A couple of years ago I thought Facebook was just for sad individuals who feel the need to share the details of their breakfast or to look up their old flames.
However my opinion has changed since then.
While I very rarely post on my personal newsfeed, I do now have a Facebook page for my business.
Not that a Facebook Page like is the powerful marketing tool it once was. Several years ago if someone liked and followed your business page, then going forward they would see all of your future posts in their newsfeed.
Alas that is no longer the case.
In its bid to make more money, Facebook changed the page model so now only a small handful of your followers actually see your post. And the logic behind this change is?
If you want more people to see your post then you now have to pay Facebook to make it happen!
So with that said, does Facebook offer a significant business opportunity to small business owners?
Well while the power of the Facebook fan page has been reduced with the above change, the advertising opportunities now offered by the site do offer serious opportunities if used correctly.
Facebook have made it really easy to target people most likely to need and want your product or service. You can literally target potential leads by:
· Gender
· Age
· Marital status
· Location
· Interests
· Job
The list of targeting options goes on and on…
But as well as the targeting options, you can also build your own ‘custom audiences’ to advertise to.
For example you can choose to target people who have visited your web pages; watched your videos or who have already given you their email address.
With all of these options available to you as an advertiser, it gives you a really good chance to make a positive return on your investment.
Here are some of your Ad options explained in more detail:
Post Boost
Whenever you add a post to your Facebook page, you’ll see an option at the bottom of the post to ‘Boost’ it. You can then choose who to target with the boost. For as little as £5 you can dramatically increase the number of people who see and engage with your post. If you’re going to pay to boost your post make sure you add a link to your web site in the post content.
Page Like Ads
In Ads Manager create a new ad and select ‘Page Likes’. The aim of this type of ad is to increase your number of Page followers, so that more people see your new posts.
Website Clicks
As the title suggests, the object of this style of ad is to get people to click through to your web site from your advert, rather than to your Facebook page.
Offer Claim Ads
With Offer Claim ads you can offer your customers special deals. When creating your ad, choose ‘get people to claim your offer’ and then select ‘Offer Claims’. You can limit the number of people who can claim the offer and control how long the offer is available and who actually gets to see it.
Lead Ads
A great way to build a very targeted list of prospects in Facebook. You can create contact forms in your ads that are automatically filled in when a lead sees them (because the lead is logged in to Facebook, Facebook can pre-populate the fields on behalf of the lead). This auto pre-populate means all the lead has to do is click the submit button to subscribe, which significantly increases your optin rate! For each subscriber list you build in Facebook you can add a sequence of emails that will be automatically be sent to new subscribers to promote your services, products and offers.
Video Views
If you use videos in your marketing, then using them to promote your business via paid ads in Facebook can be really rewarding.
You can either upload your video as a post and then ‘Boost’ it as above, or choose the ad campaign objective of ‘Get Video Views’.
Videos are 8 times more likely to get shared and liked than image ads which is why video ads can be really cost effective to run.
Did you know that Facebook actually keeps records of how long people watch your videos. Why am I telling you this?
Well do you think if someone watches 20 seconds of your ad or watches it the whole way through that they might have a need for what you’re offering? The chances are they do.
Facebook allows you to target ads by the length of time viewed. So if you boost your video and say 200 people watch it all the way through, you can then target that 200 people with a follow up ad encouraging them to click through to your site.
The more times you put your ad in front of people who have a genuine interest and need for your product, the more likely they are to hand over their cash.
Combining a series of these different ad types in the right sequence to increasingly targeted audiences is the way to develop profitable ad campaigns. You need to think beyond a single ad campaign for maximum success.
Now we’ve discussed some of the Ad variations that Facebook offer you, I want to talk about a vital piece of code that you should add to ALL of your web site pages today without delay!
The code is called the ‘Facebook Pixel’.
Why is it so important?
Well the Pixel allows Facebook to track who visits your site. They then try and match your visitor to their database of members.
Why is this so important?
Because it allows you to track the effectiveness of your Facebook Ads; If someone clicks on your ad and visits your web page, you can track which pages they visit to know whether they subscribed or bought from you.
Even more importantly, if they didn’t buy on that visit, the Pixel allows you to build an audience of visitors that you can then advertise to again, and potentially, again and again until they buy!
This brings me to ‘Facebook Customer Audiences’.
A Custom Audience is built up of people who have already interacted with your business. Using the Pixel you can build custom audiences from people who have visited your web pages, or you can import the email addresses of your leads or customers.
You can then target Facebook Ads at your Custom Audience, or subsets of that audience. For example you can target web site visitors in a 5 mile radius of your business that are aged 35-40 and visited your site in the last 24 hours. That’s how specific you can be.
You can also use what Facebook call ‘Lookalike Audiences’ to find more leads whose characteristics mirror those already tracked by your Pixel or who mirror one of your Custom Audiences.
Think about it …
If you can target your Ads at people who are very similar to those that have already visited your site, then their engagement with your Ads should be very high because they should have a need and a desire for your products and services.
With so many people now using Facebook every single day, your potential reach with Ads is significant. Couple this with the incredible targeting features we’ve just talked about and the opportunity for you to grow your business with Facebook advertising is huge.
So why wouldn’t you start putting your business in the news feeds of targeted prospects today?
Well you should if you want to grow your business, however, if you want to maximize your Ad Campaign profitability you need to optimize your Ads, the Sequence you run them in and Who you show them to.
So in answer to the question at the top of this page, YES Facebook advertising is a huge opportunity for small businesses who want to grow their businesses. But to get the most from it you need a sequence or funnel that will allow you to only spend money displaying you ads to the really targeted prospects.
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