There has been a major shift in socio-economics in recent years. Many people have opted to quit their jobs and become entrepreneurs. You can attribute this change to the unfavorable work environments or the appealing zeal of being your own boss.
Now starting and running your own business is great. You get to learn about a lot of things and improve each day. You will make quite some progress initially but then your growth might plateau.
I know there are many people out there wondering how to keep growing. Today I’m going to provide you all with a solution to help you sustain steady growth. The solution is Facebook Ads. Digital Advertising is a powerful tool every business must utilize.
Almost everyone is on an equal footing in the digital era. This guide will help you understand all you need to know about Facebook Ads.
So let’s get started, shall we?
Why Should One Opt for Facebook Ads?
We will start with understanding what makes Facebook a good platform to run your advertisement campaigns on. We will go through 5 important factors that make Facebook Ads so effective for businesses.
1. The Largest Active User Base
Facebook has an active user base of around 2.9 billion people. That’s 400 million more than YouTube and a staggering 1.5 billion more than Instagram.
As per the latest data, an average person spends 2.5 hours each day using social media. Considering these numbers, it is safe to say that Facebook Ads present the best digital advertising opportunity on the internet.
Additionally, Facebook and Instagram are both owned by Meta. So by extension, you can run your Facebook Ads concurrently on Instagram as well.
2. Advanced Targeting
Remember all the information you filled in your Facebook profile to look cool? That was a lot of detailed information, wasn’t it? Thanks to that, Facebook knows everyone well.
This has made advanced targeting possible with Facebook Ads. You have access to a diverse set of targeting parameters. There are geographical, demographic and behavioral targeting options for you to choose from.
You can even include or exclude a certain type of audience with Facebook Ads’ targeting parameters. The level of control when it comes to targeting available with Facebook Ads is unparalleled compared to any other advertisement platform.
3. Powerful Analytics
Analytics is another area where Facebook Ads outshines all its competitors. With the Ads Manager, you have access to all the analytics features you may need to run an advertising campaign.
The insights generated are actionable and for the most part, you don’t have to manually set up everything. The Ads Manager will present all the necessary data graphically so you can interpret it and use it for effective decision-making.
You no longer would have to guess or assume what is working and what is not. You have real-time, daily, weekly and monthly reports that are easy to share as well.
4. Objective Wise Ad Types
Facebook Ads offers different types of advertisements. These types are classified as per the business objective they serve. This gives you more control over advertising.
Let’s say you have a specific advertisement objective of generating leads. Facebook Ads has a template that is optimized for generating leads. Likewise, there are other ad types as well that serve different purposes.
With this functionality and choices in terms of objective optimized ads, Facebook Ads enables you to maximize your marketing ROI. We shall check all the types of ads further ahead in this blog.
5. Rapid Scalability
Scalability is another big plus point about Facebook Ads. We’ve already mentioned its large user base and how you can run the same ads on Instagram concurrently.
So if you’re a small business, Facebook Ads lets you scale up your advertisement campaigns quickly. It only takes a few changes in the targeting parameters and a budget increase. With those two things taken care of, you’re all set to keep growing.
Moreover, you can even scale down your advertising campaign quickly if the need be. This flexibility in terms of scaling allows businesses to grow at their desired pace.
There are many more benefits to opting for Facebook Ads, these were only the top 5. Now we can head on to learn about the different Ad types that Facebook Ads offer.
Facebook Ad Types
Facebook Ads gives you plenty of choices when it comes to Ad types. Each type of Ad focuses on achieving a different business objective. This allows you to achieve the desired business objective most effectively.
o make it easy to understand we will first consider the ad types by their business objectives. After that, we will see ads as per their format and which objectives they are suitable for.
Ad Types as per Business Objectives
There are three Ad types according to what business objective they focus on. Each type has further sub-types that achieve a specific business objective.
Awareness Ads
A basic advertising objective of any new or growing business is to generate awareness about its brand and grow its reach. Having new people discover your brand helps it grow as more people are exposed to your offerings.
There are almost 3 billion active users on Facebook. Almost everyone around you has an account on Facebook. With Facebook Ads, you can reach these people.
Depending upon the scope of your targeting, you can create brand awareness and reach your local, regional, national and international markets.
An effective social media strategy does create brand awareness. However, it takes a lot of time to achieve the objective organically.
Reaching the right people at the right time with the right message is important. With Facebook Ads, you have control over the first two. I’m sure you all are good at creating the right message.
Consideration Ads
Trying to influence the buyer’s decision is a key objective of any digital marketing strategy.
The next step in the advertisement process is to get people to consider your offerings. This is followed by getting them to commit a certain action that indicates their level of purchase intent.
