Not so long ago Facebook was considered to be only for teenagers and those looking for romance and a change of relationship status but that has changed dramatically in recent years. Facebook has quickly evolved as one of the most valuable assets to advertisers who are striving to reach a specific niche audience.
That is the reason why Facebook has the edge over other types of advertising, because it has so much detailed information on all of it’s more than 1 billion users. As a result Facebook has got really good at letting advertisers run highly targeted ads. In fact, Facebook ads are bringing real, exciting and valuable results to businesses, many of them, small and local who would never have been able to run such a super targeted campaign before Facebook came along.
Here are just some of the specific variables you can use to target your advertisements:
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Relationship Status
- Interests
- Connections with specific people on Facebook
- Fans of other business pages on Facebook
- People who work at a certain company or attended a particular school.
Just to help you to understand how useful this would be for your business lets say you are a Wedding planner and you want to target your ads to women within a specific age group who are going to be getting married and live within a specific area code. You can target that specific group on Facebook.
Not only that but if you own a small business and have a competitor with a large fan base, you can target that company’s fans as well.
Just like with Google search advertising, you can also set up Facebook Ads so you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
It really does generate cost effective sales and conversions for your business.
If you still need convincing here are 5 more reasons why YOUR business should be advertising on Facebook:
- Facebook Ads are Easy: You don’t need to be an advertising genius or design expert to create basic ads on Facebook. We find that many small businesses are overwhelmed when placing ads in sites like Google Adwords but Facebook ads are much easier and can be more effective. This creates a level playing field for smaller businesses to be able to compete with the national and International brands online.
- You Can Reach A Huge Audience: Facebook has the largest active user base in the world with over 1 billion users. Over half of those users log in to Facebook every day via computers, mobiles and tablets.
- It’s targeted: As we mentioned at the outset, you are able to target your ads to a very specific audience, which is crucial to an effective and successful advertising campaign. Facebook boasts that it can give your business a targeting accuracy of 90%. That means for example, that if you are want to target people who interested in a range of handbags you can specifically target people that Facebook identifies as being interested in handbags, fashion and other related interests. You can even target fans of huge fashion outlets to show off your range.
- It works and is cost effective: If you don’t have a huge advertising budget, Facebook ads are perfect because they are highly targeted giving you a better return on interest. It doesn’t make sense to waste your valuable advertising budget on people who are not interested in your product. You wouldn’t be doing that with Facebook ads.
- Facebook ads are mobile friendly: Most people access Facebook via their mobiles and you can promote your business by making the ads appear on mobile phones. Make sure that your website is mobile friendly too (if it isn’t we can fix it for you).
Getting the Most Potential from your Facebook Ads:
Every business advertising on Facebook wants to attract brand new clients and increase their fan base. Here are some suggestions showing you how best to use Facebook Ads to reach your objective:
Get more likes to your Facebook page:
You can use Facebook Ads to get more ‘targeted’ likes for your Facebook page. You will not only build brand awareness for your company but when people like your page they will also see some of the content that you post on your page in their Facebook newsfeed. This is very useful to entice them with special offers and news about your products or service.
Get more exposure for the posts you make on your Facebook page:
Most small businesses don’t realize that you can also pay to have Facebook show posts you make to a larger number of your fans and/or people who are not your fans. To illustrate how effective this is lets say that you posted a coupon on your Facebook page. You could use Facebook Ads to show that same coupon to even more of your fans AND non fans.
So in addition to having people see and actually use your coupon, this can also increase the interaction and engagement with that post which will then increase it’s Edge Rank (Edge Rank is the name commonly given to the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine what articles should be displayed in a user's News Feed.)
Send more traffic to your website: You don’t just have to send people to your Facebook page and posts. You can use Facebook Ads to send people directly to your website. You can control exactly what page on your site you want to go to.
How to Write a Good Facebook Ad
Now that you have a general understanding of how Facebook advertising works you now need to know how to write a good Facebook ad that will get the best results. You need to create a headline and text for your ad that engages the people seeing the ad and encourages them to take action.
Think carefully about the people who you want to target. You know your customer base better anyone so you need to try to imagine what is likely to convince them to click on the ad.
