There are many avenues to explore in digital marketing, and Facebook Ads, or paid social in general, can have a big impact on your online presence.
Many businesses now use Facebook Ads in order to improve brand awareness, increase traffic and ultimately generate business online.
But what exactly are the benefits of Facebook Ads?
The Business Benefits of Facebook Ads
Advertise where your audience hangs out
If your audience is on Facebook (which let’s face it, is most audiences) then why not ensure your brand is seen here?
Your brand, product or service can be in front of the eyes of your target audience while they browse Facebook multiple times each day.
Specific audience targeting
One of the biggest Facebook Ad benefits is how targeted you can make your audience.
You can reach the exact audience you want to. This includes interests, behaviour, location, age, and much more.
This means you can target specific ads to specific audiences that are most likely to engage them, or encourage them to click. You can target multiple audiences or personas that are likely to want to do business with you.
Quick results
While there are many digital marketing channels and platforms to explore, Facebook Ads can be up and running as quickly as you can set them up.
You can drive immediate results if your ads are effective. You can begin getting your offer in front of thousands of people in order to drive traffic, conversions or to generate sales.
Build brand awareness
Advertising on Facebook is one of the most effective ways to build your brand and ensure more people are aware of your brand.
Even if you aren’t attempting to take potential customers directly to a sale or to convert, showcasing your brand to people browsing Facebook helps cement your brand in their mind so they may come back to you in the future, even if they don’t click right there and then.
Fully measurable
You can easily see how your ads are performing, and alter your budget to suit.
If certain campaigns are performing better, or certain audiences are engaging more, you can shift your budget to these to ensure you get the best possible ROI.
You can simply see how many conversions, clicks, and impressions your ads are getting. The Facebook Pixel allows you to track website activity of people coming from your ads, so you can see exactly how they act after clicking the ad.
Optimise your campaigns
This, of course, means you can see where they are any drawbacks, and therefore go ahead and optimise your campaigns.
While it is not always obvious how to optimise or what to do in order to get the best results, this is where experience in Facebook Advertising comes in. If you don’t have experience advertising on the platform, then consider getting an expert agency involved to run and optimise your campaigns.
Ads vs organic
Organic Facebook marketing is virtually a thing of the past. Your business needs Facebook Ads in order to be effective on the platform.
Facebook has severely limited how much of your own followers you can reach via organic means – largely down to the fact that users wanted more personal posts on their timeline. But, obviously, they also want businesses to spend money on the platform.
That isn’t necessarily a bad thing though – as everyone is in the same boat, and there are thousands of businesses reaping the benefits that Facebook Ads have to offer.
Suits any budget
Whatever your size or budget, you can advertise on Facebook.
It is simple to constrain your budget on a daily or lifetime basis. You can limit your budget to a certain date or price, and change it when you want.
No matter what you wish to spend on the platform, whether it’s hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands, you can make use of Facebook’s huge audience to advertise your business.
Multiple platforms
With just the Facebook Ad Manager, you can target ads across multiple platforms. This includes Facebook itself, the Audience Network, Instagram and Messenger.
Instagram is a huge platform and has a different demographic to Facebook. A younger, more engaged audience is found on Instagram, and it is very visually-driven as it is all about images.
While there are a number of key differences in how the posts and ads work, the beauty of Facebook Advertising is that you can opt to advertise on Instagram too. Without any extra legwork of signing up for a different platform and starting from scratch.
While it’s easy to click a button and have the same ads run on Instagram as well as Facebook, depending on what you wish to advertise, you may wish to set up specific Instagram ads.
Remarketing
Remarketing ads allows you to advertise to people who have already visited your site.
The benefit of this is that you know they are interested in what you have to offer, as they have already been on your site.
So if that is the case, they are more likely to convert or do business with you than someone who has never heard of your brand.
This helps to ensure you make the most of your traffic and to not leave any stone unturned. You can engage lost potential customers, and tempt them back with specific messages or offers. And they will see this while they browse Facebook, remember what they were up to on your site, and potentially return to what they were up to earlier.
Lookalike Audiences
Lookalike audiences are a very powerful aspect of Facebook targeting.
Facebook takes your most successful audiences that work for your advertising campaigns, and then finds a similar audience which “looks like” the audience that works.
This is a powerful way to find new people that are more likely to convert or purchase on your site. And this is all without having to find them yourself – Facebook determines who is most likely to be the perfect audience for your business.
While Facebook may not be the first thing that comes to mind for many businesses looking to grow online, it can really give you an edge over the competition and drive revenue that you would otherwise not get.
Whether you are a B2B or B2C business, Facebook Ads can likely help you generate business and grow your business.
