Paid Social Media Specialist

Paid Social Media Specialist (Hybrid)

Media Works is looking for a Paid Social Media Specialist with 5-8 years of experience in media buying across various paid social platforms. Media Works is a highly respected, fast paced, and energetic integrated marketing agency located in Baltimore, MD. We have been in business for over 37 years and have a great diverse client list that has grown with us over the years.

Position Summary:

The Paid Social Media Specialist position at Media Works offers a unique opportunity to plan, execute, and optimize paid social media campaigns across multiple platforms. The role is responsible for working closely with Account Managers to implement social media campaigns for existing clients, ensuring alignment with client goals, budgets, and performance objectives. This position requires hands-on experience with social advertising platforms such as Meta, LinkedIn, X, Pinterest, Next Door etc. This position is considered exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

Responsibilities:

Media Planning & Strategy

Gather, organize, and present competitive, industry-specific, and market research to inform paid social media planning, strategy, and campaign recommendations.

Collaborate with account teams and media strategists to develop integrated media plans where the social strategy can work in synergy with traditional, digital, and social media channels to achieve client goals and objectives.

Contribute to the development of strategic paid social media recommendations, including platform selection, audience targeting, budget allocation, campaign objectives, and performance expectations.

Incorporate social media into comprehensive digital and integrated media planning documents, ensuring alignment across channels and consistency with overall client strategy.

Bring fresh, innovative, and forward-thinking ideas to media strategy, identifying opportunities to enhance campaign performance and deliver greater value to clients.

Develop platform-specific strategies that align campaign objectives, audience behaviors, creative formats, and media investment to maximize impact across the customer journey.

Identify emerging social platforms, advertising opportunities, and new media capabilities that may provide a competitive advantage for clients.

Demonstrate eagerness to stay up to date with social landscape, changing platforms, and test new platform offerings.

Ability to apply platform offerings to broader scale agency strategy to help inform the team and clients.

Campaign Execution & Management

Manage the day-to-day execution, implementation, and stewardship of client-approved paid social media plans.

Set up, implement, and manage campaigns across social advertising platforms, including Meta, LinkedIn, X, Pinterest, Nextdoor, and other relevant social channels.

Execute high-volume campaign builds, including campaign setup, creative uploads, trafficking, audience configuration, tracking implementation, conversion set up and quality assurance.

Oversee paid social media budgets, monitor campaign spending and pacing, and recommend adjustments to support client objectives and optimize performance.

Manage media execution project workflows, including asset tracking, trafficking, process control, adherence to deadlines, and quality control monitoring.

Monitor campaign delivery, budget pacing, and performance to ensure campaigns remain on track to meet client objectives.

Implement and validate campaign tracking, including pixels, conversion APIs, UTM parameters, and platform-specific tracking solutions, in collaboration with analytics and technical teams as needed.

Ensure campaign builds, audience targeting, creative assets, and tracking adhere to platform policies, client guidelines, and applicable advertising regulations.

Proactively identify and troubleshoot campaign delivery issues, platform discrepancies, tracking challenges, and performance fluctuations, escalating when necessary.

Audience & Creative Strategy

Build target audiences from scratch or enhance existing audiences using platform capabilities, client data, research, and strategic insights.

Conduct audience, placement, and creative analysis to identify opportunities for improved campaign performance.

Conduct A/B testing and implement iterative creative optimizations to improve campaign effectiveness.

Evaluate creative performance across formats, messaging, audiences, and placements to identify key drivers of engagement and conversion.

Develop audience segmentation and targeting strategies using prospecting, retargeting, lookalike audiences, first-party data, and relevant platform targeting capabilities.

Partner with account teams and creative stakeholders to develop data-informed creative recommendations, including messaging, formats, hooks, calls to action, and creative refresh strategies.

Monitor creative fatigue and audience saturation, recommending refreshes and adjustments to maintain campaign effectiveness and efficiency.

Performance Analysis & Reporting

Demonstrate a strong understanding of paid social media performance metrics, KPIs, and measurement methodologies.

Analyze campaign results and collaborate with internal team members to prepare monthly social media performance reports.

Provide actionable insights, optimization recommendations, and platform best practices based on campaign performance.

Deliver detailed reporting and analysis across creative, audience, placement, platform, and campaign objectives to identify opportunities for improvement.

Evaluate campaign performance against established benchmarks, client goals, and historical results.

Translate campaign data into meaningful business insights, connecting media performance to client outcomes such as lead generation, conversions, engagement, brand awareness, and return on investment.

Understand attribution methodologies, conversion measurement, and the limitations of platform-reported performance, including discrepancies across platforms and measurement sources.

Leverage platform analytics, reporting dashboards, and measurement tools to identify trends, uncover opportunities, and inform ongoing media strategy.

Recommend and implement optimization strategies based on performance insights, ensuring campaign adjustments are grounded in data and aligned with client objectives.

Industry Knowledge & Innovation

Stay current on social media platform updates, advertising capabilities, industry trends, and emerging technologies to identify opportunities to improve campaign performance.

Maintain knowledge of platform best practices, evolving targeting capabilities, creative trends, and new advertising products.

Provide an energy level that brings new and exciting ideas to the overall media strategy.

Explore and incorporate AI-enabled tools, automation, and emerging technologies to improve campaign efficiency, enhance analysis, and support innovative media solutions.

Evaluate new platform features, beta opportunities, and emerging advertising capabilities to determine their potential value for client campaigns.

Share platform knowledge, campaign insights, and best practices with internal teams to support collaboration, continuous learning, and the advancement of paid social capabilities.

Client Service & Collaboration

Build strong working relationships with account teams, media strategists, analytics partners, and other internal stakeholders to support successful campaign execution and client satisfaction.

Collaborate with internal teams to ensure campaign strategies, execution, reporting, and optimization efforts are aligned with client expectations.

Communicate campaign updates, performance trends, and optimization recommendations clearly and proactively.

Demonstrate strong project management, organizational, and communication skills while managing multiple campaigns, competing prio