it interesting.
And if somebody clicks through to a website that leaves them confused or unconvinced, the ad has done its job. The rest of the journey hasn't.
More budget. More reach. More people seeing the offer.
It feels logical.
And sometimes it works.
But there's an uncomfortable truth about paid media that's easy to overlook: advertising doesn't fix the thing you're advertising.
If your proposition isn't compelling, putting it in front of 50,000 more people doesn't make it compelling.
If your creative is easy to ignore, paying to put it into more feeds doesn't make it interesting.
And if somebody clicks through to a website that leaves them confused or unconvinced, the ad has done its job. The rest of the journey hasn't.
Paid media is an amplifier.
This is perhaps the simplest way to think about paid social.
It amplifies what is already there.
When the proposition, creative, audience and customer journey are strong, that amplification can be incredibly powerful. You can reach people who don't already know you, build familiarity over time, test different messages and turn existing demand into measurable action.
But amplification works both ways.
Weak creative reaches more people.
An unclear proposition creates more confusion.
A poor landing page wastes more clicks.
This is why pressing the "boost" button isn't really a paid social strategy.
It amplifies what is already there.
When the proposition, creative, audience and customer journey are strong, that amplification can be incredibly powerful. You can reach people who don't already know you, build familiarity over time, test different messages and turn existing demand into measurable action.
But amplification works both ways.
Weak creative reaches more people.
An unclear proposition creates more confusion.
A poor landing page wastes more clicks.
This is why pressing the "boost" button isn't really a paid social strategy.
Paid social works best when you stop thinking of it as buying leads and start thinking about the whole journey. Who are we trying to reach, what do we want them to understand and what needs to happen next? The media spend only works if those pieces work together.
Sharon Parker
Managing Director, Studio Global
Awareness and lead generation are not the same job.
One of the biggest sources of frustration with paid social comes from expecting every campaign to produce an immediate enquiry.
Some should.
If somebody already understands the problem they have, knows the kind of solution they're looking for and is actively considering suppliers, a well-targeted lead-generation campaign can make it easier for them to take action.
But many prospective customers aren't there yet.
They may never have heard of you. They might not recognise the problem. They may know your name but have no idea what makes you different. Or the need may simply not be urgent today.
Asking those people to book a consultation immediately is a bit like introducing yourself at an event and asking someone to sign a contract before you've finished your first drink.
Good paid social can work across that journey.
At the top, it can create awareness and introduce an idea.
Further down, it can build familiarity through useful content, case studies, video and evidence.
Eventually, when someone is ready to act, a more direct campaign can give them a reason and a route to do it.
The important part is knowing which job each campaign is there to perform.
Some should.
If somebody already understands the problem they have, knows the kind of solution they're looking for and is actively considering suppliers, a well-targeted lead-generation campaign can make it easier for them to take action.
But many prospective customers aren't there yet.
They may never have heard of you. They might not recognise the problem. They may know your name but have no idea what makes you different. Or the need may simply not be urgent today.
Asking those people to book a consultation immediately is a bit like introducing yourself at an event and asking someone to sign a contract before you've finished your first drink.
Good paid social can work across that journey.
At the top, it can create awareness and introduce an idea.
Further down, it can build familiarity through useful content, case studies, video and evidence.
Eventually, when someone is ready to act, a more direct campaign can give them a reason and a route to do it.
The important part is knowing which job each campaign is there to perform.
Creative is part of the media strategy.
There was a time when media planning and creative could be treated as fairly separate disciplines.
That distinction makes much less sense in a social feed.
The creative is a significant part of the media performance.
LinkedIn's large-scale analysis of B2B video advertising found that factors such as human storytelling, clear visual sequencing and culturally relevant creative materially affected engagement. Its research concluded that how a story is told, who tells it and what it looks and feels like account for a substantial proportion of video engagement and completion behaviour.
In other words, targeting the right person isn't enough.
You still have to make them care.
That means paid social shouldn't begin once the creative has been finished. Audience, message, format, creative and destination should be planned together.
That distinction makes much less sense in a social feed.
The creative is a significant part of the media performance.
LinkedIn's large-scale analysis of B2B video advertising found that factors such as human storytelling, clear visual sequencing and culturally relevant creative materially affected engagement. Its research concluded that how a story is told, who tells it and what it looks and feels like account for a substantial proportion of video engagement and completion behaviour.
In other words, targeting the right person isn't enough.
You still have to make them care.
That means paid social shouldn't begin once the creative has been finished. Audience, message, format, creative and destination should be planned together.
Test the thinking, not just the button colour.
Another advantage of paid social is the amount businesses can learn from it.
Different messages can be tested against each other. Creative formats can be compared. Audiences can respond differently to the same proposition. Campaign data can reveal which subjects create interest and which disappear without trace.
But testing needs to be meaningful.
Changing a headline from blue to green tells you very little if the underlying proposition is the problem.
Testing two genuinely different messages might.
Good optimisation is therefore about more than adjusting settings inside an advertising platform. It's about using performance data to improve the marketing around it.
Why did one story resonate?
Why did one audience respond?
Why are people clicking but not converting?
What happens after they arrive on the website?
Those questions turn paid social from a distribution channel into a source of insight.
Different messages can be tested against each other. Creative formats can be compared. Audiences can respond differently to the same proposition. Campaign data can reveal which subjects create interest and which disappear without trace.
But testing needs to be meaningful.
Changing a headline from blue to green tells you very little if the underlying proposition is the problem.
Testing two genuinely different messages might.
Good optimisation is therefore about more than adjusting settings inside an advertising platform. It's about using performance data to improve the marketing around it.
Why did one story resonate?
Why did one audience respond?
Why are people clicking but not converting?
What happens after they arrive on the website?
Those questions turn paid social from a distribution channel into a source of insight.
Paid media can buy attention. It can't buy relevance.
That's the distinction worth remembering.
A paid campaign can put your business in front of precisely the audience you want to reach. It can increase awareness, create familiarity and generate opportunities at a scale that organic activity alone may struggle to achieve.
What it can't do is make people care about something that isn't relevant to them.
That work has to happen before the media budget is spent.
Strong proposition. Strong creative. The right audience. The right objective. A convincing destination. Then continual testing and optimisation once the campaign is live.
When those elements work together, paid social becomes much more than paying for visibility.
It becomes a way of creating and capturing demand.
And that's a much more useful objective than simply reaching more people.
A paid campaign can put your business in front of precisely the audience you want to reach. It can increase awareness, create familiarity and generate opportunities at a scale that organic activity alone may struggle to achieve.
What it can't do is make people care about something that isn't relevant to them.
That work has to happen before the media budget is spent.
Strong proposition. Strong creative. The right audience. The right objective. A convincing destination. Then continual testing and optimisation once the campaign is live.
When those elements work together, paid social becomes much more than paying for visibility.
It becomes a way of creating and capturing demand.
And that's a much more useful objective than simply reaching more people.
