It is likely that you have heard that Facebook ads are an excellent marketing tool for small businesses. It is likely that you have come across consultants, marketing experts, and content that suggest Facebook ads are a must-have for any marketing campaign.
It is possible that if you spend a lot of time on Facebook, you have even been served advertisements related to Facebook ads. This type of targeting makes Facebook ads an effective content marketing tool for small businesses. Is there any demographic information you need before you begin creating Facebook ads?
Benefits of Facebook for Small Businesses
1. Targeting
The goal of a small business is not to broadcast or cold-sell. Getting hundreds of thousands of customers is not necessary, at least not right away. It is not usually the goal of small business marketing to reach as many people as possible.
Would a Super Bowl advertisement be beneficial to your business? It might be possible, but it would cost $10 million dollars and would reach a large number of people who are not your target audience. A market exists for your specific products and services – you just need to find a way to reach them.
You can switch from broadcasting to narrowcasting with Facebook ads. Over 80 percent of US consumers use Facebook, and the average user spends 40 minutes on the platform daily. In this way, Facebook has access to a great deal of information, which can be used by you to target your Facebook ads to potential customers. By using Facebook ads for small businesses, you are able to target people based on the following criteria:
- The languages that they speak
- Their age
- A country, city, state, or zip code can be used to locate a location
- A list of interests, pages they like, topics related to interests, even pages their friends like
- The use of a tracking pixel to target website visitors who have taken action on your website is known as retargeting
- The device on which someone accesses Facebook, such as a mobile phone, tablet, or desktop computer
- A custom audience is a list of email addresses that you upload for the purpose of targeting
2. Reporting with clarity
There was a time when traditional advertising dominated and it was difficult to link advertising budgets directly to ROI. It is much easier to make Facebook ads for small businesses because that connection is much simpler-so you do not have to worry about your ad spend is wasted. A variety of KPI (key performance indicator) metrics are available from Facebook to help you assess the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns. Among them are:
- Your reach is the number of people who see your promoted ads on their news feeds
- The cost per click is the cost per like, website click, or another goal you choose to achieve
- Spending total: The total amount you spend on an advertisement
- A clickthrough rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who click on your B2C marketing advertisement after seeing it
Facebook makes it very easy for you to determine whether your campaigns are achieving good KPIs with these engagement benchmarks by clearly showing the cost of each action. By knowing reach, clickthrough rate, and cost per action, you can calculate how expensive it is to increase website traffic to your landing page or to sign up for your email list.
Obtaining customers is relatively straightforward, and Facebook ads are relatively inexpensive, which means you can A/B test copy and image combinations before committing to a full ad campaign.
Facebook Ad Best Practices: Creative and Compelling Copy
As soon as you have determined that Facebook ads are worth your attention, it is time for you to create your promoted ad. In order to create dynamic product ads on Facebook, you have a few options for the design component of your content:
- An image
- A video
- An image carousel
- A slideshow
- A canvas
Whatever the visual format you choose, you must ensure that the actual image or video you select accomplishes four objectives:
- Bright colors are used
- Eye-catching
- Describes your value proposition
- Provides a clear call to action
You need to make your visuals stand out and grab the attention of your audience in the midst of crowded news feeds. No amount of paid promotions will be able to bring people into your sales funnel if they do not engage with your advertisement.
You should also write your advertising copy in a snappy manner. Your Facebook advertisement should grab the attention of people and clearly explain why they should be interested in it. In addition to increasing your click-through rate, you can also increase the ROI of your Facebook ads if you combine strong visuals with content.
When Shouldn’t Small Businesses Use Facebook Ads?
There is a great deal of potential in Facebook ads for small businesses, but are there cases in which paid promotions are not the most appropriate option? Most likely. Based on the specifics of your business, you must decide whether or not Facebook ads are appropriate for your marketing. Nevertheless, there are a few situations in which Facebook ads may not be as effective.
- You don’t have a Facebook audience: There are still some people who do not use Facebook. Promoted posts on Facebook may not be the best option if you are targeting an older audience or if you are targeting business professionals who do not enjoy seeing business content on their personal social media accounts.
- You are scaling up rapidly: It is possible that your customer acquisition cost will increase if you are targeting a small niche. After you have reached the people who are easiest to reach, you may have to pay more to reach more customers with boosted Facebook ads, and you will need to decide which is more beneficial to your business based on the numbers.
- Your audience has not yet been defined: Facebook ads offer the greatest benefit in terms of targeting. It is worth taking a step back to conduct some market research if you are not sure who to target. A small test budget can also determine whether boosted Facebook ads are adequate for your company.
Conclusion
Ads on Facebook can be an effective marketing tool for small businesses. With simple measurement and the ability to target based on interests and custom audiences, Facebook ads can help you cut through the noise, reach your target audience, and grow your business.
