We’ve been coming to Brighton SEO’s Paid Social Show regularly, James even presented ‘How to nail political and social issue ads on Meta’ at the Paid Social Show in April 2023. But this time things have changed, firstly there’s a new name, out is the Paid Social Show and welcome the Search and Social Advertising Show. Secondly, it’s in a new location, taking over Auditorium 2.
When the Agenda was released the change was noticeable, as a social media agency there weren’t as many talks that hooked our interest. That being said, there were still some brilliant talks with lots of knowledge taken from then.
In the morning Alex Jackson spoke about B2B Marketing and Paid Social, giving some great tips to get the most out of LinkedIn and platforms like Quora. As well as pushing home that important message that even with B2B you are still communicating with a human being at the other end. Some top tips shared included:
- You still need to use that Marketing funnel, so don’t expect lead generation to work immediately!
- If you’re sharing your ads with an international audience, make sure you do your research and don’t just copy and paste!
- Test, test test!
The next talk that really grabbed us was from Sarah Sal (was it the cat memes? Maybe), sharing her impressive TikTok case study which led to 29p Leads. From the beginning she made it clear, you can’t expect what works on Meta to work on TikTok, you can’t get away with an ad that looks like an ad! TikTok requires storytelling, we know that organically, but also in the world of ads. Some top tips she shared were:
- Be conversational. Talk to your audience about the ‘why’
- Target broadly or use automatic targeting. These see the best performance. Hashtag targeting tends to see smaller audiences.
- Don’t lean into trends if they aren’t going to show your product.
- Have multiple stories for one point. This will help you find the ones that work best, but also with ad fatigue being quicker on TikTok than Meta, you need to test more ads.
Vicki Jakes followed Sarah, discussing achieving results on a small budget. One thing she really highlighted was to manage clients expectations, small budgets means things may take a longer. She also spoke about the importance of educating your clients, to support them to get the content you need. Some top tips included:
- with the power of UGC you can create engaging ads with a good ROAS on a small budget.
- Be broad with your targeting. You don’t have room to go too niche when you’re not spending loads, keep it simple.
So what were our key takeaways?
- Tell stories
- Work with clients to get content that will work.
- TEST TEST TEST
Sarah has been working in social media marketing since 2013 and joined the Social Firefly team in January 2022. Working with some of our biggest clients she makes content planning and creation look easy while delivering on some of our best performing strategies. Outside of work, she's a keen photographer, dedicated swimmer, a certified foodie, dog auntie and travel lover.