While Facebook ads have been around since 2011, a large portion of businesses today are still reluctant to make use of this channel in their overall marketing strategy. Whether it is a channel never used before or just a pure lack of understanding, businesses today cannot afford to miss out on the targeting capabilities or the amount of reach the Social Media giant provides.
Before I get into the crux of Facebook Advertising, I’d like to briefly share some of the main benefits of using Facebook ads.
• Audience targeting capabilities. Facebook ads allow you to pin point the audience who you think will be interested in your ads by using various options such as, gender, location, interest or behaviour targeting just to name a few. For example, if you were an online travel agency wanting to target males travelling abroad for the Rugby World Cup, you could set your targeting criteria to Males in South Africa who are interested in Rugby/World Cup Rugby and are planning to travel.
• Reach your mobile audience. The statistics speak for themselves, 1.25 billion mobile monthly active users as of March 31, 2015.
• Exposure for your Product/Service. Being the second most visited site in the world gives your ads tons of exposure. With over 1.4 Billion active users Facebook provides all the reach you need.
• Rich content. Having additional character lengths for your ad descriptions allows you to provide detailed, punchy messaging and the use of images allows you to capture the attention of the targeted audience. Where traditional display ads lack in informative content in terms of visuals, Facebook incorporates both. In a nutshell, Facebook ads are essentially a combination of search and display ads to give you a hybrid that combines the best of both worlds.