Paid Ads: In-house or outsource?
Why paid social media?
We’re all aware of today’s limited organic reach on social media; as a result, making the decision to use paid ads to fuel growth has become clear for many businesses over recent years. The decision of how to manage those ads, however, is often less clear. Should you attempt to manage them in-house or should you outsource? Let’s run through the key considerations involved to make an informed decision and get the right fit for your business.
Do you have access to the right technology?
Having access to the latest and best technology is crucial to ensure you’re targeting and reaching the right audiences. The costs involved with developing such ad technology in house is often prohibitive and can be a key reason that companies decide to outsource their paid media. By outsourcing to a specialist you’ll gain access to their sophisticated technology and thus ensure that your campaigns are as effective as possible.
If you’ve decided that you want to keep things in house but are lacking the right tools, here at Mighty Social we have developed the ATOM, AI powered audience builder and segmentation technology.
The ATOM Audience Builder serves the right creative to the right segment of your audience, building smarter custom audiences at scale. In addition, our platform delivers valuable audience insights based on users who respond to the ad creative they find most compelling. This could be the perfect technology solution for your business, without the high cost of development.
Do you have the right skills in-house and can you keep up?
Social media is constantly evolving. New changes in algorithms, ad formats and platform innovations mean that the kind of content that gets served to users shifts on a daily basis. New formats are consistently being introduced, such as product tagging, Facebook Live and dynamic ads on Facebook, making the social marketplace difficult to keep up with.
There’s no doubt that the complexity involved in running social ads means that constant up-skilling is essential in order to excel in a fast-paced and constantly evolving environment. Any business has to take a close look and assess whether their team has the capacity to deliver strategic, game-changing paid media campaigns.
If you decided to build an in-house team, you would need specialists in digital marketing, web design, social media management, content writing, graphic design and SEO. If you don’t already have such expertise available in-house for developing high-performing ad strategies you may face constant hiring, the creation of new roles as well as continuous professional development for existing staff. It can most certainly be done but it does take planning.
Testing and learning
Once your ads are up and running, it’s essential to test and monitor their effectiveness to make sure you reach KPIs and see a high return on investment. Do you have the capacity and expertise in-house to be able to provide in-depth reports that analyse and track user behaviour, views, clicks, leads and purchases within your social media advertising campaigns?
You will need a team who can optimise, look at insights and perform A/B testing to help the campaign managers fine-tune their audience to make the cost per conversion as cost effective as possible. Of course, technology can help here too. Tools such as Mighty Social’s ATOM maximise response rates, reduce CPA and drastically reduce media wastage through creative personalisation.
Keeping up with legal requirements
For global brands across different countries, there are varying legal considerations to take into account.For example, are there local laws that need to be adhered to when running competitions? What are their rules when it comes to data collection?
It can depend on the product, service or brand you’re advertising to. Certain ads may be prohibited and some may be restricted. Think of the considerations involved in marketing alcohol-based products for example.
There are likely to be far more restrictions on these types of ads than for others, particularly in certain countries. Getting clarity on the legal requirements is essential and can be the difference between success and failure where paid ad campaigns are concerned.
Targeting
Marketers often fail to truly maximise the data at their fingertips, not least because the sheer amount can be overwhelming; because of the numerous implications, we consider this to be a specialist skill. A social data analyst’s role is to look at data across each of the major social networks and provide benchmarks to measure success, and to provide insights into how changes on the networks impact brand tactics and audience engagement.
Sophisticated targeting involves audience insights, such as interests, passions, life stages, behaviour etc., and consideration of all these factors shape how campaigns will be perceived. If you don’t have the expertise of a data analyst in-house, however, there is advanced technology that is now available to sort through and make sense of the mountains of available customer data and may make bringing ads in-house a viable option for your company.
Can you move fast enough?
Speed to market is crucial to tap into new trends and beat the competition. Unless you have the right resources and IT teams in-house quick roll-outs can be challenging and stressful. Speed to market still needs to be considered if you’re outsourcing. Finding the right agency for any given brief and company culture takes time and this may present its own challenges and could prevent quick delivery and start date.
The right creative is crucial
Whilst in-house media buying is definitely an option we advise against bringing creative in house. Research shows data informed creative performs the best. Teams must be in place to collect and analyse the data to inform the choice of copy, ad formats and creative approaches that drive the best performance.
Outsourcing creative also gives you the benefit of fresh eyes on your business. They will also look at your business as a prospective client or consumer, and may see ways to differentiate your company that you have overlooked. What is learnt from one client can often be adapted to another. In addition, whilst your employees are experts in their fields, it sometimes needs an outsider’s viewpoint to find the right solution.
Will you get the benefit of insights from the wider market?
If you’re a large agency, you could argue that it would be cost effective to keep paid media in-house and still benefit from the learnings of other brands and clients. However, if you’re a smaller company, this insight into what’s happening in the wider marketing and the successes and failures of other brands can be lacking. That said, social ad technology can help here in allowing you to see what’s happening with other brands and thus adapt your own campaigns accordingly.
Cost effectiveness
If you decide to hire an agency, you won’t need to worry about the costs associated with taking on an employee – recruitment fees, PAYE, insurance, pensions, etc. You pay a fixed price each month, and get a whole agency at your disposal.
If for any reason you need to cutback on your paid media activity, you can do so quickly without the worry of additional costs. However, it all depends on the volume of paid advertising and the capacity you have already in house. If you have the expertise and capacity currently, it may make sense to draw on your existing resources.
If you do decide to outsource…
It’s crucial to find the right sized agency with the right attitude. Particularly if you’re a company that’s new to hiring an agency, it’s important to make sure you’re not at risk of getting overshadowed by the agency’s established clients.
You could consider working with a smaller specialist. Ad-tech companies such as Mighty Social are social media specialists. Social specialists have creative AND targeting expertise all in the same room; when combined with the right technology, this provides the magic mix.
Conclusion
There is no ‘one approach fits all solution’ to implementing a strong paid media strategy. Whether staying in-house or outsourcing, it is important to look at the pros and cons in advance in order to identify what will work best to build your brand.
It’s certainly possible to bring paid media in house if you invest in the right tools and technology and often it’s as simple as implementing a hybrid model which combines the best people with the best technology.
If you’re looking for sophisticated technology to amplify the impact of your social media ads find out more about the ATOM, our audience builder technology.