Facebook has over 2.7 billion active users and is the third most visited website behind Google and Youtube. If you are a business owner considering social media marketing, Facebook would have most definitely crossed your mind. The social media landscape is continually changing with new platforms springing up, what seems like, every five minutes, however one staple that has moved with the times is Facebook. Yes, it has a massive audience but is Facebook Advertising still worth it? With the changes in iOS, app tracking and a general move towards more data privacy, is spending money on Facebook ads as effective as it used to be?
Reaching a wide audience with a limited budget is always been tricky. That was until Facebook came along. For just a small budget you can reach infinitely more people than with traditional print pased advertising. But with the changes in the privacy landscape, it is getting more difficult, that being said, Facebook is most definitely still a very cost-effective way of advertising online.
Why Facebook Marketing is worth it
Access to a huge audience
As mentioned, Facebook has about 2.7 billion active users, that’s more than 25% of the worlds population, that’s ahead of Youtube with 2.3 billion. These users have an even age distribution making it easy to create ads targeted at different ages. So in terms of volume of people, Facebook certainly gives you that. The question isn’t “will anyone see my ads?” and more around, who should we put our ads in front of?
Targeting options
To achieve the most from an advertising campaign through Facebook, you have to take time to plan the 5 W’s of your marketing campaign; who, what, when, where, why. With such a big pool of people to target, the who is crucial. Facebook holds a lot of data on its audience and as advertisers we have access to some of this information so choosing your audience can be tricky, but very important. Location, demographics and interests are a great place to start, however, you can get far more complex with your targeting thanks to the Meta Pixel which we’ll leave for another article.
Flexibility in creative
Once your objective has been agreed and your audience has been decided, it’s on to the creative part. You could select several photos or videos to form a carousel, slideshow or playable ad, or even explore unique in-app experiences. Facebook allows many ways of setting up ads to capture the audience. Ads can be placed in the feeds as posts (videos or photos), in full-screen stories, as well as sponsored messages in messenger. The key point is its flexibility and the data that sits behind it. With this data, you can get a clear idea of what is working and more importantly, isn’t working.
Workable budgets.
Given it’s flexibility, Facebook allows you to place ads in line with any budget or plan. You could run ads just for a day or for an extended time. Through the lifetime budget, you could schedule the ads to run till a specified date at a cost. If you have a flexible budget, you could select the daily budget and schedule ads depending on your needs.
How to make the perfect Facebook ad campaign
To reap maximum rewards from Facebook advertising, your ads must be well curated. In creating the perfect Facebook ad, here are some things to consider.
- Set clear goals for the campaign: Are you creating to increase brand awareness, boost sales, or direct traffic to your website?
- Test different audiences
- Create ads with clear messages.
- Use clear and attractive images
- Optimise your creative for their placements
How much do you need to spend on Facebook ads to see results?
You can get as much from ads as you are willing to spend. Expect to spend varying amounts based on your bidding models, the industry, the ad placement, the target number of people to be reached and even the seasons. There are multiple different factors that come into play when thinking about budget, including different objectives and bidding models such as cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM), or cost-per-engagement (CPE).
We always recommend an “always on” approach which means your ads run continuously. Doing this, allows the advertising algorithm to get used to your campaign and importantly, gives you lots of data in order to make performance based decisions. Using data in an effective way tends to be what separates the winners from the losers in the online advertising world.
