Recently, I wrote a blog about Facebook in 2021 – is it still beneficial? Should your company be on it? Feel free to read the entire blog here, but if you don’t have time, I’ll make it easy for you: yes, your company should still be on Facebook because we can almost guarantee that your customers are.
Facebook ads have recently received quite a bit of scrutiny for the adverse effects of the iOS 14 privacy policy updates. The tracking capabilities have fallen off substantially, and it’s getting harder and harder to prove efforts. Even though tracking is harder to manage and some metrics are missing, Facebook ads still work – it’s just harder to show specific results.
The backend of Business Manager and Ads Manager changes monthly, if not more, and can be hard to keep up with. This is one of the main reasons we recommend outsourcing Facebook ads to an agency that works day in and day out. If you have ever dabbled in Facebook ads, even just a few months ago, the interface will be completely different today than it was when you last logged in. However, I work in Facebook ads daily and know the ins and outs of it all, even when they switch it upon us.
So what are the benefits of Facebook ads? There are tons! From their insanely detailed targeting to a low cost to play, you can reach thousands of particular people with a small budget. The first step in creating successful Facebook ads is knowing everything about your target audience – are they, men or women? What ages? What’s their income? What do they do for fun? Do they read books or watch movies? What did they major in during college? While you may not answer each of these questions, the more detailed you can get, the better. And yes, all of these questions can be answered through Facebook’s targeting features.
Another massive benefit of Facebook Ads targeting is that of lookalike audiences. Facebook takes features similar to what we listed above of your current customer list or people who have visited certain pages on your site and shows your ads to people with similar interests and qualities. Facebook knows details about each of us because we tell them. We told them a LOT when we signed up for it as a teenager. We continue to say to it everything about us when we make purchases, search for shoes and clothes, look at houses on Zillow, click on links and posts, and more (this is where the iOS 14 changes come into play, but it still has data from the past 15+ years). Facebook then takes those interests and demographics into account and starts to show ads to people who share characteristics with those who have purchased or used your product or service in the past.
Furthermore, Facebook’s cost per click is much lower, in general, than Google, Bing, and LinkedIn. If you want to start with paid ads and aren’t sure how to go about it, we always recommend starting on Facebook. Your audience is most likely there, you can get extremely granular with targeting, and it’ll be less expensive to reach more people. When you know what you’re doing, it’s easy to get the right messaging out to the right people; that’s what we call a win-win.
I know that this is a lot of information, and it can sound a bit crazy, but it’s a good overview of how Facebook ads work! As I mentioned, details all change frequently, and there are limits on our tracking capabilities due to Apple’s privacy laws. However, even with all of these factors, Facebook ads can still be insanely successful and beneficial to your business. If you need help running any ads or cleaning up what you’ve done in the past, let us know! We’d love to help you reach customers that are waiting for you every time they log onto Facebook.
