One of the fascinating things about advertising on social media platforms is that there is virtually no limit to scale your business affinity, reach, awareness, ROI and much more. In this digital era, where the number of people using social media platforms is increasing choosing the right advertising platform is of utmost importance so that your paid advertising efforts yield the best result. So, advertising on Facebook you have the benefit of reaching your potential customers based on the user interests, behavior, etc. and display the ads in an attractive way that increases the chances of the user to make a purchase.
With nearly 2.74 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social media platform globally. Facebook has a minimum of 13 years age (age limit may be high as per law in some places) as the minimum eligibility criteria to create an account and is the largest social media platform. This provides advertisers with an unparalleled opportunity to gain potential customers and increase business ROI. Facebook Ads are a type of PPC ad which is effective, fast and with a proper bidding strategy, you can take maximum advantage to boost sales for your business. Facebook has now changed its official name to Meta with a vision to bring metaverse to life. Let us now see what Facebook advertising is and how it can be included in the digital marketing strategy for businesses of any size in lead generation, drive audience engagement, improve communication with the target audience and boosts your brand social reach.
What is Facebook advertising?
Facebook was launched on 4 February 2004 and Facebook Ads were introduced on 6 November 2007. Facebook advertising is a PPC advertising method and provides advertisers to reach a wide range of audiences. These ads can appear in Facebook’s newsfeed, messenger and are available in various formats like a single image, video, slideshows and many others. These ads are different from posting on a personal page and you need to use the Facebook Ads Manager tool for advertising to on this social media platform. This advertising method provides you with the opportunity to display the message more engagingly and drive traffic to your landing page.
Facebook advertising provides you with a plethora of options to promote your business and reach your target audience. It’s a community-led space and visitors can engage directly with your brand after a click on your ad. With Facebook Ads, you have the opportunity to get in touch with people based on demographic targeting, which helps in peer-to-peer marketing. To advertise on Facebook, you should have a clear advertising objective like promoting your business page, increasing your reach, etc., and a defined ad budget. Then in the Facebook Ads Manager tool, you can start navigating through different sections and choose the ad type that you wish to run. Facebook provides you with the option of ad placement as to where you wish to place your ads.
Benefits of Facebook Ads
1. Reach a wide audience – In the field of social media marketing, Facebook provides you with the opportunity to target a wide audience. Since users of all ages are active on Facebook so you can focus on audience insights to target your ads to the users that they wish to see. Facebook is the number one social media platform and provides you with the option to reach a wide range of audiences especially with its diversity of ages and demographics. As now Instagram is owned by Meta so you have the reach to a wide range of audience. Facebook advertising benefits you with the fact that you can target users of all age groups which is hard to find elsewhere.
2. In-depth data – Facebook Ads manager gives your business a wide range of performance insights and aggregate data. Each ad that you create can be measured using different tools to exactly know how they are performing. Ad measurement gives insight into ad performance including ad demographics information like languages, region, age, etc. With attribution reports, you can identify the most important points of the marketing funnel and then work on PPC strategies to improve the ad campaign performance. You can also work on A/B testing to compare two versions of the same ad to figure out which version of your ad yields better results.
3. Targeted – Facebook Ads are targeted and provide you with the opportunity to reach your exact target audience. You can target users based on location, age, behavior and interests. The targeting option helps your ad to be displayed to users who are most likely to find the ad relevant and have high chance of making a click. Facebook Ad algorithm helps to show your ads broadly to the target prospects so that your ad budget does not get wasted on irrelevant clicks. You have the option to adjust the minimum and maximum budget so that the relevant users are not left out to get in touch with your business.
4. Remarketing – Remarketing means connecting with your target audience that have already interacted with your brand or expressed interest in your business. This can be done through cookies or by session tracking. With Facebook advertising platform, you can even perform remarketing with the pre-filled details that the user has registered with Facebook. With Facebook advertising, you can use this strategy to increase revenue, boost conversion rate, etc. Remarketing process works using the “Facebook pixel” – a small snippet of code that you post on your site to help target customers. It tracks people based on the type of action they take after clicking on your ad like visiting the landing page, adding to cart actions, etc. Facebook advertising provides you with the option to include dynamic ads to specifically reach the target audience.
