Social media has become an integral part of business growth today. If a business does not have a presence on social media, it may lose out on customers. This is why you find even the smallest of brands trying to leverage social advertisements and engagement to boost their reach and conversions — especially on Facebook. But many of these businesses find themselves asking: Do Facebook Ads work?

As of June 2017, Facebook has more than 2 billion monthly active users. It is clearly the most popular social media site in the world. Be it for professional or personal use, the social media channel is widely accepted by a wide range of demographics in the consumer market.

Understanding how to leverage Facebook ads effectively is now more important than ever. Since it is a part of almost every successful social media strategy, it is vital to know how your posts can be seen by the right consumers at the right time.

While the platform gives businesses the opportunity to reach a mass audience, almost 62% of marketers say the channel is simply ‘pay to play’ and ends up actually missing their target market.

Do we agree? Absolutely not.
In order to increase the chances of getting a higher return on your investment, always know where your customer comes from, what they engage with the most and what triggered their purchase.

Apart from the general demographics, aim at designing campaigns that offer micro and macro conversions based on where the customer is in the sales cycle.

When you make the effort to understand their needs, without being pushy for a sale, you automatically focus on creating campaigns that deliver value to the customer.

This results in a higher growth slash engagement rate on the campaigns. These campaigns might just be about boosting a post your customers are engaging with the most — or about simply promoting your page in their circles.

Simply put, the answer to, ‘do Facebook ads work or not’, is a resounding YES.

However, before we dig into the different type of Facebook ads that your business should experiment with, let’s first understand…

How Do Facebook Ads Work?

Many businesses new to social media marketing doubt the power of Facebook ads. They continually debate on whether they would work for their market or product. Which is why you need to test the waters yourself before executing an ad campaign. It’s always good to make educated decisions, so why not?

Almost 30% of the market fail to define the difference between paid search and paid social campaigns. The explanation is quite simple: while paid search helps your target market find your business, paid social campaigns help your business find potential customers.

Facebook advertising does the latter. It lets you reach out to targeted prospects and customers. It helps you target specific user segments that are more likely to be interested in the products and services offered by your brand. In the process, get more sales.

With vast user data about their day-to-day activities, the level of targeting offered by Facebook rivals no other platform.

The number one step that you as an advertiser should take is to identify the goal of your ad campaign.

Do you want to…

• Drive relevant traffic to your site?
• Generate more leads?
• Encourage users to interact with your page?
• Secure more sales?
• Expand your brand’s reach?

The clearer you are about your goal, the better results you will see. You may want to stick to running one ad at a time or experiment with multiple goals to understand what is fetching you the highest return on investment.

The audience segmentation on Facebook lets you define what your ideal customer looks like. Their robust system then displays your ads to users who fall under the demographics you defined. In other words, these users exhibit the type of behaviour you have identified.

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It all depends on how well you understand your customers, and how effectively you’re able to incorporate the data into the ads. Also, the type of format you choose for your campaigns tend to influence the results you get. You may also want to consider using a professional social media marketing company.

When it comes to answering the question do Facebook ads work, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Your ads are based on factors such as:

• What your business has to offer
• The industry you are in
• The niche you are targeting
• The campaign goals you have

Let’s look at the different types of Facebook ads you can run for your business and what objective they can serve.

Page Likes

The very first ad type is the one that will boost your page’s organic reach. The goal of this campaign is to spread awareness about your brand and what you offer. It is to encourage your target audience to follow you on Facebook with a ‘like’ for further updates.

Since it is a micro conversion, most users are happy to interact with this ad type. The high engagement gives businesses a chance to target these prospects the right way. They can run lead nurturing campaigns with relevant content and more.

Engagement Ads

These ads help to target existing users. They help to generate activity on your business website or within an app. You could use these ads to highlight new features, new products or simply run an offer that encourages them to engage with your app or website once again.

This type of advertising campaigns is best suited to keep your existing customers engaged. These help them stay connected with the brand and maintain a loyal community.

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Post Promotion

We all know how a few posts do better than the others on social media. When you’re driving people to your page, you will notice that they interact with some content more than what you have been posting so far. That’s your opportunity to target more customers from that segment.

Using post engagement ads to boost the reach of your content on Facebook will also get you more likes on the page – a double whammy!

Acquisition Ads

One of the primary goals for most businesses and apps is to acquire more users or customers. While engagement ads are targeted at re-engaging existing users, acquisition ads are focused on bringing new users/ customers to your business.

These could be…

1. App install ads
2. Lead generation ads
3. Product/service promotion ads.
4. Brand awareness

Sometimes the best way to get more conversions is to let people know more about your brand. Using Facebook ads, you can boost the exposure your brand name gets. But this can only be done when you share remarkable content that establishes you as an industry authority.

These campaigns should not be focused on what your brand is all about. Instead, they should highlight why a customer should engage with it.

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Localised ads

While some businesses focus on global brand awareness, there are some that have location specific goals. These campaigns are set using the geographic location of your customers. And target them with tailored offers for high relevance. It could be to encourage a store visit or to avail an offer on product purchase in a specific area.

With localisation becoming an integral part of personalised marketing, these ad campaigns are a great way to boost brand recall value as well as conversions.

Website Conversions

Even though most brand awareness campaigns result in driving traffic to the website, the website conversion ads are a different ball game. They are super-targeted and specific in nature. In short: they take visitors towards a defined call to action on a particular page of your business website.

In order to get maximum results from these ads, try experimenting with different call-to-actions. Instead of using ‘learn more’, direct your users to a page where they need to sign up for a newsletter or a free trial of a product.

Website Clicks

If you’re new to the industry and are just starting to reach out to your customers, website click campaigns are your best bet.

These campaigns focus on one thing: driving traffic to your website. You could direct this traffic to your blog, product page, sales page, etc. The idea is to let the customer discover what you’re offering instead of pushing them towards a conversion right away.

For businesses that have different things to offer, you can make use of carousel ads to send traffic to different links. Similarly, you can also experiment with canvas ads that share the story of your brand with customers and nudges them to visit your website to know more.

Event promotions

Interactive content is what performs the best on Facebook. Promoting events and encouraging your target audience to participate is a great way to put forward your value proposition and get a chance to start a conversation without sounding too salesy.

But remember not to club all your segments into one event promotion. The more targeted you remain, the higher attendance you generate.

Offer Promotions

Every business wants a chance to interact with their customer and highlight the value they can give deliver. This is why you see many brands running promo offers, or special discounts designed to appeal to their target market.

Whether you’re offering something for free, a content upgrade (such as an eBook) or a simple discount coupon for first time purchases, these ad types will work for you. They will help you stand out from the vast volume of content being shared on a user’s feed. The only thing you need to ensure is the look of your ad: it must be appealing to your ideal customer.

Lead Generation Ads 

The general approach to online lead generation is to drive users to a landing page via a digital advertisement. And have them fill out a form with their contact details. But things change with the new Facebook leads ads. Now, businesses have the opportunity to decrease the drop off from an ad to a landing page. Which is huge.

Facebook lead generation ad campaigns allow you to collect a prospect’s information without forcing them to leave the platform. This has resulted in a boost in lead generation results for both business to business (b2b) and business to consumer (b2c) businesses.

Are you wondering which one is better for your business? We can help you!