Facebook was launched in 2004. That’s not long ago in the context of the life of the internet, And facebook wasn’t the first platform to try and bring about social interactivity online. But without a doubt, Facebook is the largest and most successful social media network. This means it’s advertising platform is also a market leader, even if sometimes that can feel like it happened by default. Facebook has over 2.2m active users (as at July 2018). And don’t forget about Facebook Messenger – 1,3m active users.
In following article we take a look at the Facebook advertising platform and what it offers online businesses.
Most active Facebook users (95.1%) access the social network via smartphone. Facebook has long adopted a mobile first policy for many of it’s moving parts. Not just design, but this is also why many Facebook ad formats are dedicated to mobile users.
This has greater ramifications than just a statistic. It means your facebook advertising is primarily going to be received on mobile. Therefore your design, your creative, your branding, your call to action, and the intended next step of your target audience must all work on mobile.
Facebook Ad Formats:
You have quite a few options for advertising with Facebook. There is not one best option, it all depends on what you want to achieve and which audience you are trying to reach. You can choose among:
• Photo ads – the simplest form of Facebook advertising. Don’t be too serious there – fun content gains the most shares and likes,
• Video ads – Facebook users watch over 8 billion videos or 100 million hours of videos every day. That is why videos on Facebook can be a real power. Just remember to switch off the auto-play sound and add captions in order to increase video views,
• Slideshow ads – when you don’t have time or resources to create a video ad, you can always go with an ad built from a collection of still photos/existing video clips,
• Carousel ads – you can add up to 10 photos or videos to create a carousel ad. This gives you a possibility do advert more than one product at one time, highlight the benefits of one product or create one large panorama ad (that can be really impressive!),
• Collection ads – these ads allow users on mobile devices to click and buy your products immediately,
• Instant experience ads – you can go big with a full-screen ad format and don’t worry about ad loading – it loads a dozen times faster than a mobile website outside of Facebook,
• Lead ads – do you need to collect contact details of people who can be interested in buying your product or services or collecting newsletters? Then create a lead ad with gated content. They are designed for mobile users to make it easy for people to give their contact information with a little typing,
• Dynamic ads – every business has customers who visited a product page or even placed it in their shopping cart. In order to encourage them to make a purchase use dynamic ads. They remind the potential customer to complete the purchase,
• Messenger ads – these are ads designed to appear in Messenger application. If you select “click-to-Messenger” ads you encourage users to contact you via Messenger,
• Boost your post – by paying a few euros for boosting your post you can effectively reach a bigger audience.
Where does Facebook’s Ad platform perform best?
There are many business goals suited to Facebook’s advertising platform The examples below highlight the targeting tools and advertising mechanics that can help reach the right audience the right way.
• Lead generation – one of the most popular strategies to gain leads on Facebook is to run a Facebook ad directly into a landing page offering free eBooks, coupons, discounts and more,
• Advanced targeting – your product can reach your specified audience. Facebook adverts can be targeted by location, job description, interests, gender, age and more,
• Build brand awareness – ideal for larger scale branding campaigns,
• Get more traffic to your website or store – you can send people to your website by using clicks to website ads objective,
• Get more app installs – it is ideal after app’s first launch to increase installs and your app store ranking at the same time,
• Get more engagement – it includes post engagements, page likes, event responses, and offer claims.
Now the best – Facebook ads are not expensive. For example, a campaign which costs you 100 EUR can last one month and bring more than a hundred likes.
Managing Expectations –
• Competition – it is hard to catch user’s attention among updates from their friends and other ads. Your ads have to be creative and funny to get noticed,
• Optimisation limitations – Facebook often suggest recommended settings when creating ads set but they can be not the most effective. Sometimes experience counts here.
• A lot of time and resources required – maintaining Facebook ads, replying to comments and queries can take a lot of time, resources and energy.
Feeling a bit lost with all of this? Daily Digital can help you with deciding what is best for your business, whether it is small or big.
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