How to Use Paid Ads to Grow Your Facebook Following
There are over 1.56 billion users active on Facebook everyday and over 4 billion active users globally. This means there’s plenty of real estate to cover to help your business grow. This is where Facebook Paid Ads come into play and we’re going to show you how to get the most out of them.
Facebook Paid Ads are a simple and cost-effective strategy for your business to reach a specific demographic. According to Facebook, “With Facebook Ads, you can create targeted ads to reach different audiences and meet your business goals.” It seems pretty straightforward, but let us elaborate. You can promote your custom ads and content to reach an audience of your choosing. What’s more, you can use the ads to collect data that will help you improve the ads to increase their efficiency.
When building your ad, there are a few important factors to consider:
Your demographic
Deciding what audience you want is one of the most important parts of optimizing your ad and reaching people who will want to follow your page. Choosing a broad range can be effective for some businesses, but you’re much more likely to see results by narrowing your terms.
For example, let’s say you’re selling video games. You will want to target men and women between the ages of 15 and 40 with interests in video games (obviously) and entertainment since that’s where your customers are likely coming from. If you’ve optimized your audience to your business.
A persuasive message
Your Facebook Ad has limited space, so make sure you’re saying exactly what needs to be said and get right to the point. Are you offering a deal? Hosting an event? Showcasing products? Make your message clear to your audience and give it a call to action! Don’t forget to add an image, too.
Ads with photos are much more likely to attract attention than those without and they are more helpful; when people read information, they're likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.
Keep it Fun and Fresh
The more, the better! You should definitely consider making two ads instead of one so you can have multiple sets of analytics. You can then determine which ads work and which don’t. But be aware, even if you find your ads are working well, it is still essential to switch them up every once in a while so the message doesn’t stagnate. People get tired of seeing the same thing over and over again, so keep it fresh!
You’re now all set! Facebook Ads are a great way to get your products and services in front of potential customers. Facebook has some great resources to help you get started. Even a low ad budget each month can help you attract new customers and find new business. Although Facebook advertising is extremely important, creating and running ad campaigns can be a time-consuming project. Consider using our paid advertising service, and with our reporting, you’ll be able to clearly see the ROI and what you’re getting for your money.
More: 5 Reasons You Need Instagram for Your Business
To find out more about paid ads and how they can help grow your business, book a consultation now.
How does online advertising help a local business grow?
Digital advertising consists of a range of services, all of which work to promote a business online. More and more businesses are increasing the amount that they spend on online advertising as we are now able to recognise that it increases awareness and leads—it’s that simple.
With traditional media channels, quite often there is no way of tracking the effectiveness or success of an advertisement in terms of advanced data analytics. However, with digital advertising, companies such as Google and Facebook grant users access to these advanced analytics. This way local businesses know that their money is being well spent and that the digital advertisements are positively impacting their storefront.
When determining the success of an ad, besides social media monitoring, the significant factors will differ case by case. However, the main indicators of the success of an ad lie in the indicators listed below.
ROI measures of a successful campaign:
- Impressions: the actual # of views on an advertisement
- Clicks: the actual # of direct clicks on the advertisement
- Engagements: Social & landing page clicks
- Results: In most cases, results come in the form of a phone call or a store visit.
Most effective places to advertise
Through our team’s extensive work in the digital advertising space, we have come to the same conclusion as pretty much every digital advertising company - that the best places to spend money on digital advertising are Google & Facebook.
With digital advertising, not only is a local business visible online, but they are visible to the right people online. Platforms such as Facebook and Google allow for advanced targeting, which puts a local business in front of consumers who are more likely to convert into a sale.
In fact, Google and Facebook accounted for roughly 60 percent of ad spend in 2017!
The Benefits of Advertising Your Business on Google
Google, the world’s largest network, is the most efficient way to tell people about your brand. The two main reasons are reach and flexibility.
Reach:
Consumers use Google every day to look for local businesses, resulting in approximately 3.5 billion Google searches every single day.
In this day and age, or computer age, people are no longer relying on TV commercials or radio ads to find a business or a service. They are mostly relying on Google.
Furthermore, Google integrated native Gmail ads with Google AdWords in 2015 and made it available to all advertisers. This means that you can reach prospects using their Gmail inbox.
For these reasons, it is indispensable to adopt Google’s network capabilities to allow your business to get instant visibility from users looking for your services.
Flexibility:
Google allows the advertiser to spend whatever amount of money they want on advertisements, whenever they want. Thanks to these flexible options, advertisers are able to test what works and what doesn’t work for their business. Spend a bit, wait to see how your campaign is performing, and then reinvest in larger budgets for greater prospect reach.
The Benefits of Advertising Your Business on Facebook
Facebook is one of the main forces dominating the modern-day society. But you already know this because you (like me) check your Facebook every day, multiple times a day, and so do potential customers. The benefits of advertising on Facebook can be summarised to 2 words: Audience and Targeting.