Types of Facebook Ads
Understanding the types of Facebook Ad format and ad type, you can create ad campaigns that cater to your specific audience and marketing goals to make the most of your Facebook advertising efforts. With the Facebook Ads Manager tool, you can choose the type of ad format to run so that the relevant audience is not missed out and the ads are not clicked by irrelevant users. To have the maximum benefit of Facebook ads cost you need to focus on content marketing, keeping the ads relevant, optimizing images, etc., so that the interest of the user is engaged with the product or services. The different types of Facebook Ads are discussed below:
1. Image ads – Image ads are basic Facebook Ad formats and can be used in multiple ad types, ad placement and aspect ratios. Image ads are the type of ads that are displayed to the user conveying them about your product or services. The images displayed to the user should be eye-catching and match the content on the landing page. To have the maximum advantage of this ad type you should focus on having a quality image, writing only required text, etc. Facebook news feed constantly keeps updating the specifications for the ad formats and you should focus on optimizing the image with the ad relevance. The ad specification for image ads are:
• Primary text – 125 characters
• Headline – 40 characters
• Description – 30 characters
• Resolution – 1080*1080 pixels
• Aspect ratio tolerance – 3%
2. Video ads – Video ads are used to keep the interest of the visitor engaged with your ad and they have high chances of making a purchase once the user reaches the post-click landing page after clicking on the ad. With video ads on the Facebook advertising platform, you can even consider making small videos to connect with your audience and drive huge audience engagement. The video ads may be time-consuming, so you should try to focus on keeping the ads short and only display content that relates to your product or services. You can create video ads in the Facebook Ads Manager tool and if you do not have much information to share, you can consider having image ads to save time and money for your business. The specification for video ads are:
• Ratio – 1:1 (for desktop or mobile) or 4:5 (for mobile only)
• Primary text – 125 characters
• Headline – 40 characters
• Description – 30 characters
• Video duration – 1second to 241 minutes
• Maximum file size – 4 GB
3. Carousel ads – With carousel ads, users can flip through multiple images or videos, each having its own headline, link and description. Carousel ads are great for introducing readers to a broad range of your products or services, as each image in the carousel ads can have its landing page specifically tailored for that product or service. These ads can also be used to tell a story or explain any process by splitting up each section into multiple sub-sections across your carousel. The best practices for carousel ads can be having multiple unique headlines, call-to-action tabs, top-performing images or videos and link to landing pages for a more personalized experience. The carousel ad specifications are:
• Image size – maximum 30 MB
• Video size – maximum 4 GB
• Primary text – 125 characters
• Headline – 40 characters
• Description – 20 characters
• Landing page URL - required
4. Instant experience ads – Instant experience ads (formerly known as Canvas ads) are mobile-optimized ads and designed to capture the complete attention of your target audience. With Instant experience, users can watch engaging videos and photos, swipe through the carousel, etc. With Facebook Ads Manager tool, these ads are easy to create and load up to 15 times faster than standard mobile web. The ultimate goal of these ads is to acquire new customers, increase your business, inspire mobile shopping and boost brand awareness. You should consider using five to seven components (images, videos, etc.) in your ad as these get more engagement and even consider pre-made templates to save time. You can include a header with logo, full-screen image, text block, auto-play video, etc.
5. Collection ads - A collection ad in the Facebook news feed includes a cover image or video followed by three product images. A collection ad is like a mobile-window shopping experience where, with one tap users can scroll through your product description. These ads are customizable and as they mainly focus on mobile devices so they can even adjust the full screen. With Facebook algorithm, you get to know which products from your catalog are most clicked on by the specific user. You should consider having an eye-catching image to make people click on the ad. The collection ad specifications are:
• Image size – 30MB maximum file size
• Video size – 4 GB maximum file size
• Ratio – 1:1
• Resolution – at least 1080*1080 pixels
6. Messenger ads – Nearly 1.3 billion people use Messenger every month and advertising on messenger provides you with the opportunity to stay in touch with your target audience even when they are not using the web or app version. Messenger ads work with the help of Facebook bots, which deliver the promotional content and make it easier to connect with the audience. Messenger ads appear in the main tab of Facebook Messenger where users spend their time chatting with friends, playing games, etc. There are two advertising options in messenger ads.
• Ads in messenger inbox – The ad can be sent to the users depending on what type of posts they most interact with. After understanding the user’s intent with a complete PPC audit, the relevant messages can be sent to the users. The ads have a call-to-action button that takes them to the relevant landing page specified at the time of ad creation. The message should have great content so that the user is interested in clicking on the ad. You can create ads in messenger inbox in the Facebook Ads Manager tool and working on content marketing would be of immense use to take the maximum advantage of ads in messenger inbox.
