20 Benefits of Facebook/Instagram Advertising for Businesses
Facebook has become one of the most dominant digital marketing platforms and for good reason. With currently 2.45 billion monthly active users worldwide, Facebook has built an unparalleled database of interests, behaviors and demographics linked to each and every person using the platform. This has created a significant opportunity for businesses who, through this channel, now have access to their target market like never before.
We could go on forever about the benefits of Facebook/Instagram ads and why this should be part of every business’s marketing strategy but here are the 20 most important benefits (and reasons why) that we feel stand out the most. On a side note, please don’t confuse these benefits to Facebook and Instagram ads as the benefits for running boosted posts. These benefits are related to running paid ad campaigns through the Facebook Business Manager platform and we by no means support the use of running boosted posts.
1: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Allows for Highly Targeted Ads
The targeting capabilities of the Facebook/Instagram advertising platform are truly impressive. The detailed targeting options includes targeting an audience based on their interests, behaviors, demographics, locations, languages, level of interest in your brand/product or service offering as well as your competitors. You can target people who have spent a certain amount of time on your website, people who checked out but didn’t go through with the purchase or watched a certain percentage of your ad’s video to name a few. The list goes on and on.
Advertisers also have the option of layering their audience targeting to exclude people who don’t necessarily fit within the target market or to make the targeting even more refined for those niche audiences some businesses may be looking for.
The Facebook/Instagram advertising platform is unrivaled when it comes to its targeting capabilities which is why this benefit is at the top of our list.
2: Facebook and Instagram Advertising is One of the Cheapest Forms of Advertising
Due to the detailed targeted capabilities that the Facebook advertising platform allows, advertisers are able to only pay to advertise to people who fit their exact target market but who are also most likely to go through with a purchase/submit a lead form/engage with the brand etc. This makes the cost of advertising so much cheaper as precious marketing budget is not being wasted on advertising to people who aren’t interested in the offering. In addition, Facebook prioritizes ads that receive a high level of engagement so if your ad is achieving a great click-through-rate and people are showing an interest in what you are advertising, your costs will decrease and more people will be reached for the same budget.
With a potential cost per person reached on Facebook as little as $0.05, who can argue that Facebook is the most cost-effective advertising investment any business can make?
3: Facebook and Instagram Advertising is Fast
No time is wasted when it comes to advertising on Facebook. This form of digital advertising is immediate, allowing businesses to start reaching thousands of people with a click of a button.
4: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Offers Real Time Data and Extensive Analytics
The analytics available throughout a Facebook ad campaign is almost endless. Every metric you can think of is available to you at any point in time, allowing advertisers the opportunity to make real time changes to their ads based on real time performance. Data is gathered on a minute-by-minute basis, allowing for accurate conclusions to be drawn and instant changes to be made, if necessary.
5: Your Competitors are Using Facebook and Instagram Advertising
It’s that simple. For business to compete with their competitors in today’s world, Facebook and Instagram advertising is the way to do so. Your target market spends most of their time on social media so be where your competitors and consumers are.
6: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Allows Businesses to Adapt Their Ads as They Are Running
The real-time benefit of Facebook and Instagram advertising allows advertisers to change their ads immediately. Based on the data, advertisers can make quick changes to targeting, ad copy, ad creative, landing pages etc. which is updated on the platform straight away. If you are unhappy with the results or would like to test a new strategy, no problem. The whole process will take as long as you need to make the changes which is not possible with other forms of advertising.
7: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Increases Brand Awareness on a Mass Scale
Facebook and Instagram advertising allows businesses to build their brand awareness by reaching as many people as possible, often, at the lowest cost possible. Businesses are able to get their name out there to hundreds of thousands or millions of people with relevant ads and messaging. Repetition is highly important when it comes to awareness. You want your ads to be seen multiple times by the same person as the more familiar they are with your brand/product or service offering, the more likely they will remember it and purchase from you. Ads can be shown multiple times to as many people that your budget will allow, keeping your business top-of-mind.