Choose your Audience:
Facebook is the fastest evolving marketing platform and communication channel.The audience on this social network includes 2.38 billion monthly active users (MAUs) on average, at an increase of 8% MAUs year-over-year.
Those statistics are simply too big to ignore, and as a local business, you need to understand the fact that Facebook is an intersection in which you can find prospective customers. If this hasn’t convinced you yet then let’s talk about how often social media is being used.
According to a study conducted by Zephoria Digital Marketing, the average person spends nearly 20 minutes every day on Facebook, highest-traffic occurring mid-week between 1 and 3 pm.
This means you have a short period to make your impression, so use it wisely!
Use the Powerful Facebook ad Targeting Strategy:
Firstly, how does Facebook Ad targeting work?
You can target a specific audience on Facebook with many different ad formats and ad targeting parameters. This is every marketer’s dream so get creative!
Facebook ad targeting allows you to focus on users so microscopically that you can basically become a bit of a digital stalker. You will be able to target users by their interests, life events, behaviours, age, gender, location, and anything else that their Facebook profile may reveal about them.
That Facebook algorithm has allowed massive changes to be made to the local advertising landscape and is now one of the best environments for businesses to get the word out about themselves.
Lastly, by leveraging these two platforms, Google and Facebook, businesses will be able to take their advertising game to the next level and begin to rake in new revenue with enough data to back their investment.
More: How to Reach Your Audience With Paid Advertising.
To find out more about how we can help grow your business, book a consultation now.
How to Reach Your Audience With Paid Advertising
There are several different forms of paid advertising, including display advertising, sponsored ads (such as those on Google and Facebook), and of course, search ads - just to name a few of the main ones.
So where do you start? Whilst there are many options to choose from, reaching your desired audience does require a little bit of work. Fortunately, using paid advertising to get your business across to relevant consumers is easier than you think.
Pick the right platform
In 2008, only 24 percent of the UK had a social media account. Today that number has skyrocketed to 81%. Whilst many traditional methods of advertising, such as television and print publications, still have their place, companies are now turning to digital advertising for the majority of their needs.
Tech titans, Google and Facebook are said to command nearly 65% of UK online ad market by 2021. Furthermore, this year, the overall digital advertising market will grow by more than 11% to hit £14.73bn, with Google taking a 38.8% share, valued at about £5.72bn and Facebook will grow its share from 22.7% in 2018 to 24.5% in 2019, worth around £3.62bn (campaign live). So why would you settle for anything but the best? Pick the right digital platforms and go where you’ll be seen.
Know your audience
Knowing your exact target audience is undeniably the most beneficial tool in your advertising toolbox. Not only does it give you a leg up for reaching your most likely consumers, but it also helps to pick the appropriate platform and technology to deliver your products and services. However, once you have their attention, there’s still plenty of work to do!
To make sure you are pushing all the correct buttons, you need to know exactly what to say. Well thought and engaging content moves people and will consequently move your products! It creates loyalty, trust and brand awareness, meaning your customers will keep coming back for more!
Be interactive
As the internet continues to advance, media is consumed differently by all groups of people. More and more people are getting their entertainment and news from streaming options such as Netflix and YouTube. So what does this mean for paid advertising....interaction! Interactive ads get a higher clickthrough rate of around 6 percent, whereas most digital ads remain at just under half of one percent.
Interesting advertisements tell a story that engages the audience. If you’re a restaurant owner, enticing future customers with a snappy ad no longer works as well as it used to. You need to intrigue potential buyers with an eye catching video, and a captivating call to action. Don’t tell customers what to think, but instead show them why buying your product is the best decision for them.
Keep it short and sweet
Don’t say too much. Short, effective messages that include interesting and engaging content go a long way in the paid advertising world. Hook your audience with a smart pun, a fun image or simple one liner.
Pull at their heartstrings
Whether your message is sensitive, funny or serious, it should come across as authentic at its core.
Nowadays, audiences are smarter and expect a lot more than basic pandering. They need and want to see engaging content that scratches beneath the surface of a product and that relates to them on a personal level.
That’s why today’s most memorable campaigns reject tradition in exchange for something more sincere. We understand that traditional word of mouth will forever impact a local business and the trick with this is to give them something positive to talk about! The most important thing about your digital advertising campaign should be about connecting with your audience. A little passion goes a long way.
Successful paid advertising plucks at your viewers’ heartstrings and entices them with good, relevant content. Most importantly, whatever your approach, be sure to make a connection with your audience - leave them engaged and interested. Make your digital ad is memorable and appealing, and therefore your brand will be too.
More: How to reach your audience with print advertising.
To find out how we can help grow your business, book a consultation now.