When we talk about social media, many things come to mind: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and many others. But why advertise on Facebook and Instagram specifically?
With the right advertising strategy, these social media platforms provide huge opportunities for small business owners and marketers.
But you may ask if you had to choose one social media platform, what would that be and why? The simple answer would be we should assess the social media sites in terms of popularity and return on investment (ROI).
The best metric to assess the popularity of a certain platform is in terms of monthly active users (MAU). This is very important for social media advertisers because the more users are on a platform, the more people you can advertise to and the more diverse your audiences.
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ROI is an approximate measure of how much return you get for every penny spent. For social media ROI, it is defined by the formula:
Social Media ROI = (Net Result – Cost) / Cost
Or, quite simply, if I sold $400 worth of toy products through Facebook and I spent $100 for ads (labor and fees) & $80 for product costs, my ROI would be 2.2 or 220% (320 – 100 / 100). This means I would earn more than double for every dollar spent on Facebook ads!
Now let us compare the top social media platforms in these two metrics.
According to Statista, the most popular social media site is Facebook, with a massive 2.7 Billion MAU. It is followed by YouTube & WhatsApp, each platform has a whopping 2 Billion MAU, Messenger with 1.3 Billion MAU, and WeChat with 1.06 Billion MAU.
A 2017 survey of senior ad buyers conducted by Cowen and Company shows that Google and Facebook deliver the best ROI. 48% of the respondents said that Google has the best ROI, while 30% also believed that Facebook is the best social media advertising platform.
Now it’s crystal clear that Facebook is the top contender regarding popularity and ROI. But not only that, I consider Facebook the most powerful advertising platform, and here are four reasons.
Why Advertise on Facebook and Instagram
“I’m already running ads on Google, why bother with Facebook and IG?“, you might ask. Well, here are four reasons why.
1. Cheap, Laser Targeting
Whereas Google only allows you to display your ads for specific keywords being searched by users, Facebook allows you to target audiences according to its demographics such as age, gender, education, location, relationship, job title, etc.; behaviors such as digital activities, purchase behavior, travel, etc.; and most importantly your audience’s interests such as business industries, entertainment, shopping, food & drink, technology, and many others.
Now that is a highly-targeted audience for your brand!
Facebook ads are also very cheap. The average cost per click (CPC) is around $0.64! Compare that to Google Adwords is around $2.32.
The CPC is a no-brainer if your site is optimized for conversion.
2. Highly Customizable Campaigns
For every campaign, you choose an objective. This is indispensable because not a single ad works for every campaign.
There are 11 objectives under three campaign categories: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. And each campaign objective has different ad variations.
You can customize the ad copy, headline, description, creatives, and call to action (CTA) at the ad level.
So what does this tell us? High customization enables more control for advertisers to craft the right ad for the right audience. This means it has a higher chance of achieving the campaign objective at the lowest possible cost.
Also, there are a lot of improvements in ad creatives. You can choose between a single image, carousel, video, instant experience, or catalog for e-commerce stores.
3. Scalable and Predictable Results
If you have an eCommerce store running Facebook ads, how do you know if your campaigns are profitable? Simple, check your return on ad spend or ROAS!
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How do you know if campaigns should be killed or scaled? Again, check your ROAS.
The analytics part of Facebook ads is extremely powerful in that you can track every single activity on your ads, such as engagement, cost per click (CPC), cost per thousand impressions (CPM), add to carts, app installs, page views, purchases, cost per purchase, ROAS and many others.
With these powerful features, there is no hard guessing what campaigns to stop and to scale up!
Update: With the launch of App Tracking Transparency (ATT) on iOS 14 in all Apple devices, Facebook’s ad tracking is no longer 100% accurate. Hence, it’s more challenging to track conversions but there are recent developments to alleviate this problem.
4. Retargeting Campaigns & Lookalike Audiences
What is the secret sauce of Facebook ads? Facebook Pixel.
This simple line of code tracks specific activities on your ads and website and can be used for retargeting campaigns and lookalike audiences.
A user who visits your site, adds items to a cart or makes a purchase can be retargeted when he visits Facebook again.
You can also create a lookalike audience. They are users who look like current customers, website visitors, or page fans.
This is a powerful feature, especially for warm audiences, as they are more likely to convert than cold audiences.
Update: Since more Apple users are opting out of Facebook ad tracking, creating and targeting lookalike audiences are more challenging than ever. But there are also specific ways to get away with it.
Conclusion
Facebook is a really powerful social media platform with advanced advertising features. It has the most significant monthly active users and enhanced capabilities than other platforms. Advertising is also very cheap, providing the greatest bang for your buck!
For serious business owners and marketers, Facebook should be taken advantage of as it offers many possibilities for brand outreach and a highly targeted audience.
