Since Facebook was founded in 2004, year by year it has grown into the most widely recognised social media platform on the planet. Now boasting a user base of 2.85 billion, it’s no surprise that the blue website has also become a central hub for web marketing and brand awareness in general.
But with all of the noise out there in the world of social media posting with thousands of businesses vying for your attention, you’d be forgiven for wondering how on earth you can get seen on Facebook or whether it’s worth your effort. Read on to get a better understanding of how it all works and where to start!
Why should I use Facebook?
While there’s no doubt Facebook is a massive service, other platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat have started to close the gap in recent years, which may lead you to ask if Facebook is still the best option. The fact remains though that in terms of daily userbase Facebook is still streets ahead of the others.
This is largely due to Facebook’s ability to reach a wider age demographic when compared to Instagram and Snapchat, who have a much more pronounced fall off after the 25–34-year-old age bracket. This means that using Facebook as the main platform for an advertising campaign can be highly beneficial if you feel your products apply to those in older age brackets as well.
Something else to take into consideration when deciding what platform to advertise on is the criteria that a user must meet in order to be shown one of your ads. An example of this being the difference between Facebook ads vs Google ads.
When a user is shown your advert on Google, it’s because they searched a keyword that is associated with your ad, hence it appearing for the user. This differs to Facebook primarily in the fact that people aren’t actively searching so much for products on Facebook as much as they are just generally on the platform for its social media usage, and ads happen to be there.
This may seem like a minor piece of information but the distinction is important, as it is effectively the difference between driving high conversion on leads that are already somewhat interested in the product or service (Google) vs actively promoting a product or brand to someone that may not have otherwise have been looking/interested in that product (Facebook).
You want me to pay HOW MUCH?
Yep, here comes the nitty gritty part but don’t fret! As far as advertising as a whole is concerned, one of Facebook’s most appealing aspects and best arguments for its usage, is in fact its price.
When looking at Facebook advertising costs, there are 2 key metrics to keep in mind. The first one is Cost per Click (CPC). The second is Cost Per Thousand Impressions or sometimes known as Cost per Mille (CPM). The difference in these two is centred mainly around what your goal for the ad is. E.g. do you want to put this ad up primarily for brand exposure and getting your name out there? Or is this ad’s purpose solely to generate clicks and (hopefully!) conversions? If the first option speaks to you, CPM might be best. If it’s the latter that you’re looking for, CPC could be what you need. More on this below.
There are ups and downs to both CPC and CPM but the short of it is that if you are not looking to experiment too much with different ad types and ad campaigns and just want to keep it sweet and simple, then Cost Per Click is probably best for you. This way you only pay for actual interested traffic that has clicked on your ad.
However, Facebook is such a vast space that allows a lot of room for movement and experimenting with different ad types. As such you may feel inclined to try new ad styles with different products or different wording and get an idea of what actually works best for you and your business. If that’s the case then it will be beneficial to pay by CPM as this way your ad’s main purpose is to be put in front of as many people as possible. This way you’ll be charged per thousand people that your ad gets put in front of, whether they engage with it or not.
Source: WebFX
The above image is on average and it should be mentioned that these numbers can and do change from time to time based on the industry and ad type in question.
How do I know if it’s working?
The obvious answer is that you’ll be selling more products. But it goes deeper than that, a lot deeper.
The key element to knowing how your campaign went is to have a clear idea at the start, of where you want your campaign to go. This means setting a campaign goal early on and using that as an initial metric of success. You don’t need to shoot for the moon here, you just need to have an idea in mind of what sort of return you would be satisfied with based on the time and money you’ve invested.
It can also be tricky to know the success of your ad if you don’t have anything to benchmark it against. This touches on an important point that we mentioned earlier. Experiment. Get a few ads out there, try new things and see what works. It isn’t easy to gauge success without anything to measure it against. You could spend a week going through all the information that signifies your ad’s effectiveness. But without getting too bogged down with the analytics and statistics, here are a few indicators that you can look for if you don’t have any previous ads to benchmark against.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
Simply put, this is the percentage of people that see your ad and actually click on it. Below is some historical data on the average CTR on Facebook. This obviously isn’t the be all and end all of advert success, but it’s an interesting metric to show how interesting your ad is to your audience.
Source: Socialinsider
Impressions.
This is how many Facebook users your advert has been put in front of or “served” to. As mentioned earlier this is a metric based on which you may choose to be charged, so it definitely helps to understand it. The drawback of impressions being that it’s difficult to draw any concrete findings from this statistic as it is not a given that people who see your ad will purchase your product. This is best suited to reach and exposure orientated campaigns.
Return on Investment/Conversion
ROI is important in everything you do as a business owner and is of course, in many instances, the main reason for advertising in the first place. Seeing a markable uptick in sales directly from people clicking through your advert and making purchases is the end goal. But as with all of these indicators, it doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story. This doesn’t give voice to those potential customers who saw the ad, were reminded of the business again and are now closer to making a purchase down the track.
The point here is to not feel bogged down with any individual metric but to look at them as a whole and view them through the lens of what your initial goal/target was. After all, while you may be competing with other businesses for the customer’s attention, your main competition is your last ad and trying to improve on that will yield the best results.
For a run through on using Facebook Ad Manager as well the steps to set up your ad click here. If you’d like to speak to us at Hike about the capabilities of our system and how it can assist with your online and in-store sales click here to book an initial consultation.