Facebook Advertising offers businesses a way to connect with their target audiences on the world’s largest social network.
Whether your goal is to increase brand awareness, reach, traffic, engagement, store traffic, app installs, sales, or video views, Facebook Advertising can help you to achieve it. And as an almost exclusively pay-to-play network, Facebook’s organic reach continues to experience a steady decline, strengthening the reach and effect of paid advertisements for marketers.
Why Use Facebook Advertising?
Widely considered as one of the most productive and successful tools for businesses to grow, develop a loyal base of customers, and produce leads and sales, more than 3 million companies currently use Facebook Advertising. Marketers utilizing Facebook Advertising have access to the platform’s massive user base — “over 1.13 billion daily active users[,] 1.03 billion of which access the social network via mobile devices.” And due to the fact that people tend to spend a lot of time on social networks on a daily basis, Facebook Advertising offers marketers an unparalleled opportunity to grab attention. Furthermore, Facebook Advertising provides marketers with fantastic ad targeting options, enabling businesses to focus their advertising efforts on their desired audience — entirely based on a set of customized criteria like location, gender, age, interests, behaviors, etc.
Advantages of Facebook Advertising
The following are just some of the numerous advantages available to businesses that choose to utilize Facebook Advertising.:
- Campaigns are rather easy to track, offering great visibility.
- Due to the platform’s enormous population of daily active users, Facebook ads are likely to receive an immediate influx of traffic.
- It can be more user-friendly than Google AdWords in terms of set-up.
- It offers marketers and businesses the opportunity to reach potential customers early on, simultaneously capturing the interest of those both aware and unaware of their want or need.
- Images and videos can be mobilized to stimulate interest and engagement from the target audience.
- It offers highly customizable and focused ad targeting options.
- Businesses enjoy complete control over daily budgets and maximum CPC, allowing for instant return on investment.
- CPC is typically quite affordable; an average CPC of about $0.61.
Facebook Ad Targeting
Through ad targeting, your company can methodically and strategically select the audience makeup of each ad created and distributed — all in an effort to boost sales, strengthen brand awareness, and stimulate traffic to your website. Although “Facebook will automatically show your ads to people who are most likely to find your ads relevant,” the platform also offers businesses three audience selection tools that allow for user customization of advanced characteristics for targeted ad delivery.
Core Audiences
With Facebook’s Core Audiences targeting tool, companies can define their desired audience based on criteria like location, behavior, demographics, etc. These audiences are customizable and can be as wide-ranging or as precise as you prefer.
Core Audiences allows for target audiences to be adjusted based on the following user characteristics:
- Location – the cities, communities, regions, and countries in which you would like to conduct business.
- Behavior – consumer behaviors that fall in line with your target customers like device usage and purchase history.
- Demographics – criteria like age, gender, level of education, job title, etc.
- Connections – individuals connected to your Facebook page or event, or those who are not.
- Interests – the interests and hobbies of those who you’re targeted ads will be most relevant to.
Custom Audiences
With Custom Audiences, businesses can bolster pre-existing customer relationships, connecting with individuals who have shown interest in their company, products, or services in the past. These people may be loyal, repeat customers or people who have merely visited your company’s website or app.
By using contact lists developed with information collected in-store, as well as data generated from your CRM system or email lists, you can connect with your business’s connections or contacts via Facebook. Moreover, Facebook SDK is available to install for app developers looking to create more pertinent advertisements that encourage in-app action like purchasing an item. And setting up a Facebook pixel will automatically generate a Custom Audience comprised of site visitors. The Facebook pixel allows for more focused ad targeting, enabling you to show prospective customers items that they’ve previously viewed on your site.
Lookalike Audiences
With Lookalike Audiences, your business can reach potential customers with characteristics and behavior similar to your current customers. Lookalike Audiences are comprised of the individuals most likely to positively respond to your advertisements, outside of your typical target audience. After developing a source audience made up of people that you know, Lookalike Audiences can serve as a quick and helpful tool to distribute your ads to users with common and interests and traits.
Types of Facebook Ads
Varying from simple to incredibly detailed and complex, there are several types of Facebook Ads available to your business. The following are some of the platform’s standout advertising formats.
Image Ads
A wonderful way to begin your foray into Facebook Advertising, Image ads can be easily created with just a few clicks by boosting an existing post with a photo from your Facebook page. These ads are straightforward, but should still be engaging and exciting.
Video Ads
Available to run in News Feed, Stories, or as in-stream ads in longer videos, Video ads are an incredible way to showcase your business, team, products, or services. These videos can be created from filmed video footage, as well as GIF-like animations and graphics.
Video Poll Ads
Exclusive to mobile, video poll ads add an interactive element to video ads and serve to increase brand awareness.
Carousel Ads
This type of ad can use up to 10 different images or videos to showcase your company’s offerings. You can use this type of ad to highlight different products, elements of a single product, or even to create a panorama image.
Lead Ads
Exclusive to mobile, Lead ads offer users an easy way to share their contact information with your business without a ton of typing. This ad format is ideal for collecting newsletter subscriptions or signing users up for a trial of your product.
Dynamic Ads
This type of ad is an incredible way for you to promote products or services to customers most likely to be interested in them, like an individual who has placed a product in their shopping cart but hasn’t checked out — reminding them to complete their purchase.
Stories Ads
Stories ads are extremely effective full-screen vertical video ads that seamlessly maximize screen space.
Conclusion
One of the most effective ways to advertise online in the digital age, Facebook Advertising enables businesses across the globe to connect with prospective customers, potentially generate long-lasting brand loyalty. And with help from New York Software Developers, successful Facebook Ad campaigns are within reach. Contact us today to get started!
