If you’re a frequent reader of this space, you already know the benefits that a social media presence can provide your business. By growing your audience and posting regular, frequent content, you can increase your brand awareness and drive traffic to your website.
But sometimes, a simple presence isn’t enough. In fact, supplementing your organic (unpaid) efforts with paid advertising can significantly help your brand achieve its marketing and sales goals. Here are 4 reasons you should consider Facebook advertising for your business.
1) Expand Your Audience
Without a doubt, the single biggest benefit of paid Facebook ads is being able to reliably reach a large portion of your target audience. Organic posts from your business page only reach users who have decided to like your page. And even then, not all of your followers will see each of your updates. In fact, one study found that on average, only 6.5% of your followers will actually see individual posts.
The reason for that low average reach is simple. Facebook has long prioritized personal posts over branded alternatives in order to keep user satisfaction high. Seeking to minimize promotional noise,the network has taken active steps to ensure that only your most engaged followers actually see your posts.
Advertisements, however, bypass that issue. Rather than having to rely on a fraction of your follower base, you can decide exactly who on the network should see your update. Using targeting criteria that range from interests to demographics and behaviors, you can reach a much larger portion of your target audience.
2) Reach Your Marketing Goals
Depending on the growth stage of your business, you likely have a variety of very specific marketing goals. They may range from increasing brand awareness to driving web visits, leads, and customer conversions.
Facebook allows you to accomplish all of them. You can choose to either promote existing, organic posts, designed to ensure that a greater portion of your follower portion will see your updates. Or you can go with a direct ad, which you can optimize for website clicks and conversions. But more on that later.
3) Re-Engage Web Visitors
Marketers across all industries have to face an ugly truth: a one-time visitor is unlikely to immediately become a lead. No matter how much you focus on driving visitors to your websites, your efforts may be futile if you don’t find a way to also re-engage them after they leave your site.
Enter Facebook retargeting, the first of two ways in which the network allows marketers to take advantage of a simple pixel (consisting of a few lines of code) placed on their website. Through the pixel, you can target your ads specifically to recent visitors of your website, focusing your message on getting them back or simply reminding them about your brand.
4) Track Conversions
Finally, Facebook advertising can especially businesses looking to focus on inbound lead generation through one, crucial feature: you can track how many leads you generated based on individual ads.
For example, you can place a pixel similar to the retargeting option mentioned above on the page your leads see when they first convert. That pixel then communicates back to Facebook each time a conversion occurs, and you can use that metrics to determine exactly how successful your ads were in generating conversions.
The result is an invaluable analytics opportunity. Given conversion intelligence, you can better focus your Facebook ads overtime, and optimize your strategy to generate more leads. For businesses looking to embrace inbound marketing, it’s the perfect opportunity to jumpstart your lead generation.
When Facebook Advertising is Unnecessary
Of course, you don’t necessarily have to spend money to be successful on Facebook. If your budget is low, or you don’t have an immediate sales need, you can spend your efforts on growing a large, active community of followers instead.
Organically growing your Facebook presence, and making sure that it actively contributes to achieving your marketing goals, takes time, effort, and at least some expertise. For both paid and unpaid efforts, a strategic effort is key. But if you get it right, Facebook can make a significant impact on your social media success and business growth.
To learn more about advertising your business using social media, give us a call or send us a note today at Small Dog Creative 661-702-1310!
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