Is Facebook Advertising a Good Investment ?

Nile Marketing - Is Facebook Advertising a Good Investment?


In 2012,BBC tested Facebook Advertising by putting out ads for a fictitious small business dubbed VirtualBagel. For one week, BBC ran display ads to boost fan page likes. The conclusion at the end of the week: Facebook ads are a waste of money.

Very bad news for online marketers and small business owners, right? Not necessarily.

It does not take much examination of BBC’s experiment to find some serious design flaws. BBC’s study design misused one of Facebook’s key value propositions — robust demographic targeting. Success with Facebook advertising relies heavily on efficiency and precision. You cannot simply jump in blind and expect immediate results.

Use of Multifaceted Social Targeting Features is Key

On Facebook’s advertising platform, marketers are able to target campaigns based on many different factors such as location, age, gender, interests, community connections, and many more.

If you are not leveraging at least two of these advanced targeting features in your Facebook advertising campaign, you are not fully utilizing the platform tools that are available.

In order to develop a strong end goal of achievement for your campaign, you should first ask yourself some core questions:
What are your campaign goals?
Who is your target audience?

Facebook Display Ads Work Best to Promote Brand Awareness

Facebook display ads are designed to be visually appealing. With a small thumbnail image, you can show your product or another attention-grabbing photo, encouraging more engagement overall. This is an advantage over Google Adwords PPC campaigns.

Social Connections

If you are deciding whether or not to advertise on Facebook, don’t forget to factor in the platform’s social component. The ads you run on Facebook will be seen not only by the audience your are specifically targeting, but also by their social connections as well. This effect is embedded in the social nature of the site in and of itself. For marketers, this means that these residual organic connections lower the average cost of acquisition per user.

To Sum It Up

Facebook advertising is not a platform that works for every company or product. This is why it is very important to know how and why you are using the platform from the outset. For example, a direct response ad campaign to an e-commerce site would not be a good fit for Facebook (people are on Facebook to be social, not to shop). On the other hand, a branding campaign works perfectly for Facebook.