Paid Social Media Ads
Reach the people who aren't searching yet.
Not everyone is Googling what you sell right now. Social media ads put your business in front of the right people based on who they are, what they care about, and where they spend their time online. That's how you build demand instead of just chasing it.
Paid Social Media Ads
Why your social media spend isn't producing anything.
Hover each panel
You're boosting and hoping
You hit the 'Boost Post' button on Facebook, spent a little money, got a bunch of likes from people who will never buy from you, and concluded that social media advertising doesn't work. Boosting a post is not the same thing as running a real ad campaign. Not even close.
You have no idea where the money goes
You're spending money on social ads every month but you can't point to a single lead or sale that came from it. Nobody set up conversion tracking. Nobody built a landing page. You're paying for impressions and hoping something sticks.
You're targeting everyone
Your targeting is 'adults, age 25 to 65, within 25 miles.' That's not a strategy. Real paid social starts with a defined audience built on demographics, interests, behaviors, and lookalike modeling from your actual customers. Broad targeting burns budgets.
Your agency runs the same playbook for everyone
Your agency uses the same audience settings, the same ad formats, and the same funnel template for every client they manage. Your campaigns look identical to a dozen other businesses. There's nothing specific to your customers, your market, or your offer.
Overview
Social ad campaigns built around your customers.
We build paid social as a system, not a single ad running to a cold audience. It starts with audience research: who your best customers are, what platforms they use, and what messaging will get their attention. Then we build the full campaign structure. Prospecting ads to reach new people. Retargeting to bring back the ones who didn't convert the first time. Conversion tracking on every action that matters so you know exactly what your budget is producing. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. We manage all of it, test constantly, and shift spend toward whatever is working best.
Paid social is a demand-generation channel, not a demand-capture channel. That’s the single biggest mistake we see Pittsburgh businesses make with it. They run search-intent-style campaigns on Facebook expecting to convert clicks the same day, and when the ROAS doesn’t match Google Ads, they conclude social ads don’t work.
Social ads work when they’re structured for what social ads actually do: build awareness, warm up prospects, and stay in front of people who aren’t yet ready to buy but eventually will be. The purchase decision might happen weeks later on a Google search or a phone call, and that’s fine. Attribution has to account for it, or the channel looks broken when it’s actually pulling weight.
We build campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for Pittsburgh businesses across every category we serve. Contractors targeting homeowners in specific neighborhoods in the South Hills and North Hills. Professional services firms reaching decision-makers by job title and industry. E-commerce brands running retargeting for cart abandoners and email subscribers. Each campaign is built around who your customer is and what stage of the buying journey they’re in.
Creative is where most social campaigns win or lose. We test everything: images, video length, hook lines, offers, and audiences. A campaign that starts with mediocre creative and improves through testing will beat a campaign that started with “good enough” and never iterated. We build the testing structure and run it consistently.
Tracking is a real challenge on social in 2026. Between iOS privacy changes and Meta’s shifting attribution windows, the platform’s own reports overstate performance in ways that get campaigns cut before they’d have paid off. We use the Conversions API, offline conversion imports, and post-purchase surveys to build a truer picture of what’s actually happening. You’ll get reporting that reflects real business outcomes, not just Meta’s optimistic take.
Budget minimums vary by campaign type. If you’re just starting on Facebook, expect a testing period where we’re spending to learn what works before we’re spending to convert. That’s not wasted budget. That’s the tuition that makes the next six months profitable. Paired with organic search or Google Ads, paid social is the piece of the funnel that keeps prospects warm between the first touch and the sale.
What you get
Pull any drawer. It's all in the build.
We don't guess who to target. We build audiences based on demographics, interests, purchase behavior, job titles, and lookalikes modeled on your real customer data. The more specific the targeting, the lower your cost per result.
People scroll past hundreds of posts a day. Your ad has about one second to earn attention. We write copy and design creative that's specific to your audience and your offer, not generic templates with stock photos and vague headlines.
