5 Reasons why you should be advertising on Facebook

Anton Ioffe - September 21st 2020 - 5 minutes read

Any good digital marketing strategy must be comprehensive, i.e., cover various fronts and combine content marketing and SEO strategy, with online advertising.

As part of the latter, there are platforms for advertising in search engines, videos, and websites such as Google AdWords and of ads in social networks, such as Facebook Ads.

This article will focus on the Facebook ads aspect, and as such, I will explain five reasons to use Facebook Ads right now in your business. Throughout the following paragraphs, you will find each of the advantages offered by this great social media advertising platform.

But before that, let's remember: what is Facebook Ads?

Facebook Ads is an online advertising platform for the largest social network.

The essential form of these ads is sponsored posts. These appear in the chronology of the users of the social network. However, they are not limited to this. They can also appear in the sidebar and outside of Facebook.

In essence, it is a Pay Per Click (PPC) platform, just like AdWords, although it can also be set up for impressions.

Campaigns can be managed through the primary ad manager that Facebook provides or with something called Power Editor, more advanced, and for mass ads. Another option is through the API, which is widely used by third-party developers and programs.

So why should you use Facebook's advertising platform? Let's see.

1. Advertising on Facebook Ads is Cheap and no Sacrifice in Quality

One of the first advantages of using Facebook Ads is that it allows you to define your maximum budgets. These can be per day or campaign.

As for minimum budgets, (in U.S. dollars)

For impressions: $0.50 per day.
Per click, like, video playback or post-interaction: USD 2.50 daily.
For low-frequency events like offers and app installation: $20 daily.

Also, in any case, the minimum will be $0.01 per click in terms of CPC.

It's best not to offer the minimums, but to start experimenting with low budgets that will most likely pay off. This will let you know what adjustments you need to make to your campaign to achieve better results.

Then, with Facebook Ads, you don't need to throw away the house, but you can keep an austere budget.

2. Facebook is the Social Network with the largest audience and reach

By the second quarter of 2019, Facebook had over 2 billion active users. India ranks as the first country with the highest percentage of users, about 280 million people, almost 20% of the country's population.

But this goes beyond countries statistics, according to April 2019 measurements, it has a greater reach than Twitter (66%), Instagram (59%), YouTube (72%) and WhatsApp (93%) individually. How? Facebook has a 95% reach in some countries such as the Philippines.

If you're not on Facebook, you're not online, and you can't take advantage of Facebook Ads.

3. With Facebook Ads, you can also advertise on Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Audience Network

Facebook is one of the giants of technology and social networks. On the advertising side, it's not limited to allowing advertisements on the social network itself. It also allows you to advertise on Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and its Audience Network.

What is each one about?

Facebook Ads on Instagram

As you know, Instagram is a social network where users share photos, short videos, "stories" (videos and pictures available for 24 hours), and live videos. Facebook acquired it in April 2012, and since then, it has had significant growth.

As such, F.B. integrated it into its advertising platform. To take advantage of it, you only need to have a Facebook page for your business and a business profile on Instagram.

This allows you to create and run ads through the Ad Manager or Power Editor, just like any other campaign. Available formats are photos, footage (galleries), videos, and stories.

Best of all, unlike regular Instagram profile posts, ads do allow you to include a link. This avoids asking users to go to your profile and enter the link that appears there.

Facebook Ads on Messenger

To make communication more personal, you can also place your ads on Facebook Messenger conversations.

This happens without the need to break in excess, as F.B.'s platform will only allow you to advertise in front of users who have previously started a Messenger chat with you.

Advertising on Facebook's Audience Network

Audience Network is a Facebook advertising network that allows you to advertise outside their social networks, specifically on mobile applications and websites.

There are four formats: native browsing, full screen, banner, and embedded video ads.

4. Organic reach of Page Posts Get More Complicated Every Time

In recent years, Facebook has made several changes to its posting timeline algorithm. Among these are those focused on giving much more organic importance to the posts made by users' friends than to those of the pages they like.

However, with advertising being one of Mark Zuckerberg's leading sources of revenue, sponsored posts are just as or more relevant than user posts.

Thus, investing a little bit of money (or a lot, depending on your budget and goals) in Facebook ads while periodically posting for the organic feed, will allow your strategy on this social network to be successful.

5. Ease and Flexibility

Many people think that setting up an advertising campaign on Facebook is extremely complicated. However, it is something straightforward, more than Google AdWords.

Although the most recommendable thing is to approach expert agencies in Facebook Ads, you can quickly start with a low budget and production campaigns.

As I mentioned before, F.B.'s advertising can be managed through the Ad Manager, through the Power Editor or the Ad API (third party developers and applications).

The first option is the most user friendly and does not require much technical knowledge of the subject.

Besides, tracking the results of your ads is also very intuitive. Best of all: it happens in real-time.

So, if any metric is not having the expected results, you can immediately make the necessary adjustments to the campaign. This avoids financial losses. If the opposite is true, you can specify a larger budget to take advantage of the right results.

In Conclusion

The main reasons for using Facebook Ads the Facebook PPC/PPM platform for social media marketing, are

It's a cheap, quality platform.
It is located in the social network with the most massive audience and reaches.
It also allows you to advertise on Messenger, Instagram, and the Audience Network.
Positioning yourself as a business organically on Facebook is becoming more and more complicated.
Setting up and measuring campaigns is very simple, and the platform is flexible for adjustments.

The trend is for Facebook ads to become even more relevant. In the future, they will likely integrate WhatsApp, which they acquired in 2014, into the advertising platform, as they did with Instagram and Messenger.

We should not even rule out everything related to research and development of machine learning and artificial intelligence, in addition to their acquisitions of companies such as Oculus VR, so that soon Facebook Ads could be present in virtual reality.

Do you think there are any other important reasons to use Facebook Ads for your business?