As the figurehead of the social media revolution, Facebook attracts more viewers than almost any site on the Internet. With 1.65 billion active users, including 1.1 billion daily, 989 million on mobile devices, and 2.8 million adult users in BC, (as of March 2016), the platform represents an advertiser’s dream: highly trafficked, highly accessible, and with a highly devoted user base. Gone are the days of casting your advertising net into the vast ocean of uninterested masses and pulling in your few prized targets. With Facebook Advertising, you get:

• A custom ad
• A target audience with unparalleled specificity
• An opportunity to state the desired outcome of your campaign
• Real-time ad performance tracking
• Comprehensive budget breakdowns

What to Expect From Facebook Advertising

When beginning your Facebook ad campaign, you are first met with a fundamental question: what do you want your ad to accomplish. The versatility of Facebook provides many precise possibilities for whatever your business needs. Whether it’s increasing traffic to your store, website or social media pages, spreading awareness about deals, events or new products, or simply getting your brand into the consciousness of consumers, Facebook advertising allows you to hone in on your purpose like never before.

After choosing a desired outcome, you select an audience. Since Facebook offers a wide range of demographics for indicating your target market, including location, age, gender, language, etc., your ad is only viewed by those that you intend it for. Facebook can also create a custom audience, based on contact information from your current customers. Using this information, the company’s algorithms can find you a base of potential customers with a similar makeup to your custom audience.

Facebook also offers a feature called Lead Ads, which allows interested individuals to sign up for more information about your company, receive estimates, and subscribe for newsletters, all with one click. Your company then receives the relevant personal information that they have previously shared with Facebook, saving the consumer the time of filling out a form, and instantly creating leads for your business. 

The Cost of Facebook Advertising

Something has to give right? Custom ads, to an exact target market, with a global reach? Luckily, with Facebook Advertising’s dynamic cost structure, you have complete control over your budget. When organizing your Facebook ad campaign, you can choose either a daily spending limit, or a limit for the lifetime of an ad. This limit can be as low as a dollar a day, so even the smallest scale operation can achieve an advertising presence on Facebook.

The way Facebook determines which ads are shown, and how often they appear on people’s newsfeeds, is through an auction system. Your bid in this auction is based on a metric called Total Value. Your ad’s Total Value is composed of:

• How much you’re willing to pay for customers to see your ad
• The likelihood that your ad being viewed will lead to the desired outcome
• The quality of the ad
• How relevant your ad is to your target audience

Facebook allots ad space with maximum efficiency, ensuring that your ad gets an exactly appropriate amount of space based on its total value; you get exactly what you pay for. Marketers trained in Facebook Blueprint have a deeper understanding of Total Value, and will ensure that it is maximized in your ad.

Tracking the Success of Your Facebook Advertising

If this seems overwhelming, as the Internet often can, don’t fret. Zuckerberg and his brilliant army are here to help. Facebook Advertising offers comprehensive analytic tools, which break down how your ads are performing, and how your budget is being spent. Performance statistics are collected in the Ad Manager tool, and compared with your marketing budget. With the assistance of agency experts who can interpret these results, you will be able to truly grasp the effectiveness of your ads, and what to change if they aren’t working.

One of the most effective tools offered is the Facebook Pixel. This tracks visitors to your website, and then automatically creates and optimizes a target audience with the potential customers most likely to “convert,” or take the desired action. This increases the likelihood of retaining customers and creating repeat visitors.