Do Paid Facebook Ads Really Work?
In today’s internet landscape, there’s a seemingly infinite number of online advertising avenues open to you. It can be quite overwhelming to know which are effective—and which will be effective for your business. Afterall, what works for one company may not be the most effective strategy for another company, even if they operate within the same industry or market.
Developing a unique Facebook advertising strategy tailor-made for your business can be as daunting as it is crucial. There are a million questions that crop up: Which Facebook marketing methods should I put my money into? Do Facebook ads really work for growing business?
After all, no business—regardless of size—operates with an unlimited advertising budget. You’re going to have to pick and choose where you spend your dollars. But as the Facebook platform grows, and as its ad network continues to expand across Instagram, it’s tempting to ask why such a large platform has exploded in used for brands and business.
Facebook advertising as a channel has been around for a long time (over 10 years already). You might be asking yourself, if they work.
Do Facebook Ads Really Work?
Before we answer that, let’s just look at some data: Facebook has 2.27 billion active users globally. A staggering 1.32 billion (meaning well over half!) of which are active daily. The United States makes up only about 10% of these users, which still adds up to approximately 190 million Americans on Facebook. Plus, in 2019 the average price for Facebook Ads services had decrease by 6%, but ad impressions had grown by 37%!
That is a lot of eyeballs. Eyeballs that could be seeing your ads as they scroll their timelines, post pictures, and connect with distant family members. Every day. This means for any business that’s operating at least partly online, Facebook ads do really work.
Who are these millions of people constantly looking at Facebook, you might be wondering? Does this user base include people from my target demographic? Around 7 out of 10 adults in the U.S. use Facebook, in total the social giant has accrued more than 7 million advertisers.
According to March 2020 Facebook usage statistics from Statista, about 53% of polled United States residents use Facebook “several times a day,” and that’s just on the mobile app alone. As the platform continues its domination as the largest social network in the world, it’s menu of advertising options and business growth potential also becomes greater.
All of this means that, unless your target demographic is “people that don’t use Facebook” – chances are, they’re on Facebook.
And the chances are you’re going to be able to target them, because Facebook has a meticulous level of detail by which you can narrow down a demographic for an ad.
Because the real secret to why Facebook advertising really works is the specificity with which you can set your target demographic. Facebook has extremely specific targeting categories, including:
- Gender
- Age
- Location
- Education
- Job Title
- Income
- Spoken Languages
- Political Affiliation
- Interests
- Behaviors
- Life Events
Of course, the Facebook Ads network lets you mix-and-match all those categories for each of your ads. This is why Facebook ads work for businesses across a wide range of niches, industries, and markets. Being able to expand lead generation, grow your customer base, and improve your brand PR means being able to bring the right people to your content.
Meaning you could easily run one ad targeting liberal college-graduated women in the greater Chicago area that speak English and Spanish and have read all the Harry Potter books, paired with another ad that targets men age 55 to 65 with a “marketing” job title and who just got married in the last 3 months. The way Facebook paid as work really allows business to finetune their target audience in order to boost their ROI. Generally as ad campaigns gain more data, it allows marketers to even further fine-tune their campaign.
Or you could skip all that and target an ad directly at your old neighbor Ed and his wife Debbie, because Facebook Ads do work to let you narrow down your ads to target individual users. Facebook’s public data supports these suggestions.
All this means that as Facebook becomes more tied-up with daily socializing, it also becomes part of a business’s multi-pronged strategy.
Among businesses decision makers, B2B brands, or IT leaders for example, many small and medium sized businesses use Facebook. Business owners, business decision makers, and executives are more likely to engage with a wider range of people, in fact they’re 40% more likely to have more than 200 friends. They’re 1.3X more likely to watch product info ads, and 1.5X more likely to engage with product demos.
Okay, so now you know who’s using Facebook and how to target them, but you’re still wondering, is it worth it? Here are some benchmark metrics from February 2020 that should help convince you that Facebook Ads really do work.
- Average click-through-rate – 0.90%
- Average cost-per-click – $1.72
- Average conversion rate – 9.21%
- Average cost-per-action – $18.68
Of course, these metrics can very between industries, but with averages like those, it’s clear that Facebook Ads is a worthwhile avenue to invest your all-too-precious advertising dollars.
So, does Facebook advertising really work?
Yes.
But that still leaves an important follow-up question: How do paid Facebook ads work?
The first step is to determine your objective—what you expect to get out of the ads. These could include driving more traffic to your site, increasing brand awareness, or gaining conversions.
There are also multiple types of paid Facebook ads to choose from:
- Photo – These are static single images, plus a caption. These are classic, simple ads.
- Video – Video ads range in terms of length and can be set to appear in-stream, in users’ feeds, or in Stories.
- Stories – Stories are customizable ads that take up the whole screen. They can be videos or static images and tapping on Stories ads brings the user to your site (or whatever page you set).
- Messenger – These ads appear between conversations on the Facebook Messenger App.
- Carousel – Carousel ads are comprised of up to ten static images that the user can scroll through.
- Slideshow – These ads show short video-like clips made with motion, sound, and text.
- Collection – Collection ads showcase multiple products in a single ad, all of which can be individually interacted with by a user.
- Playables – These are interactive demo games that users can preview before they download the app or game.
Each type offers a different set of advantages. It’s up to you to determine which type will work best for the ad you’re looking to run. Though, the most successful strategy will likely include a combination of several ad types. But setting up these ads to match your business objectives is a good way of making Facebook ads work toward your long-term success.
The social media site’s ad network provides opportunity for advertising that focuses on growing site traffic, user engagement, eCommerce/product sales, business-to-business lead generation, multi-media interaction and more.
Facebook also lets you choose where you want your ad to run, which includes any of the platform’s affiliate sites, such as Instagram and Messenger. You can manually adjust placements for each of your ads, or just let Facebook automatically place the ads where they think your target audience is most likely to see it.
Finally, you just need to set your budget and place your order!
Paid Facebook ads are an exceptionally powerful tool that really work. They tap into one of the largest social media sites on earth and are one of the most versatile platforms you can find anywhere.
Learn More
Still not convinced Facebook advertising really works? Contact us! At Radd Interactive, our PPC team are experts at all things web-advertising. We’d be happy to answer your questions about paid Facebook ads and offer recommendations for how to improve your business through advertising and search engine optimization.