MKTG2001 · Digital and Social Media Marketing
Paid Social-Media Marketing
Week 9 covers paid social advertising: how a campaign is structured from objective to audience to creative to budget, and how to prioritise which campaigns to run. It draws on the interruption-marketing and cost-metric ideas from earlier weeks and on prioritisation tools such as the PIE and ICE models. The cohort material is light here, so the chapter builds from the schedule topic and cross-week frameworks — confirm the set activity on Canvas; the campaign design feeds the plan's implementation section.
What this chapter covers
- 01Paid social as interruption marketing — buying reach the audience did not request; complements organic (permission)
- 02Campaign structure: objective → audience → creative → budget/bidding
- 03Choosing a campaign objective (awareness, traffic, engagement, conversions) and matching it to a metric
- 04Audience targeting — demographics, interests, behaviours, custom and lookalike audiences
- 05Cost metrics — CPM, CPC, CTR — and matching each to the right objective
- 06Prioritising campaigns with the PIE model (Potential, Importance, Ease; score = average; below 8.0 needs approval)
- 07Prioritising with the ICE model (Impact, Cost, Effort; priority = sum)
- 08Budgeting and measuring return on ad spend
Prioritise two paid campaigns with the PIE model
- +1Recall the PIE rule. Score = (Potential + Importance + Ease) / 3, and any campaign below 8.0 requires additional approval before it runs.
- +1Campaign A: (9 + 9 + 9) / 3 = 27 / 3 = 9.0.
- +1Campaign B: (8 + 7 + 6) / 3 = 21 / 3 = 7.0.
- +1Decide. Campaign A scores 9.0 (≥ 8.0) so it proceeds; Campaign B scores 7.0 (< 8.0) so it needs additional approval — its lower Ease and Importance drag the average below the threshold.
Key terms
- Paid social
- Advertising bought on social platforms to reach an audience beyond a brand's organic followers; a form of interruption marketing measured on cost efficiency and return.
- Campaign structure
- The standard build order of a paid campaign — objective, then audience, then creative, then budget/bidding — each layer constraining the next.
- CPM / CPC
- Cost per mille (per thousand impressions) and cost per click — buying-cost metrics matched to awareness and traffic objectives respectively.
- Lookalike audience
- An audience a platform builds to resemble an existing customer or engager list, used to extend targeting to similar new prospects.
- PIE model
- A prioritisation tool scoring campaigns on Potential, Importance and Ease (1-10 each); the score is the average, and anything below 8.0 needs additional approval.
- ICE model
- A prioritisation tool scoring Impact, Cost and Effort; the priority score is the sum, with higher totals acted on first.
Paid Social-Media Marketing FAQ
How is paid social different from the organic marketing we studied earlier?
Paid social buys reach — it is interruption marketing that puts a message in front of people who did not seek it — whereas organic social earns attention from people who chose to follow. The two work together: organic builds the permission-based relationship, paid extends reach and accelerates specific objectives. In the plan, justify paid spend by objective and audience, not by reach alone.
Which cost metric goes with which objective?
Match the metric to the goal: awareness campaigns are judged on CPM (cost per thousand impressions), traffic campaigns on CPC (cost per click) and CTR, and conversion campaigns on cost per acquisition and return on ad spend. Reporting a click-cost metric for an awareness objective is the kind of mismatch the analytics thinking from Week 4 warns against.
When do I use PIE versus ICE?
Both prioritise candidate campaigns, but the arithmetic differs: PIE averages Potential, Importance and Ease (with an 8.0 approval threshold), while ICE sums Impact, Cost and Effort. Use whichever your task specifies and be consistent — do not average an ICE table or sum a PIE table. Confirm the expected tool on Canvas.
Can AI help me design and prioritise a paid campaign?
Yes — Sia can walk the objective-audience-creative-budget build, drill PIE and ICE scoring with fresh tables, and check that your cost metric matches your objective. It teaches the method and checks your working; it will not complete the graded plan, and academic-integrity rules apply.
Exam move
Cohort material is light this week, so anchor on the campaign-structure sequence (objective → audience → creative → budget) and the prioritisation models. Drill PIE (average, 8.0 threshold) and ICE (sum) until the arithmetic and the difference between them are automatic, since it is easy to lose marks by mixing the rules. Practise matching each objective to its correct cost metric, reusing the metric-choice discipline from Week 4. The output feeds the plan's implementation and budget sections. Confirm the exact activity and expected tool on Canvas, and ask Sia to set fresh PIE/ICE tables to rehearse.
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