1. Facebook Finds YOU!
Unlike Google AdWords, which waits for users to type in a specific keyword or chain of keywords before an advertisement appears, Facebook advertisers work their magic to find YOU.
How exactly do Facebook advertisers do this? It’s actually quite simple!
It starts by understanding a little bit how Facebook works.
Which can be described in the expression; “You Are What You Eat”.
….Ok, maybe it’s a similar expression “You Are What You Like.”
Facebook is constantly gathering information on its users based upon the users age, demographics, location, relationship status, interests like favorite movie, music, and much MUCH more. Every time you like a page, comment on, or even talk about something, your profile is being tagged and labeled by Facebook.
Using this massive amount of information that Facebook gathers, advertisers create ads, and choose the type of audience they would like to reach.
If your profile fits the audience criteria, you will see that ad (see below) throughout your Facebook, either on your newsfeed or on the right side column of your newsfeed.
It’s that simple!
2. Cheap Quality Clicks
Because Facebook finds YOU, instead of waiting for users to type in a certain keyword, the cost per each click is significantly lower than other veryadvertising platforms such as Google AdWords.
How much lower you might ask? …MUCH LOWER
On Average, you’ll pay between $1-$5 per click using Google AdWords, depending on the industry. For competitive industries such as real estate, you’ll be lucky to find a cost per click under $8!
On the contrary, the average cost per click on Facebook is between $.30-$.50.
That’s more than half the cost of anything you’ll find on Google Adwords.
Below are a few examples of the Facebook ads we’re currently running for some of our clients:
Some critics argue that the clicks on Facebook are unqualified and worthless to businesses.
As someone who’s advertised thousands of different businesses in hundreds of different industries on Facebook, I can tell you this is entirely untrue.
If you create the right ad, for the right audience, with the right targeting, you will get qualified leads.
A skilled advertiser knows how to promote an ad to a relevant audience whom would “like” and engage in the ad based upon their previous user activity.
Our clients wouldn’t be investing thousands of dollars into ads every month if they weren’t qualified and they weren’t getting a positive return on their investment.
In fact, Facebook advertising is our businesses #1 lead generation method for acquiring new clients.
We truly do practice what we preach.
That being said, we do occasionally come across a business whom wouldn’t benefit from Facebook advertising.
In most cases, their target audience is too small or too niche to reach on Facebook. However, this is much more uncommon than you would think.
To see whether or not your business would be qualified for Facebook advertising, feel free to contact us at SocialVantage.com or call my extension at (877) 261-7016 ex. 706 for some free unbiased advice.
3. Facebook’s Users and Databases
With over 1.3 Billion active monthly users, Facebook Advertising helps businesses reach the right ones.
1.3 Billion. That’s more than 1/7th of the world’s population. And it’s only getting Bigger.
Jared Cohen and Eric Schmidt (Google’s co-founder and Director of Google Ideas) predict that 5 Billion new people will connect to the Internet within the next decade.
5 Billion new people.
That’s a lot of people, and a lot more Facebook users for us to target to.
And with Facebook’s constantly improving ability to label and categorize each user by gathering their profiles data, it turns the entire platform into a goldmine for online businesses.
Would you like to know the greatest part about all this?
No one is using Facebook advertising yet!
This is due to a few reasons:
The barrier of entry to create a successful Facebook ad.
Unfortunately, Facebook advertising isn’t something that anyone can quickly pickup and master in 10 minutes. It does take some skill and understanding before you can start running some successful campaigns.
That being said, businesses still try to use the platform themselves only to be quickly disappointed when they waste hundreds of dollars with a poor ad targeted to the wrong audience.
Viral videos of frustrated advertisers like the one listed below claiming that the advertising platform doesn’t work.
This isn’t so good… for Facebook.
However, for the advertisers and online businesses, THIS IS GREAT NEWS!
This is better than the invention of sliced bread!
Not only has this helped from saturating the market, but it’s also preventing the costs per clicks to rise!
Our advice: Take advantage of Facebook Advertising while the competition is low and the traffic is dirt-cheap!
4. Advanced Targeting
Facebook allows you to target based upon location, age, gender, languages, interests, and even behaviors.
Below are the targeting options available for creating an audience on Facebook:
It even allows you to target based upon specific demographics such as:
By understanding your target audience, and knowing how to reach them, a business can put the right ad in front of the right person to generate more leads, and sales for their business.
It’s hard to grasp the effectiveness of this targeting until you actually see the qualified leads flowing in. It’s quite remarkable how effective this targeting can be if setup correctly.
5. Custom Audiences
You’re not only limited to targeting users in Facebook’s database, you also have the option to use your own custom audience.
What exactly does this mean? It means you have many more options of users you can target.
Let’s dive into a few of the different types of custom audiences that are currently available.
Email Lists
Facebook allows you to insert your own email list and then works its magic to match each email address with the Facebook profiles of that email. Your ads will then display on the Newsfeed of that users personal Facebook.
Website Traffic/Retargeting
Facebook allows you to place a tracking code on your website, and then sends ads to the Facebook newsfeed of users who already visited your website. You even have the ability to send a different ad for each different page of your website they visit.
For instance, if they visited your page but didn’t opt-in, you can send them an offer to try and get them to opt-in.
In addition to that, you can send them a completely separate ad for people who did opt-in, maybe giving them an offer or pushing them to buy one of your products or services.
Lookalike Audience
Facebook allows you to take an audience such as an email list to create a “lookalike” audience. This “lookalike” audience takes the common characteristics of your audience and creates a separate audience of Facebook users who match the characteristics of that initial audience.
A best practice of this would be to create a lookalike audience for your opt-in list. You can create a lookalike audience for the people who have decided to opt-in to your business, and Facebook will find and target users who match the same characteristics as those people who have already decided to opt-in. This is one of our tops secrets for getting extremely qualified leads.
6. Audience Insights
Another incredible feature that Facebook offers is their Audience Insights.
Audience insights are used to see more detailed information on the people you are targeting or wish to target. You can see where the majority of your audience is from, what they like, whether they’re male or female, the list goes on.
You can view the audience insights for everyone on Facebook, people connected to your page, or custom audiences.
It gives you graphs, charts, and tons of data of the users associated with your page, or audience.
Below is a quick glance at the interface to help you better understand how this works and how easy it is to use.
A great way to use this feature is to see the statistics of your opt in list or your Facebook fan page. This will give you some great insights of who your customers are and what they like. This will show you what pages they like, where they’re from, what they’re likely to purchase, what their average income is, what pages and topics they engage with, and a whole LOT more.
If utilized correctly, this tool can be tremendously effective for better understanding of your customers. We recommend this tool to every business that owns a Facebook fan page. And the best part, it’s absolutely free!
Conclusion
I sincerely hope this article helped you to better understand the power of Facebook’s Advertising Dashboard.
I‘m sure you’ll agree that this is by far the best platform you could possible use to market your business online. However, if you disagree, please leave your comments or questions below. I’ll do my best to answer any questions you may have.
If you’re interested in hiring an advertising expert to build and manage ads for your business, feel free to visit SocialVantage.com or reach out to me at (877) 261-7016 ex. 706. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.
*Also – feel free to share this article to any business you know who may benefit from these services. References are GREATLY appreciated!
