Why Your Business Should Be Advertising On Facebook And Instagram Now.
In today's highly competitive landscape, relying solely on organic social media content to reach your audience simply isn't enough.
Paid social media advertising is a powerful tool that can help businesses of all sizes to increase their visibility, reach new audiences, and drive conversions.
Not only does paid social media advertising offer precise targeting options and robust analytics, it's also a highly cost-effective way to drive traffic and generate leads. With the launch of new paid subscription services like Meta Verified, Facebook and Instagram are doubling down on their 'Pay to Play' model, making it even more important for businesses to invest in paid advertising.
So, if you're serious about growing your business and staying ahead of the competition, it's time to embrace the power of paid social media advertising. With the right strategy and execution, you can reach your ideal audience, drive conversions, and achieve your business goals in no time.
Still on the fence? Check out these reasons why you should include Facebook and Instagram ads in your marketing strategy:
Getting started is inexpensive
Traditional advertising methods like TV ads, billboards, and print ads may look impressive, but they can quickly eat up your entire marketing budget. Not only do they come with huge upfront costs, but you're never really sure if they're effective. You could be pouring money down the drain without seeing much return on investment.
Thankfully, with Meta advertising, you don't have to worry about those hefty costs. You only pay when your ads are live and being seen by your target audience.
Plus, you can target your audience more precisely, and see how many people are engaging with your content.
Platforms like Facebook and Instagram typically charge you per 1,000 impressions, so you only pay when someone actually sees your ad. And the best part? You don't have to break the bank to get started. While we wouldn't necessarily recommend it, you can start running your ads from as little as £1 per day.
Reach a huge audience
Facebook is one of the most widely used websites in the world, in fact it is the third most visited website in the world with 1.96 billion daily active users. It has changed the game when it comes to advertising for marketers and businesses, with 51% of total advertising spend being spent on the platform in the US last year alone.
The scope for advertising on both Instagram and Facebook is huge, whether you’re looking to raise awareness for your product to a niche B2C audience or you’re wanting to build out a B2B client email list– your audience is likely to be using both Facebook and Instagram.
Target both B2C and B2C
Meta's targeting options are great for businesses looking to get their products or services in front of the right people. You can target anything from demographics, interests, and behaviours to find your perfect audience.
For example, if you're a baking goods company targeting 30-45 year old mums in Scotland who love the "Great British Bake Off," Facebook and Instagram have got you covered.
But did you know that you can also target business decision-makers? Yes, you read that right. Whether you're trying to get businesses to download your app or generate leads for your CRM system, Facebook is the place to be. LinkedIn may be considered THE B2B platform, but their ad costs are extremely high, why spend more when your decision-makers are using Facebook outside of work hours? The major benefit for advertising on Facebook and Instagram? They are much more affordable.
Meta has recently introduced new B2B targeting options for Facebook ads. The "Business decision-maker titles and interests" option lets you target people with specific job titles or interests. There's also the more focused option of "Business decision-makers," which targets people in engineering/IT, operations, HR, strategy, or marketing. And if you're looking to target IT decision-makers, you can use the "IT decision-makers" audience segment based on their job titles.
Testing
If you're new to advertising or you're looking to reach a fresh audience, Facebook and Instagram ads offer great opportunity to see what works best for your business.
You can experiment with different versions of your ad copy and compare the results to find out what resonates with your audience. If you're trying out different creatives, create multiple ads and pause the less effective ones.
Testing is key to improving your ads, understanding your audience's preferences, and seeing the impact of small changes. Once you've completed your tests, you can optimise your campaign and focus on the most effective content.
And if something's not working, it's easy to pinpoint the issue and make adjustments.
Discover new audiences
Building a lookalike audience is one of the most powerful digital marketing tools that most advertising platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, offer.
Although on the surface they may seem complex, the concept is simple: these tools collect data on people who have interacted with your website and use that data to create new audiences of similar users based on behaviour profiles.
So if you're a brand specialising in trainers for long-distance runners, the algorithm will analyse the data collected from your website and create an audience with similar interests and demographics.
This takes the guesswork out of creating your own saved audience. Whether you find this cool or scary, one thing is certain - the resulting "lookalike" audiences are extremely effective.
Retarget to warm audiences
Have you ever visited a website and suddenly started seeing ads for that website everywhere you go online? That's retargeting in action!
It's a great advertising strategy that allows you to show customised ads to people who have already shown interest in your business and/or products.
Facebook retargeting allows you to capture this ‘warm’ audience and encourage these users along their journey whether that is to purchase your products, return to your website/app or engage with your page. It also increases brand awareness on their purchasing process making it one of the most effective digital marketing strategies out there.
Did you know that retargeting can also increase conversion rates by up to 161%? And with those numbers that's pretty impressive, don't you think?
If you're wondering how to get started with retargeting, Facebook got you covered. Their pixel tool makes it super easy to retarget your website visitors and show them personalised ads.
Dynamic ads
In a nutshell, dynamic ads display different variations of an ad to users to increase the odds they’ll click or convert.
For example, Facebook allows you to load up to 5 headline, body copy and description variations into an ad without having to create a bunch of individual ads.
Users are then displayed a unique combination of these creative elements based on the likelihood they’ll respond positively to the ad.
While there are no concrete stats about their effectiveness, in our experience dynamic ads almost always outperform static digital ads in driving engagement, clicks and sales.
Optimisation
With traditional advertising methods like TV and billboard advertising it’s vital you nail an ad first time.
If you don’t, you risk losing A LOT of money.
With digital advertising, you can tweak ad creative elements, ad placements and audiences as your campaign runs.
For instance, if your audience is getting fatigued with seeing your ads too frequently, you can swiftly switch off the ads, change the creative or copy, or modify other options.
If something’s not working, it’s easy to diagnose and cheap to fix.
Planning your next move with customer insights and forecasting
Facebook customer insights are pure gold! They can provide endless inspiration for your marketing campaigns and help you discover new business opportunities.
With Facebook Ads, you get to access these valuable insights in real-time through the comments section. You can learn what your customers think of your products or services, and use their feedback to make improvements or develop new features they want to see.
But don't just focus on the negatives! Positive comments can be just as valuable. They can inspire your marketing copy and highlight what your customers love about your brand.
Once you have decided what you want to offer your customers via social ads, you can get a rough forecast on how it will perform.
When it comes to forecasting digital campaigns, it's never 100% accurate. However, Facebook's forecasting tools can give you a rough estimate of how your social campaign might perform over a certain timeframe. This is especially helpful when you need to convince senior leaders to invest in your campaigns.
And let's be honest, who doesn't love beating the forecast and exceeding expectations?
Wrapping up
We understand that some brands might have reservations about trying Meta ads out, but we want to address one common objection we hear a lot: "We've tried it before and it didn't work!"
Now, while that may be true, there's usually a reason behind it. It could be that you simply don't know enough about how the platforms work. But that's okay! Just like you wouldn't say a guitar is broken because you don't know how to play it, an ads platform isn't necessarily wrong for your business just because you haven't figured out how to optimise it yet.
Another possible reason is that you might have had a lower budget, which can definitely make things more challenging. But don't let that discourage you! With a bit of time and patience, we can usually make lower budgets work too. These platforms thrive when they're given lots of data, and a bigger budget certainly helps acquire that data faster.
So, if you've had a less-than-stellar experience with Meta Ads in the past, we encourage you to give it another shot. They really can work wonders in the right hands!
And if you're still feeling unsure or overwhelmed, don't hesitate to reach out to our team of experts. We're ready to help you grow your business with social ads, and we'd be more than happy to lend a hand. Feel free to get in touch.