Living in a small town such as Oban, it can be easy to sleep on some of the more advanced forms of marketing, such as Facebook Advertising.
I know it can seem like there aren’t enough hours in the day to run your business and then try to create and keep up with an advertising campaign.
However, with billions of people using Facebook and Instagram on a daily basis, including your customers, advertising on these platforms can help you create a steady and more predictable stream of income – if you get it right.
Social media is where people socialise with friends, stay up to date with what’s happening and post what they had for dinner – but it’s also where they see things they want to buy or services they need to use.
Facebook owns Instagram and the ads for both have been merged, meaning you can reach people on both Facebook & Instagram with the one campaign. I refer to them as Facebook Ads below, but bear in mind you can use them on both platforms.
So why should you be using Facebook Ads to promote your business and products?
1. Your customers are on Facebook
I mentioned this in the introduction, but billions of people use Facebook & Instagram on a daily basis, including your ideal customers, which gives you the opportunity to put your message/product/business in front of them.
2. You decide who sees your ad
With Facebook and Instagram ads, you have the ability to be very precise about who sees your message.
You can target people who live in a certain location.
You. can target people by their age, income, hobbies, and interests to name a few.
You can target people who have engaged with your posts in the past.
You can target people who have visited your website (you can go as far as targeting people who have visited a specific page on your website).
You can even target people who have watched your videos and you can go as far as targeting those who have watched a certain percentage.
For example, say you are a massage therapist and you posted a video about five triggers of back pain. If someone watches 75% of that video, you can be pretty certain that they are interested in your services and then target them with a deal for a massage.
3. You choose where the audience goes
With Facebook Ads you pick where you want to send the audience. Do you want them to message you? Email you? Visit your website? Go to a specific product?
4. You can measure the success in real time
The beauty of Facebook Ads is that they are measurable and take the guesswork out of it. You can see exactly how many people viewed your ad, as well as how many clicked on your call to action.
You can also keep track of an ad in real time and if after a certain time you see that it isn’t performing well, you can cancel, pause, or edit the campaign, so you are not wasting any more money.
5. You can test as many variations of your advert as you like
You aren’t limited by space and the secret to Facebook Ads is all about testing. You can test which graphic works the best, which piece of copy, which audience – and you can do this by spending a little amount of money on each variation, seeing what works best, and then investing a little more into the winning advert.
6. You spend only as much as you want
You can ensure your social media ads fall within your marketing budget as you can dictate your daily budget on each ad, as well as setting an overall cap to ensure you never spend more than you want.
7. Organic reach has decreased drastically
Have you noticed that when you post on your business page, only a fraction of the people who like your page see your post?
That’s because Facebook has decimated organic reach and wants businesses to pay to reach their audience.
But with that said, you can still have a successful and profitable Facebook marketing strategy and mix it up with both organic and paid content.
So get out there and get testing to see what works for you.