Cold audiences get awareness content. People who engaged get retargeted with stronger offers. Warm leads get conversion campaigns. Each stage has its own creative, its own targeting, and its own budget allocation. This is how social ads actually scale.
Someone visited your website but didn't call. Someone watched 75% of your video but didn't click through. Retargeting puts your business in front of those people again until they're ready to take action. It's the highest-ROI dollar you can spend on social.
Facebook and Instagram for most local businesses. LinkedIn for B2B. Each platform has different strengths, different audiences, and different ad formats. We recommend where to invest based on who you're trying to reach, not which platform is trending.
Leads generated, cost per lead, return on ad spend. Not likes, shares, and impressions. Every report shows you exactly what your budget produced in terms of actual business outcomes. If something isn't working, we tell you and fix it.
Six drawers. Zero of them are upsells.
We learn who your customers are
Who are your best customers? Where do they spend time online? What motivates them to take action? We build targeting around real answers, not assumptions or platform defaults.
We build the campaigns and creative
Audience targeting, ad copy, visual creative, landing pages, conversion tracking. Everything is built, reviewed, and tested before we spend a dollar of your budget.
We launch and test everything
Campaigns go live with multiple ad variations across audiences and placements. We monitor daily in the first few weeks and make fast adjustments based on early data.
We optimize and scale
Winning audiences and creatives get more budget. Underperformers get cut or reworked. Your cost per lead drops and your return on ad spend improves month over month.
Who we build for
We run social ad campaigns for home service companies, e-commerce brands, real estate agents, healthcare practices, nonprofits, and local retailers across the Pittsburgh area. Each industry requires different platforms, audiences, and creative approaches.
Frequently asked questions
The questions we hear most.
01 How much should I budget for social media ads?
It depends on your goals and the cost of reaching your target audience. We'll recommend a budget large enough to test multiple audiences and ad variations properly, then scale what works. Spreading too little across too many tests is the most common way social ad budgets get wasted.
02 Which platforms should I be on?
It depends on your business and your customers. For most local and consumer-facing businesses, Facebook and Instagram cover the majority of the opportunity. For B2B or professional services, LinkedIn is often the better fit. We'll recommend platforms based on where your audience actually spends time, not which platform is most popular.
03 How do you target my customers?
We use a combination of demographic targeting, interest and behavior targeting, custom audiences built from your customer data, and lookalike audiences that find new people who resemble your best existing customers. On LinkedIn, we can target by job title, company size, and industry. Every campaign starts with a defined audience, not a broad spray-and-pray approach.
04 Do I need to provide images or video?
Not necessarily. If you have existing brand photos, product images, or video content, we'll work with it. If not, we handle ad creative in-house: copywriting, graphic design, and creative direction. For video-heavy campaigns, we can advise on what to shoot or connect you with production resources.
05 How fast will I see results?
Most campaigns start generating engagement and early leads within the first one to two weeks. The first 30 days are about testing audiences, creative, and messaging. By 60 to 90 days of consistent optimization, campaigns typically hit a steady rhythm. Social ads reward patience and iteration.
06 How is this different from organic social media?
Organic social media reaches a tiny fraction of your followers. On Facebook, organic reach for business pages is typically 2% to 5%. Paid social reaches exactly the people you want to reach, whether they follow you or not. They serve different purposes, and paid is how you scale reach and generate measurable results.
07 Do I own my ad accounts?
Yes. We work inside your Meta Business Suite and LinkedIn Campaign Manager accounts, not ours. Your accounts, your audiences, your data. If you ever want to move on, everything stays with you.
08 What if I've tried Facebook ads before and they didn't work?
That's common. In most cases, the issue is boosting instead of running structured campaigns, targeting too broadly, no conversion tracking, or no retargeting. The platforms work. The previous approach probably didn't. We'll look at what was done before and show you what we'd do differently.