8: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Can Increase Revenue, Sales and Leads
At the end of the day, the main goal is (for most businesses) to increase sales and leads, resulting in increased revenue. The Facebook and Instagram advertising platform has many options available to advertisers in order to do this. It is important that businesses first find their ideal audience who are mostly likely to purchase from them before running an ad campaign optimized for sales or leads in order to ensure that you are attaining that sale or lead at the lowest cost possible. Once you find our ideal audience that is ‘warm’ enough to purchase, you can start running lead generation and sales optimized ad campaigns that target those who are most likely to purchase based on their previous online behavior. Lookalike audiences can also be targeted which include people who are similar to those who have engaged with or shown a certain level of interest in your brand as a strategy to grow your reach and consumer base. Installing the Facebook Pixel is a key element to any campaign but specifically a conversion campaign as it will allow you to gather data and create custom audiences based off of people who have performed certain actions on your website. Lookalike audiences are also created using data gathered from the Pixel.
9: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Increases Traffic to your Website
Most types of ads on Facebook and Instagram are linked to a specific page on your website. Without a doubt, businesses will always see an increase in website traffic when running a campaign on Facebook and Instagram. Specific pages can be linked to specific ads depending on your advertising strategy and where that specific audience is positioned in the sales funnel. Once your business has recorded a certain number of website visitors, retargeting ads can be used to further grow the connection with your audience and increasing the likelihood that they will purchase your product/service.
10: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Can Drive Off-Line Sales
It has been shown that many people go into a store to look at a product or service they saw advertised on Facebook and Instagram. Generally, physical stores record an increase in foot traffic during a Facebook and Instagram advertising campaign purely due to the increase in awareness for the brand as well as the product/service. In addition, not every consumer is comfortable with making a purchase online and would prefer to see or try on the product before buying. This is a great added benefit to running Facebook and Instagram ads as the brand and product recognition is built online, increasing foot traffic into physical stores allowing your sales staff to further build on the relationship and potentially up sell the consumer.
11: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Drive Repeat Purchases
The Facebook and Instagram advertising platform allows businesses to retarget their previous customers with the same or new ads. Businesses can use the data gathered from the Facebook Pixel to do this or they could import their customer email lists into their Facebook advertising campaign for added targeting. The email list feature is especially great for businesses whose Facebook Pixel hasn’t been tracking visitors over a prolonged period of time and/or who have an extensive email list of customers who visit their physical store or inquired about their service. It must be noted that Facebook can only match the email address to the person on Facebook if that person used the same email address to create their Facebook account. Overtime, many people use different email addresses to the address they originally used to create the Facebook/Instagram account which is why we suggest an email list of at least 1 000 emails in order for it to be worth using for targeting purposes. This is why installing the Facebook Pixel is so important even if you are not going to be running ads in the near future as this is the most accurate way to gather data which Facebook can use to target consumers.
12: Facebook Advertising Increases Word-Of-Mouth and Referrals
If your Facebook and Instagram ads are reaching the right people and you’re advertising relatable and shareable content, people are likely to share your ads with their friends and family on social media. The value of a person sharing your ad is almost more than the value attached to reaching that person in the first place. Word-of-mouth and referrals is the most valuable form of advertising for a business but it is one of the slowest and toughest forms of marketing to get right. Running Facebook and Instagram ads increases the likelihood that your ads will be shared among people within your target audience and therefore, by default, increasing word-of-mouth and referral marketing.
13: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Can Help Build Your Email List
One of the options available to businesses when using the Facebook and Instagram advertising platform is the option to run lead generation campaigns. A lead generation ad will advertise a product/service or a brand with a lead form extension. This lead form appears when a person clicks on the ad, allowing that person to fill in their details such as name, phone number, email address etc. in the ad itself without needing to leave the platform. This increases the conversion rate as the person doesn’t have to wait for a web page to load and navigate their way to a lead form on a completely new website. Data is conveniently captured in a spreadsheet which can be downloaded at any time or linked to a partnering CRM platform.
14: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Can Increase Your SEO Ranking
Through sending more traffic to your website, increasing your engagement on social media by driving shares, likes and comments on your posts, your ranking on search engines will inevitably improve. SEO ranking is important for driving organic (non-paid) traffic to your website by appearing higher up on the search engine’s results pages.
