As great as it would be to have an unlimited marketing budget, the truth of the matter is, most businesses are only able to focus their efforts on a few of the available channels without running the risk of being spread too thin. Between email campaigns, direct mail, search engines, and social media, it can be difficult to determine which platforms will yield the best ROI. In this article, we’re going to explore the unique features and benefits that make Facebook one of the most powerful marketing channels for pretty much any and every business. Read on to learn about why advertising on Facebook is so effective, and why you should give it a shot for your business.
Related eBook: Examples of Facebook Ads (free download)
Why Facebook is a Good Platform to Advertise On
No matter how small or large the target audience is, with Facebook’s 1.4 billion users (900 million of which are active on any given day), your customers can be found and targeted with highly customizable campaigns. In addition to the audience groups you already know about, Facebook also gives you access to countless consumer profiles that you may have not even considered targeting with marketing campaigns. What really makes Facebook’s social media platform so powerful for businesses is the unique environment that it creates. Most people use Facebook to read daily news updates, get a few laughs as they scroll through their timeline, and keep up with the lives of friends and loved ones. The enjoyable environment that this creates makes users more receptive to Facebook advertisements than the oftentimes overwhelming setting created by search engine campaigns.
Why Advertising on Facebook is Effective
While having a Facebook business page is a great place to start, your posts are only going to have very little organic reach, populating the timelines of your followers on average only 2.6% of the time (Source: AdWeek). To compensate for this, Facebook Ads offers a great way expand your brand’s reach and place highly targeted ad campaigns right in front of consumers with the best chance of converting into paying customers.
One of the biggest questions that businesses want to know the answer to is whether or not advertising on Facebook really works. At the end of the day, Facebook is a business too, and if their ads aren’t working for brands, they’re not going to make any money. In addition to giving you a plethora of free marketing tools to make the most of your campaigns, they also provide dozens of articles and guides that walk you through the process step by step. With this information, you’ll be able to custom-build multiple audience groups and funnel targeted traffic to whatever desired action you’ve built your campaign around. In fact, Facebook Ads has been so effective for brands, that 93% of social media advertisers use them, while Instagram ads are used only 24% of the time (Source: Social Media Examiner).
Features & Benefits of Facebook Advertising
1. Targeting Features and Campaign Building
To get the best response from each Facebook ad campaign you run, you have to target the right audience at the right time. With Facebook Ads, you can customize your campaign based on age, gender, location, profession, marital status, interests, household income, purchase patterns, and plenty more. This powerful information allows you to put your ads in front of relevant people that have the highest chances of becoming customers. Taking things a step further, Facebook allows you to create custom audience groups depending on the ad content and where customers are in the sales funnel. Even if you’re not sure which way to go, Facebook’s Audience Insights can help you to identify characteristics of people that are the most likely to be interested in your business by gathering data from profiles and third-party sources that you provide.
2. Targeted Traffic With Different Campaign Types
More than likely, you’re going to have multiple campaigns, each with its own unique goal. With Facebook Ads, once you’ve created a few different customer groups, you can customize campaigns to elicit specific responses from the audience you’re targeting. Below we’ve covered the basic and most popular Facebook ad campaign types that you can use.
Like Campaigns
Like campaigns are great for getting people to engage with your Facebook business page and increase credibility. With brand trust only becoming more important as the consumer market continues to evolve, the more likes you have on your brand’s page, the more likely customers are to express interest in the products or services you offer.
Website Campaigns
Website campaigns are perfect for funneling traffic to your actual website or a specialized landing page that corresponds to the ad content. With this type of ad, you can show consumers an important blog post, an email collection page, or even a product page to increase the awareness of what you offer and grow brand familiarity.
Call To Action (CTA) Campaigns
Call to action (CTA) campaigns are ideal for eliciting specific responses from your audience. Whether it be sending your brand a message via Facebook, filling out a contact form, or providing you with their email address for free content, these campaigns can quickly build a list of interested customers.
3. Facebook Ad Optimization
Once you have your campaigns set up and running on Facebook, there are dozens of free tools you can use to make sure they’re optimized and reaping the best results. One of the first things you’ll want to do is analyze the days and times that get the best response from your target audience and build an ad schedule around peak engagement hours. Facebook makes this easy to do so you can ensure your ads are getting maximum exposure.
Facebook Ads Manager gives you access to countless important metrics you can use to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. From the dashboard, you’re able to customize metrics to see important factors like which audience groups are converting, which devices are working best (desktop or mobile), and areas that you can improve on. The last thing you should always do when running a campaign is test multiple versions to see which ones work best with your audience. Facebook allows you to effortlessly duplicate ads and make minor or major adjustments so you can compare results side by side. Consider trying out different ad copy, pictures or videos, and CTAs to make the most of your marketing dollars.
If you’re looking to get started with Facebook advertising, download our free eBook:
