How many people do you know that own a Facebook account? Probably most of, if not everyone you know…right?
Since the introduction of Facebook in 2004, it has become the go-to social media platform for sharing photos and content with family, friends and colleagues and has fundamentally changed the way we interact with our peers.
In 2016, Facebook announced in their newsroom that they were reverting back to their original ‘core values’ with planned changes to their algorithm. In short, these changes meant that users would see more content from their friends and family and less from businesses promoting – a sweat inducing blow for any avid Facebook marketer.
The algorithm changes ensued an exponential reduction in organic visibility for businesses promoting their products and services. Thus, with the need to stay on top and on their potential customer’s radars, businesses turned in their droves to paid Facebook Advertising. A clever money-driving decision by Facebook!
Facebook Advertising entails using Facebook’s interface to serve paid ads directly into potential customer’s news feeds in a bid to lure the customer, consciously or subconsciously, into purchasing your products or services. Much like Google AdWords, Facebook advertising is helping businesses gain an advantage in already saturated markets.
So how exactly does it work? Here’s how…
At around the same time Facebook stripped back business’s organic content from its users’ news feed, a change in the way we interacted with content followed suit… enter reactions! Reactions meant you could ‘love’ your friend’s new hair cut, express ‘shock’ when your colleague got engaged or show just how ‘angry’ you were when your sibling posted a poolside holiday photo with the caption ”so, how’s your Monday morning going?”
As great as this new change was for the users of Facebook being able to show emotions, something else was happening behind the scenes. The real reason for Facebook reactions? It means Facebook can build a profile of you based on likes, dislikes, loves and hates – creating a detailed mosaic of you, which then allows a business to advertise their relevant products or services directly to your news feed.
Fast forward to today, businesses can now target users based on heavily detailed interests, demographics, behaviours, custom audiences, value based lookalike audiences, build remarketing lists based on several factors and the list goes on. Facebook is really getting smart and more streamlined in their advertising approach, ensuring a better user experience overall as well as more cost effective results for advertisers.
Having last month celebrated their 2 billion users every single month milestone, it’s not hard to understand why businesses are incorporating paid Facebook advertising into their core digital marketing strategy.
Can your business afford to miss out on 2 billion potential customers worldwide? What about 2 billion 700 million potential customers…
With the online Insta community standing at around 700 million every month, Instagram has become the second most popular social media platform of all time. With that, it made perfect business sense for Facebook to acquire the photo sharing app in 2014.
As a result, Instagram ads are also published through the Facebook interface simultaneously, meaning you can either publish through both channels separately or together on the one platform – with one audience set up and one ad set. As they run through the same interface, Instagram ads operate in the same way as Facebook ads and can help to achieve your desired goal e.g. brand awareness and then allows you to analyse the results quickly and efficiently.
Double the advertising platforms means double the ad effectiveness – Now, this truly is advertising that packs a powerful punch!