Facebook is now one of the most popular marketing platforms on the planet. As the social giant has grown to more than 2.7 billion active users, it’s also expanded its advertising network to suit a wide range of businesses.
Now a ton of the benefits of advertising on Facebook are obvious, but paid advertising does come with a lot of complexities. It’s important to understand what Facebook offers businesses and how its paid ad network is built to offer a bunch of advertising options before you can see how it might help you reach new audiences.
So we’ve written this blog to help you understand – and take advantage of – Facebook’s advertising benefits.
Facebook’s market share for digital advertising is close to 20%, making it one if the single largest options for advertising, behind only Google. Plus the 2020 corona virus pandemic has given digital advertising some unexpected swings, Facebook’s Q2 revenue is well past $18 billion, an 11% increase over 2019! And average ad costs are lower than last year as well. As the world adjusts to decreased store traffic and lower brick-and-mortar results it only makes sense to consider the benefits of Facebook advertising for your business. Online-first companies and eCommerce are set to become the norm for businesses and the advantages of Facebook advertising over its competitors make it a good option.
Facebook’s advertising model functions on the ubiquitous “pay-per-click” model which has become the single biggest system for internet advertising. The reasons why PPC is important are also the same benefits of Facebook advertising: it’s affordable, effective, and fast.
1. Micro-target your exact audiences
Social media advertising for most platforms means giving advertisers the ability to focus ads towards their own target audiences using data from users – and Facebook is no different. In fact one of the main benefits of advertising on Facebook is that the platform is very data rich. You can micro-target the audiences that are best for your business.
Facebook has a meticulous level of detail that lets you narrow down the demographic for every ad you run. Businesses can create ads to narrow down their target audiences for segments under:
Gender
Age
Location
Spoken languages
Interests (expressed interests, likes, and hobbies from their Facebook profile)
Education level or history
Job title
Income
Political affiliation
Interests
Behaviors and recent purchases
Major life events
Facebook’s ads allow for extremely precisely targeted options. Businesses can define their own audiences based off of the above categories and then setup campaigns for these “core audiences.” Another one of the best benefits of Facebook advertising for your business is that you can also target people who have previously interacted with your brand.
The platforms ad network uses “Audience Insights” with aggregate data on people who interact with your brand page along with data on how they interact on the rest of Facebook. With custom audiences built in Audience Insights, marketers can then move those over to the Facebook “Ads Manager” tool.
This level of insight is one of the advantages of Facebook ads that classic search PPC doesn’t offer. Because of the nature of search engines, ad networks like Google and Bing aren’t able to offer as much detailed demographic targeting.
2. It has the highest retail ROAS for any social platform
Marketers and business owners might wonder, “do Facebook ads really work?” They definitely do.
Wolfgang Digital’s 2020 KPI report claims that Facebook’s user feeds ads are the single best performing ad type for eCommerce. In fact, Facebook is dominating with its Facebook Feed, Messenger, and Marketplace ad types all taking the top spots. Plus, according to Statista, 41% of surveyed marketers claimed that Facebook gave them the best ROAS, putting it at the top of the most popular social media sites for marketing.
This puts it ahead of even Google Shopping.
Compared to other similar social media sites, users are more likely to click ads they see in their Facebook feed, making it a highly beneficial place to invest your advertising budget. By 2020 Facebook as driving more than 80% of all U.S. social referrals to eCommerce sites, and its dominance means that by itself Facebook now accounts for 40% of annual digital display ad revenue – more than even Google PPC.
3. Better ad types for your business needs
Another one of the advantages of Facebook advertising is that it offers a wide range of ad types – some not available in other paid channels.
There are multiple types of ads to choose from for Facebook business advertising:
Photo – These are static single images, plus a caption.
Video – Video ads range in terms of length and can be set to appear in-stream, in user feeds, or in Stories.
Stories – Stories are customizable ads that take up the whole screen. They can be videos or static images and tapping on Stories ads brings the user to your site (or whatever page you set).
Messenger – These ads appear between conversations on the Facebook Messenger App.
Carousel – Carousel ads are comprised of up to ten static images that the user can scroll through.
Slideshow – These ads show short video-like clips made with motion, sound, and text.
Collection – Collection ads showcase multiple products in a single ad, all of which can be individually interacted with by a user.
Playables – These are interactive demo games that users can preview before they download the app or game.
One of the benefits of advertising on Facebook for your business is that you’re not limited to certain ad types and aren’t locked into plain text ads (like you are with search engine PPC). In fact these ad types cater better to branding since they give marketers the ability to create visual, creative, graphic-styles ads with multi-media elements: video, photo, text etc.