15: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Can Help Businesses Reach New Markets
Facebook and Instagram advertising allows businesses to build awareness for their brand and product/service offering among people who have never heard of or interacted with the company in the past. This opens up a whole new world for businesses which need to scale in order to grow and compete as there are millions of people available to be advertised to but who just need to be targeted correctly with the right messaging. Businesses launching new products and services can also expect to use these to grow into new, untapped, territories which may not have been explored in the past. By launching new products/services or advertising to new markets, businesses are also able to test the market to determine the reaction of those new markets to their brand and product/service, saving a huge amount of time and money which would have previously been spent on expensive and lengthy market research activities.
16: Facebook and Instagram Advertising is Mobile Focused
Online is the future of business and mobile is the future of online. Most internet users in today’s world use their mobile phones to access information online. Facebook and Instagram are app based platforms and therefore their user base is predominantly on mobile. Businesses can use Facebook and Instagram advertising to communicate with the target market where ever, whenever via their mobile devices.
17: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Allows Businesses to Reach Far More People Than Organic Posting
Only the tiniest fraction of your followers actually see your posts on Facebook and Instagram posted onto your business profile/page. Facebook has drastically decreased the visibility of organic posts over the years to encourage businesses to prioritize paid ads in order to grow their social media and the days of organic Facebook marketing are over. However, organic posts still play an important role for businesses by providing social proof to anyone who visits their profile. Posts and followers show people that you are a legitimate business and that other people like your brand and use your products/services. This encourages new people to follow you and engage with your brand. However, followers don’t equate to sales and a follower may never buy from your business. If businesses want to increase their revenue using social media, they need to pay to advertise. There are many ways to decrease ad costs, drive sales and increase profitability with Facebook and Instagram advertising and if done correctly, businesses will see a return that will be worth the ad spend. However, business shouldn’t be quick to jump into running boosted posts a quick and ‘cheap’ way to advertise and should not fall into the boosted post trap that so many companies use to ‘grow’ but never see a proper return from. Paid ad campaigns through the Facebook Business Manager platform is the most effective (and the only way, in our opinion), to advertise on Facebook and Instagram.
18: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Allows Businesses to Remarket to Their Target Audience
Remarketing is one of the most effective tools to use when it comes to Facebook and Instagram advertising. Remarketing allows business to market to the same people over and over again with the same or different ads each time. Audiences for remarketing purposes can be created on the basis of a large variety of actions such as visiting your website, viewing certain product pages, adding to cart, purchasing etc. Remarketing can also be done to people who have watched a certain percentage of your video on your Facebook or Instagram ad or who engaged with your page. Remarketing is such an effective way to advertise because you know the person has a certain level of interest in your business already because of the actions they have previously taken. They have opened up the conversation with your brand and product/service. Now this is your chance to convert them. Remarketing also gives businesses an opportunity to introduce new products or services to existing customers or interested consumers, making product/service launches more effective and profitable. Remarketing is extremely important for building trust and brand recognition. Showing your ads to an audience multiple times is generally required before you can expect that audience to take action and this is where remarketing comes in.
19: Facebook and Instagram Advertising Can Encourage Customer Loyalty
Facebook and Instagram ads give businesses multiple opportunities to engage with their customers and build their business to consumer relationship. A stronger relationship with your target market leads to growth, higher customer retention rates and sales. Many strategies can be implemented using different types of ads in order to build this relationship businesses need to ensure longevity and profitability.
20. You Can Optimize Facebook and Instagram Ads to Drive A Specific Objective:
The Facebook and Instagram advertising platform allows businesses to choose what they want to achieve from their Facebook/Instagram ad campaign. This doesn’t mean that any business looking to increase sales through their online store should immediately start with an ad optimized for purchases. A well thought out and planned paid ad strategy should be in place before starting your campaigns otherwise there will be a higher chance that your campaigns won’t generate sales at all and budget will be wasted. Objectives available to optimize campaigns for range from encouraging people to simply become aware of your brand/offering, engage with your ad/brand, watch your video ad, message you via Facebook messenger or WhatsApp, fill in a form, install an app, visit your website or purchase a product to name a few. When a specific objective is chosen, Facebook will show your ad to audience members within your target market who are most likely to perform that specific action. The metrics associated with that action should be carefully monitored to ensure that your ads are performing well enough to keep your cost-per-action low and returns high.