Since Facebook started over 10 years ago, Facebook ads came to dominate the game of digital marketing as it grew the largest user base in the world. In 2008, Facebook already had 100 million users on their platform and as of March 2019, that figure has grown to a whopping 2.38 billion monthly active users. That means the user base has grown over 2200% over the last decade. A staggering 1 out of every 3 people on the planet have a Facebook account. That’s a lot of eyeballs!
When Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, Instagram had a little less than 100 million monthly active users. Now that figure has jumped to over 1 billion users across the globe. This is a 1000% increase and is still growing rapidly. The numbers don’t lie! See for yourself below:
Of that 2.38 billion, 66% of Facebook users are scrolling through their feed on a daily basis. Interestingly, 74% of American users visit daily as well. For Instagram, 50% use the platform every day. No wonder so many businesses are turning to Facebook and Instagram ads to grow their businesses!
1. Ability to Reach Your Customers
As we mentioned above, the amount of people that you can reach on Facebook and Instagram is incredible! Those people aren’t just scrolling through their feeds but they’re using Facebook messenger, marketplace, reading instant articles, watching videos, Facebook Lives, Instagram Lives, IGTV, and all sorts of other content platforms.
At the click of a button you can target an ad to a third of the world’s population using Facebook’s mobile and desktop platform. For a marketer, that is very powerful and can be instrumental in growing your business if used correctly. If you’re advertising for particular goods or services, chances are your future customers are already on there!
2. Very Cost-Effective Reach
It is no secret that Facebook is the most cost-effective way to advertise your business. With only 5 dollars, you can reach up to 1000 users on the platform. Try doing that with radio, TV, or mail advertisements. When taking that a step further, if you create ads that are interesting and relatable to your audience, you can get people to visit your website for only 10 cents. If you do the math, you can get 1000 people to your website for only $100 dollars.
Say you have a 1% conversion rate, which is pretty conservative per industry standards. That means if 1000 people visit your website, 10 people will eventually purchase from you. If you’re selling a product that is $100 that means you just made $1000. So if you spent $100 in advertising and made $1000, that means you’ve made a 1000% return on investment with just one ad. Amazing when you consider other marketing alternatives.
3. Targeting Using Facebook’s Data
Facebook collects and stores a massive amount of information about each user on their platform. Think about all the times you update your Facebook profile and the information you include. They collect basic demographics about age, gender, education level, life events such as birthdays and anniversaries, how many kids you have, relationship statuses, and even your employers’ industries. This allows you to find a broad spectrum of potential users for ads targeting.
When you scroll through the newsfeed, like or follow different pages, or click on and engage with certain content, Facebook collects that data too. From there Facebook categorizes that data and associates your profile to different interests and behaviors.
For example, if you’ve watched a trailer or liked a page of an upcoming action movie or even visited and engaged with content about your favorite sports team, Facebook assigns your profile into that category and allows advertisers to target to that interest or behavior. There is no other social media platform with that extensive targeting on the market today!
4. Creating Custom Audiences
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Examples of Custom Audiences you can Create
What if you already have customers who are actively purchasing your products and just wanted to reach them. Fortunately you’re in luck! With custom audiences, Facebook allows you to upload customer information such as phone numbers and email addresses and compile them into an audience for targeting. That’s why we always stress to never stop building your list! From there Facebook matches that information with user profiles, equipping you with the tools to target your customers.
Maybe you don’t interface with customers very much but you have a Facebook or Instagram page with decent following. Thankfully, Facebook allows you to save audiences of people who liked your page, engaged with or shared your posts, or sent you a direct message via Instagram or Facebook messenger. It also allows you to choose how far back you want to target that information. If people were interested in your product a year ago, that doesn’t always mean they are actively interested. For that you can specify people who have interacted with you on social media with the past week, two weeks, 30 days, and as far back as a year.
There are ten options to choose from including customer lists, app activity if you have your own mobile application, Facebook events, Facebook and Instagram pages, lead forms, video, and even website traffic.
5. Tracking Website Visitors with Facebook’s Pixel
Say you’re looking to buy a new car and you’ve scoured the web in search of the perfect new ride. You might have gone back to Facebook and realized that your newsfeed is bombarded with ads related to purchasing a new vehicle. That is no mistake!
Probably the greatest tool in the Facebook marketing arsenal, the Facebook Pixel allows you to copy a tiny snippet of code and embed it onto your website. In turn, this tracks which Facebook users are browsing your web pages. For any business, this information is extremely useful to find your potential customer base.
What’s even more amazing is that Facebook allows you to create custom events such as which particular web pages they’ve visited, how much time they spent on your site, and categorize what each page does. So, if you wanted to track which Facebook users have gone to your page and submitted a contact form, you can categorize that as a lead and target ads to people who are actually potential leads. Very exciting! Below you can see some pixel tracking in action.
Here’s the only downside. What if you have only 50 people visit your website in the last week. You can’t just blast 50 people to buy your product or book your service, because sometimes they might not be willing to buy for any number of reasons. That’s where the lookalike audience comes into play.
6. Using Facebook’s Algorithm to Create Lookalike Audiences
When your customers have already purchased from you, a lot of the time they might not need to buy from you again right away. Custom audiences are great at putting together your lists but lookalike audiences supercharge them into customer finding machines.
Here’s how they work. When you create a look-alike audience, Facebook uses it’s algorithm to find users that are similar to the users in your custom audiences. You can specify the percentage of similarities they share and target audiences that match within 1% to 10% of you custom audience. In most cases, we recommend choosing 1% because it targets to users that have more common interests, demographics, and behaviors.
This opens a host of opportunities to find new customers similar to your current customer base, Facebook or Instagram following, and any other custom audience you choose. If you only target to your custom audience, the amount of people can be too narrow at times. Fortunately, lookalike audiences broaden your customer acquisition horizons to a fresh user base. In our experience, we have received some of our best results in terms of engagement, link clicks, and landing page visits when using lookalike audiences. Definitely do not overlook.
Summary
Advertising on the Facebook platform can yield many benefits. You can use Facebook’s data to target age, gender, location, and interests. You can create custom audiences of people already engaged in your brand. From there you can track website visitors and create lookalike audiences of similar Facebook users. Not to mention, ads can be created fast and are super cost effective in increasing leads and boosting product sales.
Many people claim to advertise on Facebook yet see little to results. If you use the above tools at your disposal, you can create ads that are specifically designed to convert. At times, Facebook and Instagram ads can be very overwhelming if you’re trying to learn from scratch. That’s why hiring an agency with industry experience and a dedicated support staff can help you navigate the ins and outs of Facebook ads. Best of luck in your advertising journey! If you need a crash course on Facebook Ads, be sure to check out Ad Espresso’s Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Advertising. Also let us know if you need help with your ads. We’d be happy to help! Contact us today for a free Facebook Ads analysis.