Georgia Beattie is a paid social and digital marketing specialist, and the founder of AdBeat Marketing. She has 12 years’ experience working across strategy, digital and social media marketing in global media agencies, independent marketing agencies, public sector marketing teams, and as a freelance consultant.
For our WE-COMMUNITY, Georgia has shared three of the biggest headaches that in-house teams have when it comes to paid social and how to overcome them.
Paid social headaches for in-house teams often boil down to three big issues: lack of understanding, bureaucracy nightmares, and fear of failure. These lead to bottlenecks and poor performance, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
In this post, I’ll take you through the frustrations, crank them up a notch, then give you solutions that empower you to tackle paid social like a pro.
The root of all problems
At its core, most paid social struggles stem from two things – not enough time and not enough budget.
There’s rarely enough time for in-house teams to properly tackle performance issues and work proactively, and there’s never enough budget floating around to bring in a specialist for every channel. Especially when, in many organisations, Social Media Marketing is still seen as “fluffy” by those outside the marketing function.
So, unsurprisingly, the investment behind these genuinely important areas is often… underwhelming.
Let’s break down these two migraines into smaller manageable headaches, and discuss how to tackle a few common issues in-house teams face when it comes to Paid Social.
(Spoiler: the answer isn’t blaming Mark Zuckerberg. He might control the algorithm, but he’s not the reason your creative hasn’t been refreshed since Q1).
Problem 1: Creative fatigue & freshness
When it comes to paid social strategy, once you’ve crafted your campaign structures, identified, tested and proven your audience targeting and maximised on placements / formats, there really is only one key thing left to test and adapt. And that’s creative.
Over the years, the creative element of paid social has become the foundation of the platform and it is the make or break of a successful campaign. Ads lose their effectiveness very quickly due to the sheer volume of content now available to us and the reduced time we have to grab a user’s attention.
Therefore our reliance on creative teams to provide us with the goods has increased. Sadly, in-house creative teams are also stretched for time and from personal experience, do not like to be told what to create. This can create a real blocker for building a bank of creatives to test or for expanding out on insight and learnings from previous campaigns.
This leaves teams stuck running the same ads for weeks (or months) longer than they should and when they do manage to request new creative, they find themselves locked into a graphics or sales pitch on why the new creatives should go ahead without looking at the narrative or story telling element. So paid ads social performance drops off, they can’t show growth or ROI and then budgets get cut. (See: time and money).
Solution 1: Break down siloed teams
Back when I worked in marketing agencies, there was always a low-key tension between the paid media team and the creative team. Paid media teams would feel like they weren’t getting what they needed, demanding specific formats and designs to fit their media schedule, leaving creative teams feeling boxed in and delivering assets with no space for actual creativity.
Meanwhile, the creative teams were trying to tell stories, develop concepts, and do the thing they’re brilliant at. But that usually ended with paid specialists throwing their hands up in frustration when they couldn’t make the work fit into paid ad formats or were left with assets that looked great but just didn’t convert.
It was the same push-pull I saw again and again: creative vision vs. media reality. Everyone works hard, but rarely works together.
Then one day, while working with another paid media specialist on a pitch, we stumbled across what felt like a revolutionary breakthrough.
We got both teams in the same room. At the same time. To work on the same campaign.
Mind-blowing, I know.
We collaborated on an integrated Pinterest (organic and paid) campaign for a client, and instead of the usual “you do your part, we’ll do ours,” the whole thing was built together. Creative fed media and media fed creative. It felt cohesive and it contributed to an overall pitch winning project.
Sounds so completely obvious doesn’t it? But unfortunately, everyone’s firefighting, head down, juggling ten deadlines and too many Slack channels, so proactive collaboration rarely takes place.
But when the space is made the results can be genuinely transformational. And working collaboratively will save you time in the long run, as well as delivering better performing campaigns that prove their worth and lead to more backing from senior members (and hopefully more budget).
So, what does this practically look like:
- First, get to know your creative team, not just their job titles, but their strengths, preferences, and how they like to work. Knowing who thrives at storytelling versus who’s great at bold visual execution helps you make smarter requests and build real trust.
- Remember: creatives want to create, not just churn out assets on demand. Mutual respect goes a long way. Instead of dictating specs, bring them into the why of a campaign, not just the what.
- Work with your creative partners to establish an ongoing test-and-learn plan (this might require a project manager to help keep things structured). Create a recurring schedule (monthly, fortnightly, whatever works) where you sit down together, share performance data, and discuss upcoming creative needs. That way campaigns are planned in advance, creative input happens before a panic brief and everyone knows when their time is needed.
- Form a mini power team where success is shared. You’re bringing insights on audience behaviour, platform performance, and what’s working. They’re bringing the visual, messaging, and creative spark. Together, you’ll form a routine of regular creative development, delivery, testing and sharing where both parties feel involved in the success of the campaign.
If you’ve only got one in-house creative (who’s already juggling multiple departments), a full test-and-learn plan might sound like wishful thinking. But it can still work, you just need to shift your approach:
- Creative testing doesn’t have to mean a brand-new concept every time. Sometimes it’s as simple as, switching out a headline, reordering the frame sequence or highlighting a different product or value prop.
- Work closely with your creative to build a flexible suite of templates that you can plug into. Once you’ve got a solid base, you can test copy, visuals, CTAs and hooks on your end without a full re-brief every time. You can then regroup less frequently (e.g., monthly or quarterly) to review what’s working and evolve the templates together, keeping both sides engaged and performance-led without burning anyone out.
Problem 2: Mismanaged expectations & unrealistic KPIs
One of the most common challenges for in-house paid social teams is mismanaged expectations and unrealistic KPIs.
