What Does a Paid Social Agency Actually Do?
“We run your ads” covers a lot of ground. Some agencies press boost on a few posts; others rebuild your tracking, produce the creative and manage budgets every day. Here is what a paid social agency should be doing for the fee, so you can tell the two apart.
Paid social in one sentence
Paid social is advertising you pay for on social platforms: Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, LinkedIn and others. Unlike search ads, people are not looking for you when they see it, so the job is to put the right message in front of the right people and give them a reason to act.
Strategy and account structure
Good work starts before any ad goes live. An agency should audit what you have run before, agree what a result is worth to you, and decide which platforms deserve budget. It then builds the account so that prospecting, retargeting and existing customers are kept apart, because each needs a different message and a different budget.
Creative is the biggest lever
On Meta and TikTok the platforms now handle much of the targeting automatically, which leaves creative as the main thing an advertiser controls. A paid social agency should be producing new ad concepts every month: short video, static images and copy, each testing a different hook or offer. If your agency only asks you to send photos, you are paying for half a service.
Audiences and targeting
Targeting still matters, especially for smaller budgets and for B2B. That means customer lists, lookalike audiences, website visitors, video viewers and interest groups, plus exclusions so you are not paying to reach people who have just bought. On LinkedIn it means job titles, seniority, industries and company lists.
Tracking and attribution
You cannot manage what you cannot measure. Setting up the pixel, server-side conversion tracking and GA4 properly is unglamorous work, and it is where many accounts fail. Without it the platform optimises towards the wrong people, and you cannot tell which campaign produced which sale or enquiry.
Daily optimisation and testing
Campaigns change by the day. An agency should be checking performance daily, moving budget towards what converts, pausing what does not, and running structured tests on creative, audiences and landing pages. “Set and forget” is the most expensive way to run ads.
Reporting you can read
You should get a regular report that ties spend to revenue or enquiries in plain English: what was spent, what came back, what was learned and what changes next. Reach and impressions are context, not results.
Agency, freelancer or in-house?
A freelancer is the cheapest route and works well for a single platform and a modest budget. In-house gives you control, but one hire rarely covers strategy, creative, tracking and media buying. An agency gives you all four, and makes most sense once you are spending enough for better management to pay for itself.
What 6social Digital includes
- Full campaign strategy and account structure
- Bespoke ad creative: copy, static and video
- Daily bid management and optimisation
- Weekly performance summaries
- Landing page recommendations
- Attribution modelling and tracking setup
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between paid social and organic social?
Organic social is the content you post for free to people who follow you. Paid social is advertising: you pay the platform to show a message to a chosen audience, whether or not they follow you.
Which platforms does a paid social agency manage?
Usually Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok and LinkedIn, and sometimes Pinterest, Snapchat and X. A good agency recommends the platforms your customers use instead of running all of them.
Is ad spend included in a paid social agency fee?
Normally not. The agency fee covers strategy, creative, management and reporting, and the ad spend is paid to the platform separately.
Related
See our paid advertising service, or read how much a paid social agency costs in the UK and Meta ads vs Google Ads.