4. They can be affordable and low cost (you set your own budget)
Like a lot of pay-per-click style advertising platforms, Facebook Ads are freely available to all businesses – and the Ads Manager tool is free as well. The only cost is the cost associate with supplying a budget and running ads.
For a lot of SMB advertisers, this one of the most appealing benefits of advertising on Facebook.
The cost of running ads on Facebook is determine by a lot of factors (your budget, your ad types, industry, etc.) but generally marketers should expect to pay anywhere from a few cents to a couple dollars per click.
Facebook ads are low cost.
In fact, last year the average cost decreased by 6%. And, according to Wordstream data, marketers in apparel, travel/hospitality, and other retail marketers get the lowest cost-per-click (CPC), on average. Meaning that for them Facebook can be $0.45 to $0.70. The total average cost-per-click across all industries is $1.72, which can give marketers a rough idea of how much ads cost. Facebook ads are a much lower cost than traditional advertising, and in terms of digital PPC, they offer some of the best ROI.
5. Facebook ads can give results very fast
Facebook business ads are ideal for brands that are looking to run both short-term and long-term digital marketing strategies – since they can start providing revenue/conversion as soon as they go live. But they’re best for fast results.
Once ad campaigns are set up in the Ads Manager, are reviewed by Facebook, and once they go live, they start working immediately and begin showing your brand/products to potentially thousands of people instantly. Ads are normally approved within 24 hours, so the Facebook advertising benefits come from giving businesses a way to start getting sales within a couple days.
6. Facebook offers ads for your specific business goals
Marketers can also choose from a range of “advertising objectives” that suit their business goals. This is great for businesses that want to prioritize different results for their ads. For example ads can be designed to drive more: post engagement/interaction, more site traffic, lead generation, etc.
In fact a benefit of Facebook advertising for your business is that you can set up “Ad Objectives” for greater brand awareness, brand consideration, or for just straight conversions! For example, specific ads can be set up for:
Boosted post ads that are set to help improve engagement or for your high-value content.
Page promotions meant for getting more people to like and engage with your business’s Facebook page.
Website ads for website referral traffic.
Call-to-action promotions. This way people can interact with your page with a customize button designed for your goals.
Plus their ad platform also let’s business focus on broader goals for business growth like leads, sales, and expanding visibility. The Ads Manager tool offers Facebook advertising benefits in the form of ad objectives designed specifically for these needs. Ad creation and objective options include:
Lead generation and information collection based off of audience interests.
Greater conversions which can include anything form product sales to app interactions, downloads, form-fill outs, and more.
Emphasis on brand awareness by reaching more people and displaying your ads to people that are more like to pay attention.
7. Access to one of the largest audiences in the world
With more than 2.7 billion active users, the Facebook ads platform gives businesses access to one of the single largest digital ad networks. But that’s not all, since its acquisition of Instagram in 2012, the social media giant has built out its ad network to give easy access to both platforms.
Their ad network extents across both sites to give advertisers an option to have their ads display on each – with little extra set-up.
Instagram now has more than 1 billion users as well, and its daily active users are well over 500 million. In fact both Facebook and Instagram have great usage stats. Facebook advertising benefits businesses of all sizes by giving them access to an audience they wouldn’t get anywhere else. 78% of American consumers claim to have discovered products they bought on Facebook, and 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram! Nearly two-thirds of all adults use Facebook – making its massive reach one of the greatest advantages of Facebook ads for small, medium, and even large businesses.
8. Access to powerful, in depth data
Facebook’s Ads Manager gives business a wide range of performance insights and aggregate data. Each ad you create can be measured through their ad tools.
Ad measurement gives insight into ad performance including ad demographics with anonymized information on users, multi-channel data comparisons (like with TV ads), and also negative advertising data (here Facebook gives advertisers control to make sure there ads don’t show up in areas where they don’t want it to).
Breakdowns in Ads Manager lets businesses see things like audience age, gender, locations, devices, and more, like breakdowns for ads types and user actions.
Attribution reports can help identify the most important touch-points of the marketing funnel.
Ad comparisons and split-testing options for fine-tuning campaigns with variations.
9. A/B ad testing for performance growth
Another benefit of Facebook advertising includes testing tools for your businesses to improve ad results. Namely A/B testing where marketers can display near-identical ads (with minor differences) to see which adjustments perform better over time, with data.
Facebook’s ad platform gives business the options to use splitting testing in order to test and display ad variants. Plus split test ads can be set up: for time periods (1-30 days), with specific budgets, and with custom audiences.
10. Pay-per-click ads through Facebook are easy to set up
Facebook advertising is available to basically all businesses and entrepreneurs. And the entire ad system exists within Facebook, all that’s needed is a Facebook page or an “advertisers” role for an existing page.
