In spite of talk – among digital marketers and business owners alike – that Facebook’s reach is on the downward trend, it’s pretty clear that people love the social networking site even than ever before. A whopping 70% of Facebook users in the United States log into Facebook every single day. This is as compared with 59% on Instagram, 38% on Twitter, 27% on Pinterest, and 22% on LinkedIn.
In addition, a lot of digital marketers have the first-hand testimonial regarding the efficacy of Facebook ads for their business:
- 54% of digital marketers are of the belief that Facebook ads are extremely effective in generating sales.
- Many of the ads which appear on Facebook have average click-through rates above 10%.
- More than half of ads on Facebook enjoy customer acquisition costs of $10 or less.
All these Facebook users spell out the huge potential for digital marketers. This is why Facebook has come out as one of the best advertising platforms for both B2B in addition to B2C businesses. In the past number of years, as organic reach on Facebook has decreased, savvy digital marketers have been advertising on Facebook in order to get results.
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The anatomy of a successful Facebook ad
There’s a lot that has to come together in order to make a Facebook ad effective. For example, you need the correct targeting, a phenomenal image or video, in addition to compelling copy.
As we said before, there are tonnes of users on Facebook. However, sending an ad in a spray and pray fashion doesn’t result in many conversions. The fundamental success factor in Facebook’s advertising is targeting. Without a doubt, Facebook has the best ad targeting of any social media networking site.
This highly specific targeting allows you the opportunity to get super specific about the audience which your ad reaches. For example, if you sell garden hoses with Facebook ads you can reach people who are interested in vegetable gardens in addition to home improvement. If you sell a software-as-a-service (SaaS) tool, it is possible for you to target those who’ve paid a visit to a landing page on your site.
Here are several ways that it is possible for you to target your ads on Facebook:
- The custom audiences view allows you to target existing customers or, alternatively, leads
- If you select location targeting this allows you to target by location (city, state, country)
- Gender targeting allows you to define your target audience by gender (male or female)
- Targeting by interests allows you to target the audience for your ads by interest (such as fitness, entrepreneurship, fashion, and literature)
- Behavioral targeting allows you to target the audience for your ad by past behaviors, such as a person visiting your website
- The connections filter allows you to target your audience according to the people who already like your page, or who have connections which do
The difference between a Google Ad and a Facebook Ad
An AdWords text ad has exactly the same appearance on mobile as it does on desktop view.
This means that you don’t have to worry about any differences – there’s not much room for error.
However, contrast this with a Facebook ad creative. With these types of ads, you’re juggling different headlines, image, text, and call-to-action (CTA) options for different placements, across different devices. What looks great for one view will almost undoubtedly not work for another.
Facebook ads are a fine balance and when making the decision about which ad you want to go with you have to weigh up so many different goals, ad types, placements as well as sizes in order to get the creative perfect. One of the first places to begin, well before you consider an image or headline, is the platform as well as device placement.
The standard Desktop, News Feed location is your primary go-to option. As a typical rule, the priority placement here gets you better-than-average conversion odds. In addition, you get more room to make your case as you have a larger image, longer copy as well as an additional link description area. However, it’s competitive and relatively more costly than the other options.
Right Column ads usually take a back seat to News Feed ones as they’re slightly out-of-sight in addition to out-of-mind. Your ability to captivate audiences with a smaller image in addition to little-to-no text area results in dilution. However, if someone already knows who you in addition to what you have to offer ads in this placement can grab their attention at a more cost-effective price point.
You can begin audience-building on Facebook by specifically targeting mobile devices, where discovery, as well as initial engagement, can usually be had for much lower rates.
Final Words
If you make the decision to create Facebook ads, you will need to set up an ongoing system in order to review as well as analyze your ads. Then, you can efficiently make tweaks to your social media campaign. This is how you find out what works best for you.