Targets are often set without proper platform context (like expecting the same CPA for LinkedIn as you would see on Meta) and there’s frequently a disconnect between business goals and what paid social can actually deliver.
Paid social is incredibly powerful for building visibility, driving traffic, and capturing interest, but it’s not a silver bullet for instant sales or deep-funnel conversions, especially on limited budgets and no real test and learn strategies. It works best as part of an existing marketing ecosystem, not a standalone fix for revenue gaps.
These high expectations (because it’s a measurable digital channel) makes it hard to prove ROI or optimise based on real data, especially with limited budgets and pressure to see performance almost immediately.
Finally, there tends to be no accountability for when ads underperform due to poor landing pages, weak storytelling or brand positioning. It’s usually the paid specialist that takes the heat, even when the problems lie outside of the platform.
Solution 2: Introduce data mapping & holistic reporting
Solving the expectation gap starts with transparency and education. Start by sharing platform-specific and industry benchmarks to give stakeholders realistic parameters for success. Context matters and whilst benchmarks can be a bit vague and don’t always take into account the industry, creative execution etc. it will go some way into helping your cause.
Use a real-time reporting dashboard (such as LookerStudio) to make performance visible and accessible. When stakeholders can see results unfolding and understand how they tie back to business goals they’re more likely to engage constructively rather than reactively.
This will also save you time having to provide fresh new reports.
The important part here is not just tracking results but tying them back to the strategy. This usually falls down because of reactive, immediate requests but setting your own expectations out clearly ahead of time for what you need will force your questions to be answered. What’s the goal of this campaign: awareness, leads, customer retention? What are the expectations on results? What’s the key message and brand story? Are we on a short deadline or do we have time to develop and learn?
Aligning KPIs with actual business objectives helps manage expectations and proves value.
When it comes to tracking and attribution, make friends with your web and analytics teams. Your performance is only as reliable as your data. Ensure that pixels are firing, UTMs are consistent, and conversion events are mapped correctly otherwise justifying your results becomes an uphill battle.
Holistic reporting
Another key to managing expectations is taking paid social out of its narrow performance box and showing how it supports and is supported by other marketing functions. Paid social drives results across many different channels and in many different ways. It fuels awareness, informs creative direction, supports SEO through content distribution, and generates insights that other channels can act on.
When I first started working with one of my e-commerce clients alongside James Mechan ( WE-COM’s Strategy & Delivey Director), part of my pitch focused on how we measure the effectiveness of paid social not in isolation, but in the context of its impact on wider channels like organic search and organic social. I also highlighted how we could apply insights from SEO and PPC to strengthen our paid social strategy.
Shortly after, I attended a talk by Dan Morehead, SEO Manager at Channel 4, titled ‘How SEO and PPC Can Be Married at First Sight’. Everything he said reinforced what I’d been advocating: the importance of ensuring your marketing channels talk to each other, and the value of measuring performance holistically across the entire ecosystem.
Start by breaking down each component part of paid social delivery and the journey users take when engaging with paid social ads, and identify where the overlaps are: creative, organic search, organic social etc.
Then, build strong relationships with those teams. Share what’s working, what’s being tested, and what you’re seeing in the data.
Establish ways of working that allows you to share data and optimise each other’s channels to better understand and improve performance.
For example, you could use the audience data pulled from PPC to plug back into social media to unlock a new test group or to sense-check your own existing audiences.
When you understand team dynamics, map out dependencies, and create trust through knowledge-sharing, you shift the perception of paid social from a siloed tactic to a strategic contributor across the whole funnel.
Problem 3: Slow sign-off & approval bottlenecks
One of the biggest performance killers for in-house paid social teams is slow sign-off and approval processes. Paid social thrives on agility and variation such as reacting to trends, testing ideas quickly, and optimising in real time. When approvals lag, opportunities are missed, performance stagnates, and paid media becomes less effective overall.
This then creates unnecessary pressure on teams, who are then forced to rush last-minute launches or recycle old assets just to stay active.
A common reason for this is a lack of understanding. Stakeholders or higher management can’t visualise what areas of sign off are crucial and which areas are low impact and just need a quick thumbs up.
Another common issue is the complexity of communicating paid social structures and components, combined with a lack of streamlined, organised processes for feedback and approval. This reduces confidence in those needing to approve and slows down overall feedback.
Solution 3: Create clarity & structure
Establish a clear sign-off process with agreed timelines and defined responsibilities. Identify who signs off what, and by when and who their second in command is when sickness or absence strike. If senior sign-off is consistently slowing things down, introduce tiered approvals empowering managers or leads to green light lower-risk content without it sitting in limbo. You can provide visual aids to help managers understand which aspects for sign off are crucial and require more focus vs smaller tasks which are lower priority and won’t impact the campaign as deeply.
You can use project management tools like Asana, Trello, or Monday to make these steps visible and trackable for everyone involved. These tools allow you to assign individuals for tasks, deadline dates and visuals/links for aid. You can also use platform tools such as Meta’s creative hub to mock up ads for sign off.
Where possible, batch approvals by their component parts instead of handling them ad hoc, so stakeholders can review multiple assets or decisions at once. For example, have all your copy matrix options ready to go for one round of approvals/amends and batch all your creative approvals together vs getting the teams to sign off individual versions of an ad.
Finally, create a list of BAU tasks that allow you to stay productive when sign off slows down. Small wins that don’t require mass approval will allow you to work smarter and keep progress moving along. This might be re-working pre-approved templates that you know everyone is happy with and doesn’t require additional sign off but will save you time when things start to get busy again.
Paid social headaches come from common, fixable issues. By breaking down silos, setting realistic goals, and streamlining approvals, in-house teams can finally take control and deliver real results. It’s not magic, just smart teamwork and better processes. Ready to give it a go?
