The methods available to market businesses, from large to small, have increased enormously over the past decade. Prior to the introduction of social media and the Internet, businesses were limited to printed media, direct mail, outdoor advertising, television and radio advertising. These more traditional forms of advertising were often extremely costly and could not be guaranteed to even be seen by your target audience.
With so many modern and cheaper methods now available, especially in the form of social media, the decision now is to decide which form of social media marketing is best suited to your business. You’ve probably heard a lot about Facebook, but does Facebook advertising work? Let’s take a closer look at why businesses would want to advertise on Facebook, examples of Facebook ads that have worked, how much Facebook ads cost, and how to make Facebook ads work for your business.
Why Advertise on Facebook
Business owners who are less familiar with social media are often found to be a little confused or skeptical about advertising on Facebook. They often to ask questions such as “Why advertise on Facebook?”
The simple answer is that although Facebook may be only one of the many social media platforms available, it has over 1.4 billion users. This gives businesses a huge audience for their advertising.
Additionally, Facebook offers the following:
Increased Organic Reach
Tablets and mobile phones are a constant part of our daily lives, and each day over 700 million Facebook users will visit the site using a mobile device. Irrespective of their reason for visiting Facebook, they will be presented with Facebook adverts relevant to their interests.
Highly Targeted Ads
Facebook advertising enables you to select the target audience for your ad. This means that when you create your advertisement, you can select specific criteria such as age, gender, location, interests and many other categories. This allows Facebook to ensure that your ad is displayed to those parties who are most likely to be interested, based on the criteria you have specified. Read more about Facebook ad targeting options in this post.
Get More Customers
Similar to fishing, when you get a bite but the fish is not hooked, the same can be true of your advertising efforts. Facebook’s Custom Audiences, one of Facebook’s targeting options, allows you to target specific customers you already know have shown an interest in your business, but have yet to do business with you. For example, a potential client may have shown interest in your business by visiting your website or mobile app. If during their visit you captured their email address, Facebook allows you to upload the email addresses of specific users and will deliver your Facebook advert to them specifically.
Related: How to Master Facebook Ads
Successful Facebook Ads that Worked
There have been some notable companies which have run successful Facebook ads. Two such companies were Dominos Pizza and Farmgirl Flowers.
Dominos Pizza ran a “Global Domino’s Day,” advertising campaign, using Facebook, where half price pizzas were offered to celebrate its 51st birthday. This resulted in recording breaking sales for any one week, with 542,000 people clicking through to order online.
Farmgirl Flowers used Facebook as a method to build brand awareness, due to it being an online service rather than a high street outlet. The result of their Facebook campaign saw a 20% increase in traffic to their website, a 25% increase in sales via Facebook, and 12 times the return on the amount spent on their Facebook advertising campaign.
But large businesses aren’t the only ones who have run successful Facebook ads. ThriveHive uses Facebook ads to promote our eBook content and many of our clients have used Facebook ads to get new customers for their business. Find out how to Master Facebook ads in this webinar.
How Much Are Facebook Ads?
Unlike many of the more traditional forms of advertising media, Facebook advertising is incredibly cheap, especially when you consider the potential audience, and how you are able to target your ideal recipients for your advertisement.
Once you have created your Facebook advertisement and specified your target audience, the answer to “How much are Facebook ads” really depends on you and your budget. You have the option to pay by each one thousand impressions, by per click, set a daily budget as little as $1 or many other options.
How to Make Facebook Ads Work for You
There are many Facebook ad types, so to get the most success from using Facebook, you need to learn how-to make a Facebook ad. Successful Facebook ads result from careful planning, setting goals for your advertising campaign, and by understanding what type of advertising is most likely to be best received by your target audience.
Here are a few tips for successful Facebook ads:
- Set the right goals: Before spending any money on Facebook advertising make sure that you have a specific goal that you want your advert or campaign to achieve. Unsure of your business goals? Take some time to set your marketing plans’ goals and objectives before you spend money on advertising. After all, if you are not prepared to take the time to plan out a winning campaign, it’s better to wait until you are.
- Target your audience: The beauty of advertising using Facebook is that you can use Facebook ad targeting options to get your ad in front of the right audience. This enables you to request your advertising to be displayed to a specific demographic. Study your ideal target’s demographics and target the ad accordingly.
- Make it Visual: It has been shown that consumers are more responsive to advertising that includes visuals, rather than just plain text. Therefore, ensure that your advert is eye-catching. Furthermore, Facebook prefers visual ads, and their algorithm has been set to give visual advertising a higher priority.
- Make it Relevant: To get the best ROI on your Facebook advertising, make sure that the content is relevant to the audience you are targeting. You can monitor how successful you have been in achieving this, using the relevance score that Facebook now provides to advertisers.
- Create an Irresistible Call to Action: In order to motivate people to respond to your advertisement, it is important to include a call-to-action within the advertisement itself. Try also to promote a sense of urgency so that the user is not tempted to think about or put off taking action.
Does Facebook Advertising Work?
The simple answer must be yes. Whatever type of business you run, and irrespective of how large a budget you have, Facebook provides endless opportunities to advertise your business to existing and potential customers. As Facebook introduces more functionality to their advertising process, so it seems its popularity and success continues to grow.