From there ads can be created:
From the business page itself (by clicking on “Business Manager” from the admin menu).
Through the ad creation page within Facebook.
Through the Ads Manager mobile app.
To take advantage of Facebook advertising, that’s all that’s needed to get started. From there marketers can set up goals, ad campaigns, find audiences and more, using the inhouse tools.
11. Filter ads to block audiences you don’t want
Facebook’s pay-per-click advertising model also provides marketers the options to prevent ads from showing for low-quality markets or non-performing audiences. This is one of the Facebook advertising benefits their system offers.
“Block lists” can be set up in an ads campaign to prevent your business ads from showing to URLs where you don’t want to appear. You can prevent your pages from showing in in certain apps, certain pages in the Audience Network, in-stream videos, and in Facebook Instant Articles. By utilizing these tools businesses can improve their ad efficiency, improve ROAS, and get more bang-for-their buck. Doing this is an important strategy for saving money by not advertising to ineffective audiences.
12. Ad forecasting and performance estimates
There’s another big benefit of advertising on Facebook’s ad network: forecasting. With ads that have enough data, they can make estimates about how many people can be reached, and how many results can be gained per day (with a full ad budget).
Their “Estimated Daily Results” feature can be useful for brands that want to know more about adjustments in their ad campaigns. These predictions show daily estimated reach and daily estimated results that appear when you’re creating or editing an ad set.
Both estimated reach and estimated daily results are available for app installs, event responses, landing page views, link clicks, lead generation, offer claims, conversions, page engagement, page likes, post engagement and video views.
13. Facebook ads remarketing
Remarketing means advertising to audiences or visitors that have already previously interacted with your brand or expressed interest in your business. Usually done through cookies/session tracking.
One of the benefits of Facebook advertising for your business is that you can use this strategy to increase revenue, boost conversion rates or get better ROAS.
This strategy works using the “Facebook pixel” – a small snippet of code that you post in your site to help target customers and visitors. It tracks people, along with the types of actions they take on your site like any Facebook ads they viewed before visiting, pages they visit, add-to-cart actions, and more. Plus Facebook advertising benefits businesses by giving them the option to include “dynamic ads” that they can create to specifically target remarketed shoppers.
14. Sponsored messages offer very strong benefits
We already talked about the different ad types above – of which messenger ads are only one kind. But the benefits of advertising on Facebooks messaging service are so strong that it’s worthwhile mentioning it again.
One of the biggest advantages of Facebook ads compared to other platforms – especially search PPC – is its Sponsored Message feature. Sponsored messages give businesses the ability to send offers, promotions, and updates directly to people who communicate with them on the Facebook messaging platform.
These ads can be created just like any other ad through the Ads Manager – with “messages” as an objective.
This is a great option for advertising given how enormous the messaging portion of Facebook has become. 1.3 Billion people use messenger each month, and messenger ads have a 70% better open ratethan email marketing, along with a 10-80X better engagement than organic posts. For that reason they are often better for reduced cost-per-action (CPA).
15. You reach more people than with just organic social media
This is another reason why advertising on Facebook is worthwhile. Because businesses will reach more people than with just their organic social media marketing. And they’ll be able to expand the reach of their existing content both on-platform and off.
Paid advertising and organic advertising aren’t exclusive though, you can do both! And with ad types specifically designed for engagement, signups, or followings, paid-ads can actually improve your organic traffic as well. And they’ll do it faster – one of the key benefits of Facebook advertising. Paid ads get better engagement, far greater impressions, and more conversions. This means your content gets more views.
16. They give better content marketing results
Facebook ads can be used to bolster an existing content marketing campaign. Content marketing is a broad digital marketing method that involves on-site content, blogging, social-media, and even search engine optimization. Facebook can help in all of these areas.
Facebook ads can help a business get more visibility for their Facebook content and boost traffic to their core website content – whether it’s cornerstone site content, simple ad copy, or blogs. Facebook ads can be set up to target greater site traffic, more impressions, and even click-through-rate (CTR).
Ad Objectives are set up specifically with these goal as available targets:
Traffic as an objective means ads built specifically to get people onto your site, for specific landing page.
Engagement as an objective can help people interact more with your organic content on your business page – using comments, likes, shares, etc.
Video views can be prioritized for multi-media and video content campaigns.
The ability to incorporate your content with your paid-marketing efforts means better success. This is likely why Facebook ads are one of the most popular channels there is, in fact 90 million small businesses use Facebook for marketing. And in 2020 it’s expected that 87% of U.S. marketers will take advantage of Facebook ads.
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