It doesn’t matter if your business is big or small. You may be a startup upstart, using guerilla marketing tactics to capture any hearts and minds you can reach. You may be the established super-power business in your part of the world, marshalling enormous resources to conquer the world.
Whatever your situation, you cannot ignore Facebook advertising. It is a platform that is coming into its own because of its reach and accessibility.
Facebook Advertising reaches consumers
Facebook occupies an enormous portion of the internet with over 1.1 billion users worldwide. 166 Million of those users reside in the U.S. No matter how you slice it, that is a lot of people. If your target audience is consumers, then you definitely need to look at advertising with Facebook. Having said that, be aware that Facebook is not the perfect answer for every marketing question. If your business has a B2B focus, Facebook may not reach your prospects. If you aren’t sure, however, it’s doesn’t cost much to experiment.
You can target your Facebook Ads
One of the most formidable powers of any kind of online advertising is the ability to target your advertising. By contrast, traditional print or broadcast advertising is like dropping leaflets out of an airplane. Online channels like Google and Facebook allow you to aim your advertising squarely at the kind of people most likely to buy from you. With Facebook, millions of users willingly give out all kinds of information about their likes, desires, and habits. When you set up a Facebook campaign (check out Guidelines For Facebook Right-Hand Side Advertising), you can target your ads so that only your most likely prospects will even see the ad. That is what we call efficiency.
Facebook News Feed Advertising
Facebook Ads are Cost Effective
As with other forms of online advertising, you control the cost. You can tell Facebook how much money you want to spend and how long you want your campaign to run. You can create a daily budget or a lifetime budget. You can decide whether you want to pay based on Cost per Impressions (CPM) or on Cost per Click (CPC). What you choose will depend on what you are advertising and what you are trying to accomplish with your ads. The main thing is that you are in control.
Controlling costs is good, but what you really want is results. Recent studies seem to indicate that by almost every measure that quality of Facebook ad results is improving. Impressions, Click Through Rate (CTR), Cost per Click, Conversion rates, and revenue.
A Facebook Ad Campaign is Easy to Set Up
One caveat here. It is true that just about anybody who can follow instructions can set up a Facebook ad campaign. If you are testing the waters, by all means, go ahead and jump in. There is really no reason to hesitate. But you should also understand that the more sophisticated and complex your marketing needs you must expect that your campaign will require time and attention. If you want results, you need to invest the resources. If you have the ability, hire a social media consultant with a history of results or just work with ExactDrive. J
Facebook Ads Provide High Quality Feedback
It’s an old joke. The advertiser used to say, “When I advertise, I know that half my ad dollar is going to waste. The trouble is that I never know which half.” With online advertising, that is no longer true and it is especially untrue for Facebook ads. Virtually every important part of your ad campaign is measured. With a little training, you can learn to read your analytics so that you can understand how to adjust your ad campaigns to get better results.
If you haven’t considered Facebook Advertising, it might be time to take a look. Use common sense, test out a variety of campaigns and ads and watch your results carefully. If you start getting results, keep doing whatever it is that’s getting results and improve on it.