Social media has evolved to become a vital business component in the modern age. People consume digital content all the time through these platforms and so it makes sense to try and use them in ways to market your business. Although this can be done for free using various techniques, some of these platforms offer a range of advertising tools, paid or otherwise, to get your business seen by more people. The world’s largest social media website, Facebook, is one of the platforms that offers these options, and as we use it regularly for our work we thought we’d talk you through Facebook’s advertising features and how to best use them.
https://youtu.be/V_vk_9xmzb8Why use it?
As aforementioned, so many people use Facebook (2.85 billion) that it’s inevitable that it will be used for business marketing. Even simply posting regularly and using the right hashtags and content could get your business seen by lots of people that would never have seen it before in an offline world. A successful business needs to bring in as many customers as possible, so targeting the place with the highest chance of catching someone’s attention is a good place to start.
Furthermore, its target audience feature, which lets you customise the audience which your ads are shown to, has proven to be very effective. Research by Impact Plus indicates that the costs of new customer acquisition decline by as much as 73% for businesses that use Facebook ads.
What options are there and how much do they cost?
As you will see in the guide below there are a few different options, although it is actually quite difficult to decipher how much it costs. This is because it is done specific to each individual request as they are rolled out, and according to the budget which you set.
You can boost posts that have already been done or create ad campaigns tailored to your specific needs. If you are looking for more people to book events through your page then there is a specific option for that, but if you just want to promote your business to a certain group of people, perhaps locally, then there are choices there too.
However, due to the “ad auction” set up of Facebook ads, the more you are willing to spend, the more effective your ads are going to be, which we’ll do our best to explain later in this article.
How do you create an ad campaign?
Firstly, if you don’t already have a Facebook business account then you’ll need to set that up alongside the relevant payment details which you’ll need. Then, again only if you haven’t done so already, create a page for your business complete with images and regular updates.
Choose a preferred option. Customise to your audience. Set your budget. It’s that simple. Tell Facebook what your aim is and it will help you create a campaign that will be the most effective in doing what you are trying to achieve. Facebook will stay strictly to your budget and never go beyond it. You can choose how much you want to spend and how long you want your campaign or ad to be running for. This will adjust as to select what sort of audience you are aiming for.
The final component is the content. You get to decide what the ad looks like, what your potential clients will see. Make sure you have content that is interesting and engaging while still being relevant to your business. Use well-branded images/videos which will grab a scroller’s attention if they see it on their Facebook timeline.
Once your campaign or boosted post is live, you can track its process statistically using insights. In this section, which is part of the Facebook creator studio for your page, you can see which posts and paid advertising is doing well or is the most effective.
The service provides help where needed during the setting-up process, and if you require any more information on the service specifically, Facebook’s Business website provides a lot of good information on a range of subjects.
How does it work?
Ad auction, as previously mentioned, is a key part in the distribution and effectiveness of your ads. Ad auction consists of a few factors, including the auction bid value, action rates and ad quality. The latter two parts of this are basically how well-received your ad is, how much people interact with it and the quality of content in the ad itself. The former is the one which is determined by your initial budget presets. The reason it is called an auction is because ads compete with other ads that have the same audience stipulations (e.g. males aged 17-20 who are interested in cars) and whichever competitor has the highest budget value will be shown in that scenario.
You can adjust your budgets any time, but it is also worth emphasising the importance of narrowing down your target audience depending on your business. If your business has a very specific client base, then to get the most out of your ads you should ensure that your targeted audience is customised accordingly.
Facebook has a huge database of information for every user to indicate to them what sort of ads they would want to see and be most likely to interact with. It’s for this reason that, if used correctly, it can be used as an excellent marketing technique and result in a huge boost to your business.
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