For small businesses, posting on Facebook just isn’t enough anymore. On average, only 2% of your fans will see one of your posts on their Facebook page (socialbakers.com). Many businesses have heard about the importance of using Facebook to grow their business – but they are not sure where to start.
Here are the top 5 reasons businesses should be advertising on Facebook.
1.) Facebook has a massive audience
Worldwide, there are over 1.79 billion monthly active Facebook users (Facebook MAUs) which is a 16 percent increase year over year. There’s a good percentage of your customers that will be on Facebook.
2.) The Targeting Options for Facebook Ads are Endless
Facebook has almost endless targeting options – so extensive that there really is a category for everyone and everything. Facebook uses online and offline data to profile consumers and show the most relevant ads possible.
Of course, demographics are used to target people, but the real value comes in the behaviors and interests categories that are available. By getting this hyper targeted, you could catch your customer at the perfect purchase point in the sales funnel. Facebook advertising works to find the right audience of people that are most likely to become your customers. With so many targeting options available, you can ensure your client that their budget is only being spent on the most relevant audience to them to help them grow their business.
3.) Easily Measured Performance
With Facebook advertising, you can clearly see what you have spent and what results it has provided. Metrics really are the backbone of Facebook, so the good news is, you can easily show your client ROI. You are able to show:
· The total number of times their ad was show (impressions, reach and frequency)
· The number of clicks or additional actions people took, such as comments, shares, likes
4.) Facebook Has the Most Engaging Ad Units
Facebook has invested in a ton of research to see what ad units get the best results. After getting a lukewarm response from their right hand column ads, Facebook developed newsfeed ads, which are native ads that appear in your friends and families newsfeeds. Then they upped their game even more by introducing carousel display and video ads. Carousel ads encourage users, particularly mobile users, to scroll through the entire ad, which most people surprisingly do. In fact, carousel ads are 10 times better at getting people to click through compared to static sponsored posts on Facebook. Because static Facebook posts and carousels cost exactly the same, a marketer should always choose to run a carousel ad.
According to Facebook, people spend 5x longer looking at videos than display on both Facebook and Instagram. More than 100 million hours of video are consumed on (just) Facebook every day! (Source: https://www.facebook.com/business/m/facebook-video-ads#advertise-with-videos)
5.) Custom Audience and Lookalike Audiences
Facebook offers a feature called Custom Audiences that enables businesses to connect on Facebook with their existing contacts. This is great for businesses to get in front of current customers and reinforce their brand – especially since these particular people have already shown interest. You need a minimum of 500 emails addresses and phone numbers to reach your audience.
Lookalike audiences allow businesses to expand beyond their current customer list but still target people with highly specific profiles – by creating audiences that look like their current customer profiles. Facebook finds you the top one percent of users with similar traits in your target area.