The challenges of running a small business are seemingly never-ending, especially if you’re a solopreneur trying to wear multiple hats at one time. In these circumstances, identifying ways to ease the burden and increase efficiency is a must. And in no area is this more obvious than in marketing and selling your product or service.
Enter Facebook advertising.
There are other online advertising platforms available. You likely have a passing familiarity with Google AdWords, or the comparable alternatives on Bing and Yahoo. And other social networks, such as Twitter and LinkedIn, also offer ways for businesses to purchase and display ads. But no platform is quite as powerful as Facebook’s, and below, you’ll learn what makes Facebook such a necessity for advertising your business and how it can make marketing a whole lot easier.
Facebook Has Enormous Reach
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, but that fact alone does not do it justice. Absorb this statistic: Facebook is the online home of over 2.2 billion users. That is nearly 30% of the world’s population. No other advertising medium comes close to an audience of that scale, including TV, radio, or print.
Put things into perspective. Think about how much companies pay to advertise during the Super Bowl. An average spot can run somewhere around $2 million. The Super Bowl brings in somewhere north of 100 million viewers, and there’s no guarantee they’ll be looking at the TV when a commercial runs. Facebook gives you the means to access
over a quarter of the world’s population, specifically advertise to those who fit your target audience best, and do so at a significantly lower cost.
Not including Facebook in your advertising budget is an exercise in foolishness. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
It Lets You Target Your Perfect Audience
The amount of information users share with Facebook is staggering. Visit any number of profiles on the social network and you’ll see users who like artists, movies, and brands they’re fans of. They join groups to talk with people who have common interests. They list their marital status, their birthday, their gender — just about every bit of information a good marketer needs to reach exactly the right kind of person.
And if you already have an email marketing list built up outside of Facebook, you can upload those email addresses to Facebook’s ad platform and create a “lookalike” audience full of people similar to your current subscribers. If you have a good idea about who your target audience is, you can drill down and ensure your ads reach them on Facebook. And if you need some assistance figuring it out, the platform can help there, too.
Facebook Ads Are Easy to Use
Unlike Google AdWords, which can sometimes feel like it’s built for rocket scientists, Facebook’s ad platform is fairly straightforward to use. Users can log in, select the type of ad they’re interested in running, and go through a step-by- step process to enter ad information and select audience demographics. Small business owners without a whole lot of tech or marketing experience have been successful in launching and managing their own campaigns, and if you want to do some fancier things on the platform, the extendability is there to allow for it.
Cost Effectiveness
AdWords experts regularly suggest that a company start with a monthly budget of between $800 and $1000. That can be a pretty substantial chunk of change for the entrepreneur just starting out. Fortunately, this is another area where Facebook advertising shines. Smaller budgets can find a home on the platform without issue, and the daily, weekly, and monthly spend of ad campaigns can be easily tracked. And, unlike AdWords, ad statistics, including impressions, clicks, and spend, update in real time.
Another benefit to advertising on Facebook? Impressions and clicks are far less expensive than on other platforms. A smaller budget can do far more on Facebook than it can on Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Twitter ads, or LinkedIn ads.
It Encourages Engagement With Your Brand
Users come to Facebook to check out what friends are doing and share the things they enjoy with others. This is good news, because it means they come to the platform ready to engage, and Facebook’s ad platform offers many ways for your advertisements to take on forms that are familiar to Facebook users. You can upload videos, display ads that look like Facebook posts, and run campaigns where you only have to pay for each “Like” your business page receives.
And engagement on Facebook has the side effect of causing a chain reaction. When others interact with your sponsored posts or social ads, that activity shows up in the feeds of other users, which means you can technically further your reach on the platform without spending extra money. Good advertising content is rewarded, so if you choose to advertising on Facebook, bring your best stuff.