I’m here to tell you some bad news. You can no longer get the same reach on organic social media that you used to. But don’t give up on social media marketing yet. Paid social media is becoming the new organic.

Paid social is a great tool for marketing managed service providers. As a managed service provider, you may think that the majority of your customers are not on social media. Wrong. Plenty of businesses are very active on social media, as they attempt to attract customers of their own. You can use paid social to increase the reach of your existing social media accounts and gain the interest of potential customers.

Why is paid social for managed service providers such a great idea? Here are a few reasons.

Demographic Targeting

One of the most advantageous features of paid social advertisements is the increased ability to target your audience. Paid social offers features such as location-based, event-based, interest-based, and device-based targeting.

For example, with organic social media you could create a post offering your services for IT network installment. However, if a few of your followers are located in China and your services only extend to Frederick County, then you’re missing your target audience. Paid social gets rid of this faux pas.

In order to use the specific demographic targeting offered through paid social, make sure you know who your audience is. Facebook and LinkedIn analytics can be a huge help with identifying your audience. Both platforms analyze your current audience and can help you specify an industry, age group, and gender for your paid social ad.

If you don’t have customer personas for your company, now would be a great time to make them. These personas identify who your main type(s) of customers are and where they can be found.

For example, if your main audience is government IT, a customer persona can be built for Gerry Government who is more likely to be on LinkedIn over Facebook and is looking for reliable and trustworthy IT services. New North performs this service for all of their clients.

Increased Reach

Reach is a huge advantage for paid social for managed service providers.

How many people your paid social advertisement reaches is dependent on how much you’re willing to pay. That being said, it actually is quite cost-effective, which we’ll get into next.

IT services are not necessarily sought after on Facebook or Twitter. But a managed service provider is something that most companies actually do need. Creating an advertisement that will automatically appear in users’ feeds is a great way to remind businesses that they need your services and that they can find you on social media.

With paid social, you can often pay just a few hundred dollars and boost your posts to reach thousands of people. The technology industry has a relatively low conversion rate of 2.31% for advertisements on Facebook. Still, if your post reaches 5,000 people, you could see a little over 1000 potential new customers on your website.

So paid social for managed service providers can have a huge return on ROI.

Cost-Effective

There are several different payment options for your paid social. One option is pay-per-click or PPC. Pay-per-click is one of the more popular options as it won’t leave you stuck paying for an ineffective advertisement.

PPC works by charging you a pre-determined amount every time someone clicks on your ad. If your advertisement receives no clicks, then you don’t pay anything for your advertisement. While the campaign was unsuccessful, at least you didn’t pay for it.

On Facebook, you can also set your advertisement so that you only pay for your objectives. For example, if you are tracking impressions on your advertisement (a great tactic for a brand awareness campaign) then you would only pay for that result. That way you don’t have to pay for conversions, when you really just want to track impressions.

LinkedIn offers three main types of advertisement. These include pay-per-click, cost-per-1,000-impressions, and cost-per-send. Cost-per-1000 impressions is similar to ppc in that you only pay when your people see your advertisement. However, you pay one set fee for every 1000 views of your advertisement.

Cost-per-send is similar to the previous two in that you only pay when Sponsored InMail messages are successfully delivered. Cost-per-send is a great way to drive highly qualified leads or event registrations.

With all of the different options for paid social for managed service providers, there’s something for every budget.

Wide Variety of Options

Not only are there plenty of options for your budget, but also for the advertisements themselves.

For paid social for managed service providers, you can use video advertisements, carousel advertisements, slideshow advertisements, and your standard image/text ad.

Video Advertisements

While video may take slightly more effort, it is shown to be more memorable to and more desired by your audience. For example, social video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined. If you’re selling a product or attempting to display company culture, then video could be a good route for you.

Carousel Advertisements

Facebook uses carousel ads as a way for marketers to display more content in one ad. Each advertisement can have up to ten images or videos in a single format. Even better, each image/video can have its own link. Not only can you showcase several different products, you can also create interaction between your ad and your customer. With the carousel format, customers have to scroll through your pictures and links.

Slideshow Format

The slideshow format is a mix of both video ads and carousel ads. Instead of physically sliding between images in the carousel format, the user hits play and images scroll by. Facebook slideshow ads aren’t as captivating as video, but easier to create and faster to load. While they aren’t as flashy or as interactive as either video or carousel ads, you may save time with slideshow’s simpler format.

Paid social for managed service providers is vital to the success of your marketing strategy. While it can help many businesses become successful on social media, it is especially important for the niche market of managed service providers. Customers may not actively seek you out on social media. Paid social is a great way for managed service providers to go to the customers. With the wide variety of advertising formats, cost options, and specific demographic targeting you can get a huge return on your investment with the increased reach from paid social.

New North is here to help

New North has years of experience working with paid social for managed service providers. We can guide you through the complicated waters of paid social and show you how you can optimize it for your business. Get in touch with us today for a free 30-minute marketing consult. We’ll take the mystery out of marketing for you.