Service 04
Social Media Ads
Paid social built around the same audience research and content insights driving your organic and search work, not a disconnected channel with its own creative, its own targeting, and its own set of numbers.
When paid social runs in its own silo
Paid social is often the channel with the least connection to everything else in the marketing plan: a separate creative team, a separate targeting strategy, and a separate dashboard nobody cross-references against the CRM. It's easy to spend consistently on paid social without ever being sure it's contributing to pipeline instead of vanity engagement.
Done well, paid social pulls from the same audience research and content strategy driving organic and search, testing the messaging and creative that content has already shown resonates, and feeding winning creative back into organic. Done in isolation, it becomes a budget line that's hard to defend in the next planning cycle.
It's also the channel where creative fatigue happens fastest: an ad that performs well for two weeks can burn out completely by week four, which means a testing pipeline isn't optional, it's the difference between a channel that keeps working and one that quietly stops.
It's also worth noting that paid social rewards a business willing to show up authentically on camera or in casual-feeling creative: the ads that consistently outperform are rarely the most polished ones. Teams uncomfortable producing that kind of creative often see weaker returns than teams willing to lean into the format.
Without a testing system
- The same three creatives running until performance quietly decays
- Audiences overlapping and competing against each other
- Platform-native formats ignored in favor of repurposed video
- Budget concentrated on one platform out of habit
With a structured program
- A rotating slate of creative concepts tested on a fixed cadence
- Audiences structured to avoid overlap and reduce wasted spend
- Creative built natively for each platform's format and behavior
- Budget allocated across platforms based on where CAC is lowest
Who it's for
For teams running paid social in isolation from the rest of their marketing, without a clear read on how it contributes to pipeline.
It's also a fit for teams who've tried paid social before with disappointing results and suspect the issue was targeting or creative, not the channel itself.
- Meta, TikTok & LinkedIn ads strategy and buildPlatform-specific campaign structures built around where your actual buyers spend time, not a single creative running everywhere.
- Audience research & lookalike/retargeting structureBuilding audience segments from existing customer and engagement data, rather than starting from broad platform-suggested targeting.
- Creative testing frameworks & ad variant productionA structured testing cadence (hooks, formats, and offers) so creative decisions are based on performance data, not internal opinion.
- Spend pacing & cross-channel attribution reportingDaily budget management and reporting that connects paid social performance to the same pipeline numbers as every other channel.
- Influencer & UGC-style creative sourcingCoordinating creator or user-generated-style content where it consistently outperforms polished brand creative on paid social.
- Community & organic social alignmentCoordinating paid campaigns with organic posting calendars so the two don't compete for the same audience attention with conflicting messages.
Outcome: paid social that reinforces the same positioning and content strategy as everything else, not a campaign running in its own silo, reported on its own dashboard, defended on its own terms every quarter.
Not the right fit if: the business sells a purely transactional, low-consideration product with no visual story to tell, or the team is unwilling to produce creative at the pace the format demands. It works best for brands with a genuine story, product, or personality that translates well to video and image.
A modeled platform mix for a mid-funnel program
An illustrative starting allocation once audiences and creative are structured to avoid overlap, shifted toward whichever platform is actually producing the lowest cost per acquisition as testing data comes in.
How we approach it
Research
Building or refining audience segments from existing customer data, and identifying which organic content and messaging has already proven it resonates.
Creative
Producing a testing slate of ad variants (different hooks, formats, and offers) built to identify winners quickly rather than running one polished ad indefinitely.
Launch
Rolling out campaigns across the platforms where your audience actually spends time, with budget split to test rather than committed entirely to one channel.
Scale
Doubling down on winning creative and audiences, retiring underperformers, and feeding what's working back into organic content strategy.
Common questions
Which platforms do you recommend?
It depends entirely on where your buyers spend time: a B2B audience often performs best on LinkedIn, while B2C often skews toward Meta and TikTok. We base the recommendation on research, not a default.
Do you produce the ad creative?
Yes, from static and video ad production to sourcing creator or UGC-style content, depending on what's testing best for your audience.
How do you measure success beyond likes and views?
Every campaign is tracked against pipeline and revenue attribution, not platform-reported engagement metrics, which can look strong while contributing very little to actual growth.
Can this run alongside our PPC or SEO work?
Yes, it's built to share audience insight and creative learnings with search and organic, which is where a lot of the compounding value comes from.
How much creative do we need to get started?
We can start with a handful of concepts and build out the testing library from there: starting lean and expanding based on what performs is usually more efficient than producing a large batch upfront.
Do you handle community management too?
Not directly, but we coordinate closely with whoever owns organic community management so paid and organic aren't sending conflicting messages to the same audience.
Do you run campaigns internationally?
Yes, campaign structures, targeting, and creative can be localized for multiple markets and languages, with budget split by region and messaging adjusted for local context rather than run as one identical campaign everywhere.
What's a realistic timeline to see which creative is winning?
Most tests reach a statistically useful read within 1-2 weeks depending on budget and audience size, though smaller budgets may need a slightly longer window to gather enough data to be confident in the result.
Where this fits with the rest of the engine
Social Media Ads pairs closely with Commercial Videography for teams that need fresh video creative to keep testing pipelines from going stale, and rolls into Digital Marketing & Demand Generation when paid social is one of several channels reporting against a shared revenue number.
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