Deciding how, where and when to advertise your business online can be a daunting task. With Google AdWords offering prominent, effective and profitable search ad campaigns, many businesses neglect to consider the value of other advertising channels. Step forward Facebook advertising.
In this post I want to give you five good reasons why the vast majority of businesses absolutely must be advertising on Facebook.
1 – Spend As Little As £1 A Day And Still Get Results
The minimum spend on Facebook advertising in the UK is just £1 a day (although it’s even less in the US, as only $1 a day). However, even with this small budget, you can reach thousands of people that meet incredibly specific targeting criteria. You would be lucky to get one click a day in AdWords for that sort of spend.
With multiple bid types available, you can choose the most appropriate bidding structure for your campaign objectives. Currently there are four bid types from which to choose:
- Cost per mille (CPM)
Increase exposure and brand awareness by bidding per thousand impressions, helping more people see your ad and potentially go on to engage with your brand. - Cost per click (CPC)
If you’re more interested in getting users to actively click on your ad through to your page or site, you can choose ta maximum bid per click, with CPC bidding. - Optimized cost per mille (oCPM)
This type of CPM bidding is when Facebook shows your ad to the people which they believe are most likely to take action on your ad. - Cost per action (CPA)
This bid type is best if you are looking for users to take a specific action when they see your ad, such as like your page.
With so many options for bidding and budget, it’s important that you choose the most appropriate options for your advertising goals to get the most out of your campaign.
2 – The Targeting Options For Facebook Ads Are Awesome
Unlike AdWords, Facebook ads are targeted to the users’ demographic and interests, not what they’re searching for. Because of this, the refinement available to you when you set up the audience targeting for your ads is really impressive. Here are a few great examples of how precisely you can target your ads:
- Provide business services or consultancy? Consider targeting users with interests in “business”, “marketing” and “advertising”. You might want to consider targeting those over 30 who might be more likely to be in a position of authority at work. You can even specifically target “Small Business Owners”.
- Sell ladies clothing and shoes online? Target online females whose interests include “shopping and fashion”. Set an appropriate age range and even target only those who tend to shop online using the Digital Activities behavioural targeting.
- Run an online dating website? Target singles and have separate ads for different gender interests to make them as specific and relevant to the user as possible.
- Only offer services in your local area? Specifically target the geographical region in which you operate, whether it’s a country, city, village or even postcode region.
With so many targeting options and combinations available, you can ensure that your budget is only spent on the most relevant audience, meaning you can get value out of even the smallest spend.
3 – Facebook Has A Massive Audience Which WILL Include Your Customers
Facebook claims to have 1.28 billion active users with over 800 million users active daily. You can all but guarantee that whatever business you run and in whatever industry or niche, a good percentage of your target audience will be on Facebook.
With the sophisticated targeting options available, you can make sure your ads are seen by your specific target audience when they are in a fairly unique relaxed mind-set. Particularly if you operate in a B2B industry, it can be difficult to get your message through in conventional work hours as people are always too busy to be sold to. But when on Facebook, individuals can be subtly advertised too, without the pressure and time-constraints of a work environment.
4 – Easily Track Spend, Performance And ROI
Whatever you spend on Facebook advertising, the most important thing is that you know exactly what you’re getting out of it. Even though social media is a cheap, powerful and essential business channel, it can typically be difficult to measure ROI for the time and resource invested into maintaining a strong profile and community. However, with Facebook advertising you can clearly see what you have spent and what results it has provided.
From within Facebook Adverts Manager, you can track a huge range of performance metrics to help you gauge performance and measure ROI. The information you are provided with includes:
- The total number of times your ad was shown (Impressions, the number of different people who saw your ad (Reach) and the average number of times (Frequency)
- The number of clicks or other actions people took, such as page likes, engagement, comments and shares.
- Cost data including average Cost per Click (CPC), Cost per Like and Cost per Conversion based on your specific goals and tracking.
Make sure you spend some time analysing your advertising performance and try out different ads and targeting to see what works best and gives you the biggest ROI.
5 – Gain An Edge Over Your Competitors
As powerful as Facebook’s advertising platform is, it’s surprising how many business are still not using it, or at least not properly. As a result, if your competitors aren’t advertising or doing it well and you can, you gain a fantastic advantage and an opportunity to win business you might have otherwise lost out on.
By getting people’s attention, increasing awareness and engaging with your audience, you can get new leads and customers who become invested in and loyal to your brand. What’s more, those customers may have otherwise gone to your competitors instead.
Now’s The Time To Start Advertising On Facebook!
Although setting up and maintaining Facebook ads takes time and requires an experienced ad manager to get the best results, the rewards are well worth the investment.
For more information on getting the most out of Facebook and its powerful advertising platform, please do not hesitate to leave a comment or get in touch. You can also find out more about our Facebook advertising services here.
Image Credit
Facebook Thumbs Up in Coffee via BigStock
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