social media

Ahhh Facebook advertising… The “hottest” way to advertise your business in 2017/2018… 

Yes, the hype is real, and for good reason! Facebook ads are a great way to get your product or service in front of super-targeted audiences. To be honest, they’ve done an amazing job with their targeting capabilities, but Facebook isn’t the “one and done” solution…

If you REALLY want your business to be successful online, you shouldn’t be putting all of your hypothetical marketing eggs in the Facebook basket. Just like any investor would tell you not to rely on one source of income, you should be diversifying your advertising efforts.

First off, let’s talk about what you SHOULD do with Facebook…

The Do’s of Facebook Ads

Facebook is one of the best platforms when it comes to interest and behavioral targeting. Google’s platform offers demographical and interest targeting as well, but it’s just not quite as detailed as Facebook.

If your audience is VERY particular, Facebook may be a fantastic solution.

One of the BEST features about Facebook ads is the Lookalike functionality. If you already have a customer list or lead list (people you’ve already done business with), uploading that list into Facebook and creating a Lookalike audience can drastically cut costs, your time spent testing and put your brand in front of the right people fast. This is something you can’t quite do with other platforms which is why Facebook is great for SCALING businesses.

If you don’t already have a list of past customers, don’t fret… There are also things you can do on Facebook to begin growing your list effectively.

Running special promotions such as giveaways and contests can generate top quality engagement across Facebook & Instagram. Leveraging influencers is also a super effective way to build custom audiences so you can later create high performing lookalike audiences.

Now that we’ve gone over ways that Facebook advertising can produce great results, let’s finally talk about what you should NOT do.

The Don’ts of Facebook Advertising

Ok… this part is pretty important because we see a LOT of business owners trying to make things work when they aren’t using the platform for what it’s meant to do.

When running Facebook campaigns, make sure you aren’t running a campaign that’s better suited for Google or a different platform. If your business offers products or services that are meant for people in a very specific buying stage, often times Google can be a better solution. Let’s walk through an example…

Say you own a local auto shop and want to generate leads or sales for your special oil change promotion. Even though you can target people with specific cars and a wide range of demographics like income, location, etc, this is definitely a campaign better suited for a search engine platform like Google, Yahoo or Bing. It’s VERY hard and expensive to run ads to everyone with a car for an oil change because you have no idea if they actually NEED an oil change.

A better bet would be to run this type of campaign on the Adwords platform and target people that are actively searching for terms such as “oil change near me” or “best oil change” etc…

Make sure you are leveraging all of Facebook’s advanced targeting features if you want to run a campaign within their platform.

Right now the “hype” and common conception is that Facebook is the cheapest place to drive traffic, but the reality is that each platform has its place.

Before you launch your next online advertising campaign, think hard about WHERE your audience would be looking for that type of offer or promotion.

If you’d like to discuss your next campaign with us to see where it might best be placed, schedule a call with our team by clicking the button at the bottom of this page. We’re happy to help and wish you the best in your next Facebook advertising adventure.