Why Facebook Ads Are Effective For Small Businesses
Facebook gathers a huge amount of data about their users, this results in their advertising platform being a remarkable tool to market your business. You can tap into this data to present Facebook users with adverts about your business based on their location, interests, age, and behaviours. Without Facebook ads the vast majority of businesses are unlikely to grow their presence on the platform quickly, with organic reach decreasing significantly over recent years.
In this blog, I’m going to explore why Facebook ads are so effective, especially for small local businesses.
1. You can reach people who don’t already like your Facebook page
Facebook undeniably has a huge audience with millions of people using the platform every day. Most small businesses struggle to reach even a fraction of this audience, with organic posts achieving less and less visibility in recent years. This basically means, if you’ve not got many followers, you’re unlikely to be reaching many people when you post on the platform. Facebook ads allow you to put your posts in front of your target audience who don’t already like your page. Without tapping into this resource you will probably find that your page audience fails to grow at a satisfactory rate. There simply isn’t another way of reaching these people consistently at scale without using the advertising platform.
2. Facebook ads are one of the most targeted forms of advertising that money can buy
One of the biggest advantages of Facebook advertising is its remarkable ability to reach your target audience. If you’ve got a firm grip on who is most likely to buy your product or service, Facebook will make it incredibly easy to reach them. You can target people by location, age, interests, and behaviours.
As an example, a local golf course could target people within 15 miles of the course who have an interest in golf. If you compare this to posting a flyer through every door in the local area, it’s obvious which approach is going to be most effective. Posting a flyer removes any targeting other than location, this leaves a very broad audience with most people unlikely to be interested in the proposition.
3. They are cost effective
Facebook ads are incredibly cost effective as you only pay to advertise to your ideal target audience. Advertising on Facebook is also generally very cheap in comparison to other forms of traditional advertising. The bottom line is that you reach more people for less money and these people are more relevant to your business.
If we pick up on the example we used above. Imagine the costs involved for a golf course to print and distribute a flyer to every house within its local community. Many of them won’t read the flyer as they aren’t interested in playing golf. Compare this to creating a digital advert with much lower production costs which is only being displayed to people in the local area who already have an interest in golf. The cost will be cheaper to reach more relevant people.
4. You can use the advertising platform to get more likes on your business page
There is a range of options when it comes to choosing how to advertise your business using Facebook ads. One of them is to pay per page like. Having a large number of likes on your Facebook page gives your business more credibility to potential new customers. The quickest way to pick up new likes in large volume is to run these types of adverts. Without them, it can be a real uphill battle to develop a page with a very large following.
5. Facebook ads can help you to reach your existing followers more often
In the same way that Facebook ads can help you reach potential new customers, it is also useful for reaching your existing followers. You may be wondering why you would pay to reach people who already follow your Facebook page? The unfortunate reality is that even these people may not see all of your posts with organic reach continuing to decrease. As a result, if you’ve got a special offer it’s a great idea to run adverts that target your existing customers as they are likely to be interested in what you’ve got to say.
6. You can retarget people who have visited your website
Have you ever visited a website and then seen an advert for the same company on Facebook shortly afterward? This would have been the result of a retargeting advert. Targeting people who have already visited your website is a very effective strategy for driving engagement on your Facebook posts. The audience will already be aware of your brand and the advert will provide a great reminder to any prospective customers about what your business has to offer.
7. You can create audiences who are similar to your existing users
Once again linked to the phenomenal targeting options within Facebook ads is the ability to create ‘lookalike audiences’. In simple terms, these are audiences who are similar to your existing contacts. This can be based on people who have visited your website or existing followers to your page. You can simply say to the advertising system “show this advert to people who are similar to my existing Facebook page followers”. This is a remarkable addition for targeting people with similar attributes to your existing customer base. Meaning they are people who are also likely to be interested in the products or services that you have to offer.
8. Using Facebook ads can give you an edge over your competitors
Many small businesses are not utilising the benefits of Facebook advertising to its full potential or at all. Many are still spending their advertising budget on more traditional marketing strategies where costs are higher to reach a less targeted audience. If your business can effectively tap into what the Facebook advertising platform has to offer there is a huge advantage to be gained over your competitors who aren’t.
Imagine a scenario where a group of local estate agents all use Facebook but only one invests in Facebook ads. Those who don’t use the advertising platform are likely to have less than 1,000 followers and have a fairly flat profile with little engagement. The one estate agent that invests in advertising could build a significantly larger following very quickly and also advertise properties for sale to a targeted audience in the local area. This will give the estate agent more exposure for the properties that they are selling, at a low cost. More importantly, it would build an element of trust and ‘social proof’ for prospective sellers who are looking for an agent to sell their property. A business with significantly more followers and engagement than its competitors always stands out as being the go to experts within their field.
9. They are quick and easy to set up
Once you’re familiar with the advertising platform, Facebook ads are quick and easy to set up. Once live, your ads will create immediate results and you can be reaching thousands of people in a very short space of time.
10. They are easy to measure
As you would expect with any form of digital advertising, Facebook ads are incredibly easy to measure. You’ll be provided with a range of metrics associated with your advertising efforts. These metrics can help you make informed decisions on the effectiveness of the ads. For instance, if you’re running a page likes campaign, you’ll be able to measure a cost per new page like. This makes advertising on Facebook a very low risk strategy. If you’re unhappy with the returns that you’re getting from your investment, you can simply stop the advert at any time without having to invest large sums of money upfront.
To conclude, Facebook ads are one of the cheapest and most targeted ways of getting underpriced attention from your target audience. They are cost effective compared to other forms of advertising as you’re only spending money on putting your adverts in front of the exact people that you want to target. They also return instant results and are easy to measure.
How can I help?
The sticking point with Facebook ads for most businesses is finding the time and developing the expertise to use the platform. To use Facebook ads effectively you must use Facebook Business Manager to create your adverts. Simply using the boost button won’t offer you the same benefits and level of control that is offered by Business Manager.
If you’re keen to explore the benefits of Facebook ads, I have extensive experience using Facebook’s advertising platform and offer a service which involves running such adverts for you to help you achieve your goals. Interested? Get in touch - I’d love to help.