If Facebook Advertising isn’t part of your marketing plan, you are selling yourself short on access to 2.23 billion people, every month. While the platform has been around for more than a decade and began as a social network for college students, it has become the mecca for almost anyone with internet access – and for you to advertise.
If your marketing budget is limited, you may be considering where to best put your money. In this article, we’ll cover 7 reasons why Facebook advertising may be a good fit for your business.
1. The Screen Time
Daily users of Facebook have been calculated to spend up to 40 minutes a day on the platform. This accounts for nearly 20% of all time spent online.
“If time is money, then Facebook represents the most valuable Internet property on the web today,” a research project analyst quoted.
While screen time alone is enticing enough to know your business will be seen, Facebook has recently announced it is actively reducing the number of viral videos and articles in our news feeds to create more opportunities to monetise.
2. The Budget
If you’re concerned about your budget, offer or the positioning of your business in the market, Facebook provides a low barrier of entry to begin testing and refining your marketing and message. You have the flexibility to start as small as $1/ day, which you can continue to scale as the algorithm gathers data and your ad gets traction.
Here at Space Digital, we recommend our clients start with a minimum daily spend of $15.This allows you to get in front of enough people (impressions) and have reliable metrics to then make decisions on your ad performance and subsequently optimise your ads.
3. The Setup
You can have a Facebook ad created in as little as 10 minutes – once you know what you’re doing. Providing you know the ins and outs of who you’re targeting, you have your ad creative (or image design) on hand and you know you’re messaging, it is a matter process that doesn’t have to be time-consuming.
Where you would want to bring on a team of experts is in two scenarios:
- you don’t have the time or interest in learning Facebook Ads or
- you would like your money to work for you so you can focus on the business
An experienced team of Facebook experts won’t just put up a single ad. They have a checklist of optimisations they consider and test. These include: ad spend distribution, split-testing multiple different ad creatives, text and audiences and strategically engineering the best campaign objective for your business funnel.
4. The Data
Facebook has even more user data than Google. Data you can utilise for smart advertising. Unique to this platform, Facebook collates information on its users in three separate categories:
- Demographics: Your location, age and income
- Interests: What you like, pages you engage with and what content you post
- Behaviour: Where you check in to, purchases you make, how often you’re on the platform and at what time
By taking the time to combine these insights and data points, you have near-limitless options to specifically address your target audience, and even speak to direct sub-sectors of your audience in a personalised way.
For example, Facebook gives its users the ability to broadcast life events.
This could include anything from adopting a pet, to getting engaged, starting a new job or graduating university. If your business naturally feeds in to one of these life events, Facebook can help put your business infront of hot traffic who are primped to buy. The question is, what life events would naturally lead to your business solution?
5. The Metrics
Having access to detailed insights and metrics is imperative in evauating your return on investment (ROI). Thankfully, Facebook takes out the guesswork with an overwhelming level of data. Based on your key metrics, this data can be customised to display and prioritise what you really care about.
While there are over 100 different measurements you can track, Social Sprout highlighted these top 11 key metrics to watch. Using these, you can gain a better understanding of how your ads are resonating with your audience and make informed decisions on what to do next.
Setting up your analytics dashboard to have everything you need is essential when spending your hard-earned dollars on advertising and generating the most value from your campaigns.
6. The Experience
Whether your potential customers are already aware of your business, have just completed a service or bought a product from you or have never heard of you before, you can completely customise their experience and exposure to your business.
One powerful source advertising is remarketing. This refers to ads that are targeting previous visitors to your website.
Where this can be useful and worth its weight in ROI gold is in the final stages of converting browers into buyers. One of the biggest battles in eCommerce is combating abandoned carts. It has been estimated that as much as 70% of potential revenue can be tied up in lost sales.
Facebook’s tracking pixel identifies visitors that have bounced from your site and allows them to be targeted, based on their behaviour. Studies have shown that there are common reasons that browers tend to click away, which are documented in this graph.
The power of remarketing with Facebook allows you to combat these reasons. Creating ads that offer coupon codes, free shipping, social proof and testimonies allows you to build trust and continue to nurture a sale that may otherwise be lost.
Source: Barillance
7. The Nature
Facebook’s main advertising competitor is Google Adwords. To best discern which platform is most suited to your business goals and budgets, knowing the subtle differences in the nature of these two major platforms is helpful.
Google Adwords is where your business can purchase advertising space on search engine results pages. They display when someone types in a search that you have told Google, “When someone types in these words, I want my ad to be seen.” This is otherwise known as a bid.
The first challenge with this is that within any industry, there are a finite number of ideal words someone may think to search for. The more businesses that bid for these words, the higher the cost to land the most sought after advertising spots. The second challenge lies in that you only appear in front of your potential customer when they are looking for you.
Facebook, on the other hand, advertises to you based not on your searches, but your individual attributes like age, gender, interests and career. On average, Facebook campaigns generally cost less than search-based advertising like Google Ads, and offers a greater variety of campaign goals.
Regardless of your industry and offer, Facebook advertising has the capacity to support your business in the direction of your growth. With billions of people actively engaging on the platform daily, it has the potential to nurture potential clients and recoup what could have been lost revenue with abandon sales. With budget flexibility and limitless customisation options, it’s not a question of if Facebook advertising is for you, but how it can work for you.
If you’re looking to increase your business’s bottom line and would like to explore what marketing strategies may be best for your goals and budget, we invite you to book your free consultation or call us on 1300 314 172 to discuss your options.
