10 REASONS BUSINESSES SHOULD ADVERTISE ON FACEBOOK

Mike O’Kelly, CEO – The O’Kelly Consulting Group

In modern-day marketing, there are a plethora of outlets available for businesses to spend their marketing budgets on—whether it be email marketing, SEO, SEM, videos, guerrilla marketing, display ads, influencer marketing, etc. The options are endless. 

That being said, there is one force dominating modern-day society: social media. There’s no denying that social media platforms have changed the way we live our lives. Social media is everywhere, from the way we get our news to the way we interact with our loved ones. Social media has also changed the world of marketing and advertising, providing a unique opportunity for businesses to reach current and potential customers.

For over a decade, the one dominating force in social media advertising has been Facebook. For the business leaders wondering whether or not to allocate marketing budgets towards paid Facebook advertising, below, we detail our top 10 reasons why a business should. 

Reason 1: Potential Customers are on Facebook

With more than 2.4 billion monthly active users and close to 1.5 billion daily active users, Facebook is a significant part of people's everyday lives. The average person now spends roughly 40 minutes using the platform each day. For businesses, within this massive pool of people are their potential customers. Facebook offers businesses an opportunity to reach these potential customers using their Facebook Ads Manager, an advertising platform. Facebook is simply too big to ignore as an on-going part of a businesses’ marketing budget—which leads to our second reason why a company should be leveraging Facebook advertising—they can get very granular and target specific customers.

Reason 2: Facebook can Target Specific Users

Facebook has a wealth of information about its users, and businesses can benefit from this by targeting just the people who are most likely to become their customers or even their current customers.

Facebook provides many detailed ways to reach specific people based on their behavior on a website, their known page likes, engagement with a Facebook page, and other various elements of their demographic such as age, gender, marital status, and location. Savvy marketers can leverage the advertising tools provided by Facebook and target custom audiences who are more likely to purchase their product or service.

As an example, imagine you are a wedding photographer and are looking to find potential customers who are currently planning a wedding. Facebook allows you to target ads based on major life events, so it would be good practice to serve advertisements to people who recently have been engaged. Businesses properly using Facebook's detailed targeting features are providing themselves a substantial leg up on their competitors. 

Reason 3: Retargeting

Yet, another way to reach the right users is through retargeting. Retargeting is one of the most effective strategies when using Facebook advertising. This enables businesses to target users who previously visited their website, used their mobile app, or gave them their email address. Marketing studies continue to demonstrate that it may take seven impressions by a brand on a customer to build up enough trust for them to take the desired action. It turns out that 97% of people who visit a website for the first time leave without taking the businesses' desired action (Mailchimp, 2019). With an effective retargeting advertising campaign, companies can increase their conversion rates by more than 200%, all while simultaneously building brand awareness.

Reason 4: Increasing Brand Awareness

For many businesses, brand awareness is one of the most overlooked benefits of Facebook advertising; however, it is one of the most important. Brand awareness marketing campaigns help keep a business top-of-mind with an audience. By keeping the brand top-of-mind, it substantially increases the chances of a customer buying from their company rather than a competitor. Facebook's advertising platform allows businesses to devise marketing campaigns designed explicitly with brand awareness as their campaign objective. Facebook's sophisticated advertising algorithm will then help serve ads to the people who are more likely to watch and recall an advertisement. The more familiar people are with a brand, the more likely they will purchase the businesses’ product or service when it is time to make a buying decision.

Reason 5: Facebook Ads Are Budget Friendly

Another significant benefit of Facebook advertising is that it is one of the most economical forms of advertising compared to other types of online advertising. Currently, the average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) for Facebook ads is around $7.29 versus upwards of $35 for television commercials. Especially for small businesses, it does not make sense to spend more in radio ads, television commercials, billboards, and other traditional media to reach the same audience. 

Reason 6: Facebook Ads Support Organic Reach

Oftentimes, business owners think by simply posting content on their businesses' Facebook page, they are implementing an effective Facebook marketing strategy and paid ad spend is not necessary—this is far from the truth. In fact, the days of organic Facebook marketing are over. Facebook's organic reach has been declining substantially every year since 2012. Recently, Facebook's Engineer Director Lars Backstrom warned that business pages could anticipate a dip in organic reach of lower than 2%. This means that a Facebook post from a business page with 10,000 followers will likely only see an organic reach of around 200 people. Placing advertising spend behind marketing messages is a must if a business plans to adopt an effective social media strategy.

Reason 7: Facebook Ads Can Help Build An Email List

Facebook advertising can help businesses fuel their email marketing efforts. Businesses can utilize Facebook’s “lead ad” forms to capture email contacts through Facebook ads with only a couple of clicks. They can also direct traffic to an external form on their website to build their email list.

Reason 8: Instagram and Audience Network

One common misconception when running Facebook advertisements is that the advertisements will only be seen on Facebook. In actuality, when creating ads inside of Facebook’s ads manager, businesses can select different ad placements, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network. Instagram is owned by Facebook and has over 1 billion active users each month available for targeting. Facebook’s Audience Network is an off-Facebook, in-app advertising network for mobile apps. Businesses can serve their ads to potential customers who are using mobile sites and apps other than Facebook, extending their reach beyond the platform while still getting to use Facebook’s exceptionally powerful ad system. 

Reason 9: Facebook Ads Are Measurable

A common struggle for businesses is measuring their marketing efforts and advertising campaign results. Facebook’s Ads Manager reporting platform helps show companies how their advertising is helping achieve their business goals across Facebook. When correctly set up, businesses will be able to track many different key performance indicators (KPI’s), including website clicks, impressions, reach, cost per click, cost per conversion, return on ad spend, and many more. Working with an experienced agency can help businesses benchmark which key performance indicators are most applicable for their business type.

Reason 10: Facebook Ads Are Highly Effective

Facebook is considered to be one of the top advertising channels online, and digital ad spends now accounts for 51% of total advertising spend in the United States. Recently Google and Facebook ad revenue topped TV spend for the first time in history. Facebook has seen a steady increase in advertising revenue year over year in the last decade, simply because Facebook ads work. A recent survey found that 78% of American consumers say they’ve discovered products on Facebook. 

As the world’s population continues to grow and as internet access becomes more globally accessible, Facebook and the internet as a whole will continue to be the best way for businesses to connect with consumers and generate sales using ads.

Conclusion: 

The faster businesses begin to advertise on Facebook, the sooner they will unlock the full potential of social media advertising. Facebook is continuously adding more features and improving user experience for both advertisers and normal Facebook users; this is a significant reason why Facebook has sustained growth for so long. 

If you believe in the benefits of Facebook advertising and are looking to start investing in a professional Facebook advertising campaign today for your business, schedule a call with one of our digital marketing experts to discuss your advertising needs.