Should My Business Be Running Facebook Ads? | Social Joey
If you are a business, no matter what industry you are in or where you are located, there is a good chance that your customers are on Facebook. The social media behemoth hosts around 1.7 billion users each and every day across the globe—so no matter who you are trying to reach, you can likely reach them there.
With numbers like these, building up your social media presence is a no-brainer…but have you ever considered using ads to do it? While putting effort into your organic social media reach is great, if you are interested in putting money behind a social strategy, you might be amazed at what results you end up seeing!
If you are curious about Facebook ads, read on below for all the basics you need to know when determining if this is a smart medium for your business to pursue.
What Are Facebook Ads?
Facebook ads refer to any type of paid media on the platform. This can range from advertisements getting you to click through to shop a store to posts that have money behind them to be more likely to show up in your feed—in short, if there is cash behind it and it is on Facebook, it is a Facebook ad.
Key Facebook Ad Vocabulary
Understanding the vocabulary behind Facebook ads can make the conversation surrounding them more clear. Every ad on Facebook has three main elements: the campaign, the ad set and the ad.
The campaign houses all of the assets. The ad set is where you build a targeted audience, set your budget and specify the duration of the ad. The ads themselves are the creative elements (the video, post, catalog, etc.) that the users end up seeing.
Additionally, it is important to note that each campaign has an objective—this is the element that the campaign is optimized to perform for.
Types of Facebook Ad Campaign Formats
When you set up a Facebook ad, you have a lot of options. The type of ad you choose to set up will depend on your ad objectives, your industry type and what you are trying to promote. Your options for a Facebook ad campaign focus are:
- Brand awareness. Shows your ad to the people that are most likely to remember them.
- Reach. Shows your ad to the maximum number of people.
- Traffic. Sends people to an app, website, Facebook event or phone number.
- Engagement. Optimizes for page likes, event responses or post engagement.
- App installs. Shows your ad to people most likely to download your app.
- Video views. Optimizes for the number of video views.
- Lead generation. Provides a form for people interested in being contacted by your business.
- Messages. Allows people to message your page directly from your ad.
- Conversions. Shows your ad to people who are most likely to convert.
- Catalog sales. Shows users ads with items from your Facebook catalog.
- Store traffic. Shows your ad to people most likely to visit your physical store.
As you can see, you have plenty of options to set up your campaign in a way that makes the most sense for your business’ goals.
How Much Do Facebook Ads Cost?
The cost of a Facebook ad can vary tremendously, so it is hard to say definitively what your budget should be for good results. However, Facebook ads continue to be one of the best ways for businesses to see a return on investment when advertising—so it is worth it to do some digging to figure out what segment of your budget you may be able to allocate to this endeavor.
What Influences the Cost of Facebook Ads?
There are many things that can influence the cost of a Facebook ad, including who you are trying to reach, where you are and what you are advertising. A few major cost influences with Facebook advertising include:
Your audience targeting. Typically, the more narrow your audience, the more you will have to spend to get your key result—but targeting too broad of an audience will reduce the quality of your leads. When building an audience, it is important to strike the right balance between honing in on your ideal customer and broadcasting your message to enough people to gain new interest.
The time of year. The time of year you are choosing to run ads can make a big difference in how much they end up costing you. In general, running ads for anything in November and December is going to be more expensive, as that is when most businesses are ramping up their spend. Additionally, you may find seasonal fluctuations that are particular to your industry, as well—for example, flower shops are likely going to have to spend far more to get noticed in February than they are in September.
Your campaign objective. The objective of your campaign will be one of the biggest influencing factors on the cost of your facebook ad. For example, traffic and engagement ads tend to be some of the cheapest, while leads ads tend to be the most expensive. This is not to say you should always do one or never do the other, but it is something to keep in mind when setting your budget.
How Does Facebook’s Ad Pricing Work?
When you set your budget and duration for an ad, you are specifying that the ad will spend up to that amount during that timeframe—but how is it decided at any given time when and how that money will be spent?
There are multiple bid strategies you can pick from when setting up an ad, but typically, ads are run with an auction-style bidding format. After your budget is set, Facebook will bid on each ad placement in a manner intended to get you the best results. This means that your ad will likely win bids less often than an ad with a higher budget, but more often than an ad with a lower one—but even ads with limited budgets are typically placed enough to spend to their target.
It’s important to note that it is possible to set manual bid caps, but this is a very hands-on approach that should only be done by the extremely experienced. As we all know, Facebook’s algorithm is highly sophisticated, and it can generally be trusted to optimize targeting and placement for users when it comes to advertising dollars.
If you are curious about how Facebook advertising could work for your business, we can help! We are your go-to team for all things social media—contact us today for more information about our Facebook services.