5 Reasons You Should Be Advertising on Facebook
1: Your Audience Is On Facebook
Facebook has a user base larger than the population of China! With 1.49 billion members worldwide, and 22 billion ad clicks per year, Facebook is providing businesses with the largest advertising opportunity since search. So yes, your audience is on there somewhere – it’s just a matter of finding them (which I’ll get into in reason #3), but if you have doubts just re-read those stats because they are quite telling, my friend.
2: Facebook Ads Are Cheap
Seriously, they’re practically free! Well, not quite. In fact, the reason you need to advertise is because getting traction from organic activity on your business page won’t yield results. Just take a look at the graph below, which unfortunately proves that the days of organic reach are long gone; your posts just aren’t showing up in your fans’ Facebook newsfeed:
On the bright side, Facebook ads tend to cost a fraction of what other online marketing channels cost. For instance, WordStream’s Paid Acquisition Coordinator, Brett McHale, ran a Facebook remarketing campaign for his sister’s small business and was able to reach 200 people who visited her site with just $5 per day. Pretty impressive.
If you’re strapped for cash, just ensure that you set reasonable daily Facebook budgets so you don’t exceed what you’re able to spend.
“It’s not a question of how much Facebook costs, but how far your money will go,” says Brett. “If you go into Facebook advertising with a clear focus and follow a simple strategy, the cost-efficiency of the platform will astound you.”
The graph below from Brian Carter’s Moz article really says it all. In terms of cost to reach a thousand people, Facebook is far less expensive than all other channels (online and offline):
3: The Targeting Capabilities of Facebook Are Exceptional
Along with tons of different ad types, like video ads, the level of granularity you can get with Facebook targeting capabilities is beyond belief to me. You can literally target President Obama or the Prime Minister of France. Whether it be by behaviors, interests, demographics, connections, age ranges, languages, or locations, you can dig pretty deep with these targeting capabilities and layer them upon each other to ensure you’re getting rid of any questionable, out-of-market clickers.
4: Facebook Is Effective to Push On-the-Fence Leads Down the Funnel
Still nervous? Try out remarketing on Facebook through custom audiences.
This strategy works wonders for marketers because remarketing works by targeting an audience that has already visited your site, and therefore is more likely to be interested in your products or offerings at some level. If you’re already doing paid search, try out “The Savvy Social Stalker” hack. With this technique, you’ll give your PPC leads a push by remarketing to the non-converters via Facebook ads.
5: Facebook Allows You to Find New Qualified Leads Easily
Once you’ve found an audience that converts like crazy, you can clone them. I kid you not! The feature is called “lookalike audiences” where you can take a custom audience and Facebook will reach NEW people who are similar to that audience and therefore likely to be interested in your business.
Lookalike audiences can also be built with conversion pixels (for instance, the conversion pixels from your paid search ads!), install data from mobile apps, or simply from fans of your Facebook page. You can also further define the size and targeting options to ensure your lookalike audience is an accurate reflection of your target buyers.
Julianna Casale.“This approach takes the guesswork out of targeting for user acquisition, leading to increased revenue,” says Content Marketing Manager at Nanigans, “Wine ecommerce company Club W saw a 5X increase in revenue when they ‘paired’ their video ads with Lookalike Audience target.”
If you want to keep up and beat your competitors, follow my advice and hop on the Zuckerberg bandwagon – it isn’t bad! (Bonus: Find 10 more smart Facebook marketing ideas here.)
