31st January, 2017
Written by: Jonny Taylor
Strategy & Insight
Organic Traffic
Paid Media
Affiliates & PartnersIn 2017 we will see the continued rise of paid social media advertising, with some predicting a 20% increase in overall spend. This is certainly a trend we have seen at Bring Digital, with many of our clients looking to invest into this relatively new advertising platform.
So if you are unsure about Facebook advertising, we are going to tell you why you need to get on board and start earmarking somhttps://www.bringdigital.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/download.jpege of your advertising budget for paid social today!
We tell Facebook EVERYTHING, and we mean everything. So naturally Facebook allows advertisers to utilise this data to target their messages at the right people. The list of ways to target people in Facebook are endless. Basically any information you input about yourself, such as gender, age, interest, location and occupation, Facebook will allow advertisers to use that information and target you directly.
This provides you and your business with a fantastic opportunity to utilise this data and ensure your budget is only spent on the most relevant audiences. Think of it this way: if you post an advertisement in a newspaper promoting wedding dresses, then the potential for a future bride to see this is minimal. However using the tools on Facebook correctly, you can specifically target and show adverts to women, in your location, who have recently become engaged. That way, your budget won’t be spent showing your advert to irrelevant people. It’s as simple as that.
A Facebook campaign which has been structured well, targeted at the right people and has killer creative copy is much cheaper than most other forms of online advertising. We commonly see cost per click to a website as low as £0.10 – £0.25, and cost per 1000 impressions at £0.75 – £1. When you compare this to other types of advertising, Facebook is often a much more cost effective alternative to push out your key messages to your target audience.
In Q3 of 2016 it was reported that Facebook has 1.79 billion monthly active users; that’s up from 1 billion in 2012. The percentage is even bigger in the UK where an estimated 50% logged into Facebook in 2016. Whilst it’s annoying that your mum now comments on every post, it does represent a massive opportunity for advertisers.
People of all ages are now are engaging and interacting with brands on Facebook. All this means that there is an audience for your product or service on Facebook, you just have to go out there and find them!
One of the real advantages of Facebook is that unlike an offline campaign, you don’t have to commit your spend upfront. With Facebook you can update your spend in real time, amend your images, copy or targeting, or simply switch your ads on and off when you like. So if you want to give it a try, a budget of just £5 per day can get you started speaking directly to your target audience. It also gives you the flexibility to run your ads on the days of the week you choose, and at specific times.
For example, if you regularly see a spike in interest on a Sunday night between the hours of 6pm – 9pm, then you can optimise your ads on Facebook to run at this time in order to get an even bigger spike in sales. This ensures none of your marketing budget is wasted and you are showing messages to your target audience when they are looking to buy.
Facebook has developed a long list of objectives to enable all types of businesses to advertise on the platform, even if they aren’t set up to drive leads or sales through their website. So whilst you will still find more traditional campaign objectives such as clicks to website, generating more likes or boosting your posts, Facebook is constantly releasing new campaign objectives.
For example if you run a bricks and mortar business with little or no online presence, then you can now run ‘Get Directions’ ads where you can push your sales or offers to Facebook users who happen to be in the local area and direct them to your store. In addition to this you can run campaigns to drive app installs, increase the attendance at your event or increase views of your video content. The full list of options is in the image above.
Although brief, we hope this gives you food for thought! There is certainly a lot more detail we could go into. If you would like to know more about Facebook advertising please don’t hesitate to get in touch or come along to one of our free training events.