Consideration Ads generally showcase a product or service to your target audience. This is done to generate interest and curiosity among the audience for your offerings.
Their interest and curiosity will most definitely have them commit the desired action aided by a powerful CTA.
The desired action can be visiting your website, engaging with you via likes, comments, shares, installing an app, viewing a video, claiming an offer, responding to an event, converting into a lead, etc.
Conversion Ads
The final process in the advertisement process is to drive revenue through sales. The main objective of a conversion ad is to directly facilitate a sale.
There are multiple formats in which you can drive people to purchase from you. You can advertise a single product, or an entire collection or drive traffic directly to your virtual or offline store.
You can even remarket and track user behavior using Conversion Ads. This makes conversion ads the most suitable option for improving your bottom line. However, conversion ads cost more compared to other forms of ads.
Still, with the right content and ad format, you can directly drive sales and grow your revenue. The revenue performance of conversion ads is, therefore, easiest to gauge.
Ads as per Their Format
A lot depends on the type of format you use for advertising. The world of advertisement has changed a lot. The average human attention span used to be 12 seconds back in 2000. At present, it has come down to just 8 seconds.
This means advertisers have a short window to make an impression and achieve their business goals. Facebook Ads offers different ad formats to help you make the most from these 8 seconds. Let’s check them out!
Photo Ads
Photo or image ads are the most simple format on Facebook Ads. You can simply boost a post with an image that is performing well. You can even create ads from the ground up in a few simple clicks using an image.
The best part about image ads is that though they are simple, they are quite effective. Using image ads you can gain brand or local awareness, traffic, reach, app installs, engage with the audience, entertain them, generate leads, or showcase products.
Video Ads
Videos are very powerful for marketing and advertising. The amount of information you can put forth with a video is far more than what a single image can. This makes videos a better option to dive into the details of a product or service.
You can do product demos, showcase features, unboxing products, or just go back to basics and create an entertaining video ad. You can also use animation and Gif like videos. Just be creative and make it interesting for the audience.
Carousel Ads
Carousel ads allow users to have up to 10 images or videos that can be scrolled horizontally. There are many ways you can use this format. You can tell a story, one image or video at a time. You can showcase different products from the same category.
Or you can showcase all the features of a product effectively in this format. Each post of the carousel has a “Shop Now” button on it. Combined with a powerful CTA, you can quickly sell products using a carousel ad.
Slideshow Ads
You could say Slideshow ads fall in between Video and Carousel ads. They aren’t as static as carousel ads while not being as bandwidth intense as video ads. The addition of sound and motion in slideshow ads makes them a compelling format for storytelling.
If you don’t want your ad campaign to be limited by bandwidth restrictions but still want the effectiveness of video ads, you can opt for slideshow ads. Slideshow ads are multifaceted and you can use those for awareness, consideration and conversion.
Collection Ads
Collection Ads offer you a complete shopping experience. Collection Ads are only available on mobile devices at the moment. You can have 5 images or videos in a collection ad.
You can either show various aspects of a single product or showcase different products from one collection. You can even advertise one main product and have its accessories showcased within the collection.
Collection ads significantly increase the ease of shopping for the users as they can purchase a product without leaving the Facebook App.
Story Ads
There has been a significant rise in the consumption of media in recent years. Short-form content such as stories is what has caused this shift. Stories are short, effective and expire after 24 hours. This makes them effective for short advertisement bursts.
Stories are immersive and can achieve all the business objectives mentioned before. You have several options that allow you to set up your story ad campaign to fulfill your business requirements.
You have the option of running the same story campaign ad on Facebook and Instagram concurrently. This access to users of both platforms means you can diversify reach and maximize returns on marketing investment.
Messenger Ads
Messenger is an important extension of Facebook Ads. Ad delivery is more direct in messenger ads. Messenger ads are effective at maximizing reach, capturing attention, engaging with audiences and retargeting customers.
Again, Facebook Ads gives you plenty of options to customize the messenger ad. Once a user clicks an ad in the messenger they will be greeted by an opening message.
They will have an option to either click on one of the CTA or type in a response. You can set certain CTAs that will drive people to certain points.
Retargeting also becomes easy as you can directly reach a customer with coupons, discounts, promotional offers and launch alerts. The ease of shopping provided by messenger ads makes it more effective than other forms of retargeting.
Wrapping up
Organic growth can be too slow at times. Some businesses need to grow quickly. Advertising is a viable option in such scenarios. Facebook has many upsides as an advertisement platform.
There are a lot of options when it comes to advertising on Facebook. Knowing about each ad type is necessary to be able to make the most out of your advertising investment.
Now that you know all the basics about Facebook Ads, you can leverage advertising on Facebook and grow your business steadily.