• Ads in messenger stories – The ads in messenger stories are created so that the user can easily see the ad at the top of the page. These ads are placed for a duration of 24 hours. If you want your ads to reappear again after it expires, you can have a custom ad appearance so that the relevant user gets in touch with your ad. You can create ads in messenger stories in the Facebook Ads manager tool and work on time adjustment so that the relevant users are provided with an ideal timing to reach your landing page.
7. Lead ads – A lead ad is an ad with an instant form attached to it so that you can learn valuable information about future potential customers. Lead ads are used to find people who may be interested in your product or services and collect information from them such as name, email address, contact number, etc. With leads ads, you can do market research about your target audience and what changes are to be done in PPC strategy by adding a feedback section. To see your form, users must click on an ad unit to enter the details you are looking for. The lead ads specification for image ads include:
• File type – JPG or PNG
• Image size - 600 x 315 pixels/600 x 600 pixels/600 x 750 pixels
• Aspect ratio - Landscape (1.91:1) / square (1:1)/vertical (4:5)
• Primary text – 125 characters
• Headline – 40 characters
• Description – 30 characters
The lead ads specification for video ads include:
• Format – MP4 or MOV
• Length – up to 15 seconds
• Aspect ratio – 4:5
• Primary text – 125 characters
• Headline – 40 characters
• Description – 30 characters
Why advertise on Facebook
Facebook has nearly 1.6 billion people connected to a small business. This states that there is a rapid increase in the number of advertisers using this platform to reach their business goals. Let’s see some of the points why Facebook should be used for advertising.
1. Driving traffic from an active and engaged user base – Facebook is a place where we connect with family and friends. There is every possible chance that if a user makes a purchase or avail of your services from this advertising platform, then there will be discussions on the services provided. If your product meets user satisfaction, then the close ones will also have a curiosity to get in touch with your business. This helps in peer-to-peer marketing and you can work on urgency to create conversions. Facebook advertising provides your business with a large user base and you can drive traffic to your landing page by displaying ads as per user’s intent.
2. Reasonable advertising cost – One of the features that Facebook Ads is that it has a very reasonable advertising cost and businesses of any size can use this advertising platform to improve impressions, increase click-through rate, target customers in real–time, generate leads, etc. In the Facebook Ads Manager tool, you first need to set up an ad campaign and then choose the ad type and ad format that you want to display on Facebook.
You should have a clear advertising objective and how much amount you are willing to spend on Facebook ads. You can then set a custom budget based on the needs of your business. For most of the ad types, you can spend a minimum budget per day in the range of $1 to $5. You can also work on bid adjustment in your bid strategy and adjust the bid amount to have the maximum usage of Facebook ads cost. Facebook Ads have a feature of creating an account spending limit for overall ad campaigns, thus saving ad budget from getting wasted. Depending on your Facebook ad cost, you can even set daily and lifetime budgets.
3. Ads tailored to your specific goals – Facebook advertising is a simple process and the ad creation work is done you need to target the users that you want your ads to be displayed. Since Facebook Ads are PPC ads you do not want your ads to be clicked by the irrelevant users. Facebook offers a wide range of ad objectives and you can choose the options that suits your business goals. Whether your goal is to drive users to the landing page, drive engagement on a Facebook post, lead generation, etc. you should choose the ad objective accordingly.
Round off
Social media keeps bringing in new features with the ongoing marketing trends so that the users are in constant touch with these platforms. When willing to use social media platforms to generate leads, increase brand awareness, increase sales, etc. then Facebook Ads is the first to be worked upon. Facebook Ads are a type of PPC ad and you have to work on bid optimization to take the maximum advantage of Facebook advertising cost. With various benefits of Facebook Ads discussed above, the crucial steps to focus on are content marketing, email marketing, etc., so that no relevant user is left behind. You can leverage Facebook Ads to the fullest only when you know how to run ad campaigns properly. If you find the process difficult, you can get in touch with a digital marketing company that has the expertise to work on Facebook Ads, video ads, display ads, mobile ads, search ads, remarketing ads etc. and increases your business ROI.
References:
• What Is Facebook advertising & how does it work?
• The ultimate guide to Facebook advertising