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With so many different advertising platforms available, it’s easy to not consider your everyday social media network as an efficient method of generating revenue. After all, Facebook is just for funny dog videos, right?
If you thought that you would be wrong. In fact, just this month, Facebook’s advert revenue topped $10.3 billion with their revenue per user reaching more than $5 for the first time. These figures are especially impressive when you consider Facebook also marked 2.07 billion monthly active users in their third quarter of 2017.
With Facebook publicly hitting milestone after milestone this year, many businesses are considering the prospect of adding Facebook advertising to their marketing strategy, but is it right for your business? To help you make that decision, we’ve put together a few things to consider.
1) Is Facebook advertising right for your type of business?
Though Facebook has a phenomenal audience due to its wide usage and popularity, that does not mean it’s right for every business. Facebook Business Pages are created far and wide for every type of business, but it works in a slightly different way with Facebook Advertising.
Firstly, Facebook advertising is not readily available to all types of businesses. For example, Facebook will not allow you to create an advert which promotes things like payday loans, alcohol, gambling, and supplements. Anything controversial will not pass Facebook's advertising guidelines, but it doesn’t stop there, they are also very cautious about being too direct.
Being too direct has caused issues for Facebook in the past as people have suspected that they are being targeted by adverts based on their interests or life updates. This means that if you were promoting a pregnancy scan, your advert would not be allowed to say ‘are you pregnant?’ as this could be seen as invasive of a Facebook users privacy. It needs to be subtler.
However, if you do not sell a controversial product, and what you offer fits within Facebook’s advertising guidelines, then Facebook advertising could be very effective for your business.
Facebook advertising works especially well for products that are quite social and gets people talking. These types of products are often shared and will, therefore, encourage users to tag their friends in the advert, increasing the potential sales.
If your business centres around visual products which can easily be made into eye-catching adverts, Facebook adverts will most likely benefit your business. Especially considering the competitive nature of other forms of advertising, Facebook is particularly good at providing you with a large platform to display your product to potential consumers.
For instance, this is an advert from Facebook for ASOS.
This is a large, visual and highly targeted advert. The shop now button takes you straight through to the website and you can easily scroll through the options available. Compared to a text advert on the google SERPs, you have more chance of reaching your target demographic with a large visual advert like this.
2) Do you know your target demographic well enough?
This makes it highly effective at targeting the right kind of customers for your business. Facebook allows you to choose the age range, the gender and even the specific interests of your target demographic to ensure you get the absolute most out of your advert.
If you know the time of day your audience is most likely to be shopping, you can even specify your advert only shows at those times. This is great for businesses who understand their target audience on an intimate level.
On the other hand, if you do not know your target age range, interests or gender, you may find it difficult to create an effective Facebook advertising campaign. Most companies have an idea of what their target audience is, but the reality is often different to the vision of your target audience. The reality of who buys your products can be found through the likes of Google Analytics, but if you’re unsure it may be best to seek expert opinion who may have a bit more knowledge about your target audience and user behaviour.
3) Do you have the budget for Facebook Advertising?
Facebook advertising can cost as much or as little as you like. This is one of the many benefits of the platform. But, as with any type of advertising, you will not get the full benefit if you spend the bare minimum.
When setting up a Facebook advert, you can set the budget to suit your requirements and it will provide you with an estimate as to how many people the advert will reach and how many clicks through to the website the advert will bring.
For example, if you set the budget at £5 per day, this may bring in 5-7 clicks per day. Depending on your type of product, 5-7 clicks may be a large enough budget if your product converts easily. The downside is that this budget will reach a much smaller pool of people and if people do not click your advert as frequently as you would like, it will raise the cost per click.
If you increase your budget, this will expand the reach and the potential for clicks. As the advert can reach a larger target audience, this can increase the clicks and ultimately reduce the cost per click. A smaller cost per click is the goal with any type of CPC advertising and a larger reach is important because this increases brand exposure even if it doesn’t increase link clicks.
Facebook adverts can suit whatever budget you have, but it works best to start with a larger budget so you can increase your brand exposure and gain the trust of your potential consumers before they buy. It is well documented that customers trust you more when they see your adverts multiple times, commonly known as effective frequency.
4) What are your goals if you do implement Facebook advertising into your marketing strategy?
Facebook advertising is very goal oriented and when you choose to create an advert you will be greeted by a panel of options. This asks ‘how would you like to grow your business?’ and proceeds to list everything from increase page likes to increase website conversions. The advert options change slightly for whichever goal you choose, so it’s important you get it right.
Before setting up Facebook adverts, it is important to have a clear goal in mind. If you’re looking to increase brand exposure, then an advert which promotes your page or an interesting post from your page could be the best option for you. If you’re looking to increase conversions, a link-click advert is the best plan of action for your business. This can be tracked more easily in Google Analytics and will be promoted on every section available on Facebook (even including messenger, which was a recent addition to the available advertising spaces).
Here are a few questions to ask yourself when deciding on your Facebook advert goals.
- Is it more important to increase my brand exposure or bring people to the website at this point?
- Do people trust the brand well enough to buy the product yet?
- Do I have a large enough budget to experiment with the first couple of adverts and gage what works best?
- How can I measure the success of this Facebook advert?
- What would I class as a successful campaign?
Once you have the answers to these questions, you should have a pretty clear goal in mind. This will help you create the right type of advert and measure the success of your Facebook advertising campaign efficiently.
So, should Facebook Advertising be a part of your marketing strategy?
Facebook advertising can generate a high return if used effectively with a clear goal and plan in mind. If you have no experience of using Facebook before and you do not have a definitive understanding of who your target audience is, you may find Facebook advertising does not work for your business.
Facebook advertising seems to be on an upward spiral at the present moment, with Google and Facebook generating one-fifth of global advertising revenue just last year. It makes sense to make the most of this platform while you can - but only if it won’t come at a loss to your business. Once you fully understand the platform, your audience, your goals and your budget, there’s nothing stopping you utilising Facebook advertising to its full extent.
If you’d like some expert help when it comes to defining your audience and Facebook advertising, just get in touch with our SEO team today! We can help with all aspects of Facebook advertising and help you create the most effective campaigns for your business.
