Post IOS14+ there has been A LOT of bad press about Facebook ads:
Businesses not getting the same results as before.
There's not enough data for ads to work in the same way.
Facebook ads are too expensive to run...etc etc etc.
So are Facebook ads still worth it?
Well, of course, I’m going to say yes, being a Facebook Ads Strategist 😉 - but let me explain why.
It gets you in front of a much bigger audience for a relatively small amount of money.
Now I’m not saying you don’t need to spend any money at all. Facebook ads, like any form of paid advertising, are an investment (I recommend around £20 per day to begin with) - however, compared with your more traditional forms of advertising, like print, radio or TV, Facebook ads are comparatively cheap.
For a conversion campaign, you’re looking at an average CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of around £10. However, I have run campaigns that have been a lot cheaper than this. For example, I’m currently running a campaign with a CPM of £5! - that’s a lot of bang for your buck!
And if you get a good link click through rate of 2-3% - that's 20-30 people heading over to your website for that £5-£10.
Everyone is on Facebook
Well - almost everyone. You really don’t need to worry about whether your audience is using this platform as you might with others because even if you are a B2B business and your client isn’t using the platform for work, the chances are they are using it in a personal capacity. After all there are 44.8 million users right here in the UK. That's most of the adult population. And if they are on Facebook, your ad can reach them. It's really that simple.
The data
Even though it's true that the platform has less data for targeting - it still wins hands down compared to every other advertising platform out there. I mean, think about the alternatives. Newspaper, magazines, radio, billboards...you have no real data on who is seeing your ads and whether they are your target market.
However, Facebook still allows you to create your audiences using what you know about your ideal customer - their interests, demographics, location…AND you can use data from your website, your organic marketing, and other ads for retargeting. Even your other digital platforms don't let you do this to the same extent.
You also get the data on how well your ads are working. Even with people opting out of tracking, you can still everything that is happening with your ads on the platform:
- How many people are clicking on your ads?
- How much your ads are costing you per click?
- How many people are watching your videos?
- Which delivery format (stories, newsfeed, Instagram, Facebook) is working best for you?
Facebook can still tell you all of this and more - and this data can be used to further optimise your ads and for future ad campaigns.
The formats available…
Single images, carousels, videos, reels, dynamic creative - there are so many options to choose from. AND, you can do more than one at a time to see which is going to work best for your product and audience!
If you think about some of your other paid advertising options, once you've chosen the image and the format, that's it. You won't know whether a different format could have worked better for you. A lot of the time, there is only one format available so you need to hope that it will work for you. With Facebook ads, you get to test out the whole lot!
Which finally leads me to...
The ability to test
When you are marketing a new product, you need to work out which creative AND which audience is going to bring you the most success.
Testing is the key to marketing success...and Facebook allows you to do this exceptionally well.
You can test your images, your copy, your CTA, your audiences, your headlines (the list goes on), allowing you to find that winning combination you can then scale for best results.
With your more traditional forms of advertising, you choose your image or video, write your copy, and cross your fingers. Of course, you might have information what has worked well on a particular platform in the past, but testing multiple ad versions, to different audiences at the same time allows you to see what works at a much faster rate.
Having said all of this, Facebook ads certainly aren’t right for EVERY business, it needs to be at the right stage and have a few things in solidly place (more of this in a future blog 😊)
What's next?
Want to find out more? I offer free discovery calls where I chat through your business goals and whether Facebook are right for you. You can book an appointment here!