4 things you really need to know before starting with facebook advertising

Advertising on social media is undoubtedly essential for your business, and while other social media sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn are worth using, Facebook is simply one that cannot be brushed off. The sheer number of people that are using Facebook means that if you aren’t advertising there, then you are missing out on the majority of your target market.

Facebook has reported a 16% year on year increase in Monthly Active Users, which means that as of 2016, there are over 1.79 billion active users per month on the site. While this is impressive in itself, there is also an amazing reach when it comes to people that are active on the site daily, with 1.18 billion people logging in every single day – which surmounts to a 17% year on year increase as of September 2016.

This isn’t just a phenomenon that is exclusive to the US, it is a worldwide trend and offers businesses a global audience. For example, in Europe there are over 307 million people on Facebook and each visit to Facebook lasts on average 20 minutes.

These stats are just some of the reasons you should be advertising on Facebook, here are 4 other reasons why advertising on Facebook is a must-do:

1. USER PROFILES COMPARED TO OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

As seen above, Facebook is the most widely used social media platform in the world and although the majority of its users are between the ages of 25 and 34 – around 29.7% – it covers pretty much all of the demographics around the world. It is the most popular form of social media and therefore it is used by most of the world’s digitally active population.

To cover the huge variety of the target markets that are active on the platform, Facebook has created an awesome variety of targeting options that businesses can use to get their adverts to the right people.

2. WHAT ARE THE TARGETING OPTIONS ON FACEBOOK?

There are a variety of targeting options to choose from on Facebook to ensure that you are getting your adverts to the right audience:

• Custom audience: This allows you to connect to your existing customers that are already on Facebook through data that you have collected. You can create Custom Audiences from customer files, the Facebook pixel, the Facebook SDK and Facebook engagement.

• Lookalike audience: This option allows you to target potential customers that are similar to your current customer profiles.

• Demographic/core audience: Target your potential customers based on age, gender, location, behaviours, etc.

• Connection/links: You can reach out or target potential customers based on your pages, apps, or events.

3. FACEBOOK’S PRIMARY ADVERTISING FORMATS

There are a number of different advertising formats on Facebook:

• Lead adverts: These adverts allow forms to pop up after just one tap on the advert. The best thing is that the client’s information is already filled out – making the process simpler and faster for them.

• Dynamic adverts: This format exposes products to customers based on what they have looked at or added to their cart before, making it more likely that they will purchase it. This means that all your products in your catalogue get seen.
• Link adverts: This format creates actionable CTAs (Call-to-Action), that encourages customers to download, join or click on a link that takes them where you want them to go.

4. REPORTING

Although each of the advertising formats has its own reporting dashboard that will allow you to analyse the performance and each has campaign creation, management, and reporting options – ultimately all reporting and data on all social media platforms comes together in Google Analytics or Hubspot. Here is a more in-depth look at reporting on Facebook ads manager.

As you can see, Facebook is one of the most effective social media platform to advertise your business to the highest number of potential customers around the world. The number of options for targeting, advertising formats, and reporting means that it is also the best social media platform for traffic generation and lead conversion.

At Rise + Shine, we use an inbound marketing approach that centres around the very best principles of direct marketing, to help companies attract their ideal customers by creating and implementing successful lead nurturing campaigns. If you would like to know more about lead nurturing and ways to get a better lead conversion rate for your company