Don’t worry if you get it wrong. It is amazing how even the smallest of tweaks in your ad’s headline, body of the ad and the image can have dramatic affects on the number of people who will click on your ad.
With any type of ad you always want to have a call to action (buy now, click here, click for more information etc.) and Facebook ads are no different. If you want people to click the ‘Like’ button, ask them. If you want them to download a coupon, ask them.
It is also important to engage with your target audience by getting them to identify with whatever your ad says. Again, this comes from experience and the more you know your target audience, the easier it will be to get them to identify with your ad.
Questions work so well on Facebook ads. Users on Facebook are used to interaction and being asked for their opinions. If the question intrigues your target customer they will reward you by clicking on your ad. For example if you are a gym instructor ask: “Which exercise burns fat the quickest?”
Statements that make people belong or part of a ‘knowing’ group work well too.
For example: Click LIKE if you think that One Direction is the best band in the world.
Giving things away is always a crowd pleaser. Asking people to click LIKE to get your latest coupon will work very well.
Images are important too. You need to choose an image that is right for your target audience. It has to be attractive to them and make a statement.
Targeting Your Facebook Ads
One of the best features of Facebook ads is being able to reach your audience using laser target ad. You can reach your audience based on their location, age and gender.
When you set up your ad and you click on the advanced targeting options you will them be able to target them based on their interests, connections, relationship status, language, education and workplace.
How To Use Facebook Advertising To Get More Exposure To Your Facebook Posts
If you have posted something that has been really well received by your fans you might want to advertise that specific post in your ad. Again, you do this within the Advanced Options.
You either select the post that you want to promote or create a new post for your page to promote. Something you will need to bear in mind is the fact that you cannot make any changes to the content of the ad, so you want to make sure everything is how you want the ad to look when you make the post.
Flexible and cost Effective
The reason why we recommend Facebook Advertising for small businesses is because of the low risks involved. You have full control of your advertising budget and it is the ideal testing ground for your ad. If you run a particularly good campaign you can consider using it on other platforms such as Google.
Your Facebook ad will deliver quick results and will let you know if your message is effective and gets the point across to your potential buyers so that they know who you are, what you are offering and how they can purchase your product or service quickly and safely.
You will be able to tweak your ads as often as you want in order to get the best results from it and reach your target audience.
If you are trying to reach a local audience you will find Facebook ads very effective. It is the perfect way to inform local and regional clients about your business.
Make full use of the ‘friend’ network too. You will find that most local communities enjoy supporting local businesses and Facebook Ads can get your message in front of the quickly and efficiently.
By promoting your Facebook business page through the ads you place on Facebook you are guaranteed that the people you are targeting with your ads have a Facebook account. This is reassuring to you as a business owner as it means that your ads are reaching the audiences most likely to buy from you and you can communicate with them directly any time you want.
One of the most powerful reasons for advertising on Facebook is the flexibility of the management budget that is open to you. You don’t have to invest thousands in advertising fees like you do with traditional forms of advertising. Your budget can be as low as you want it to be per day. As you gauge how successful your advertisement is you can change your budget to suit. You are free to do this as often as you want and whenever you want.
Facebook provide you with a number of tools to monitor the performance of your advertisement which will allow you to test ads and see which ones are working the most effectively for you.
In the world of social media, advertising is an excellent way to reach customers. The users on Facebook are very active and they login daily, often many timed during the day. Facebook ads enable you to reach an audience who you might not have been able to reach otherwise. They are going to see you ad far more quickly than they would if it was on your blog or website.
The exposure you will receive by placing ads on Facebook will be very lucrative for your business. The more customers are exposed to your product, the higher your profits can become.
Hopefully this article will have convinced you what a versatile and useful tool Facebook advertising is. As we have mentioned it is easy to set up and to manage. However, we realize that you might not have the time or inclination to set up a Facebook advertising campaign. Some businesses still find it daunting even though it is low risk. That is why a lot of businesses use our services because of our experience and knowledge.
We know what it takes to run a successful advertising campaign and to engage with your potential customers no matter what niche market you are in.
If this article has aroused your interest and you can see the potential of how powerful Facebook advertising would be for your business and want to use it as part of your marketing campaign, please contact us. You will be glad you did and we will be able to share our advice and help you to increase your business profits.
