Facebook Marketing: Don’t Miss the Boat!

Facebook Marketing and Advertising

Reaching your target market can be a real challenge, especially if you aren’t keeping pace with the latest technology trends. Traditional advertising can be extremely ineffective because it doesn’t always allow you to reach your intended audience. If you aren’t utilizing social media advertising tools such as Facebook, your business is missing out massive amounts of market exposure and revenue.

Astounding Facebook Statistics

The largest social media site is, of course, Facebook. This social media giant has over 1.28 billion users monthly and over 97.6% are active users. In the United States alone Facebook has 128 million active users per day. In 2013 the American population was approximately 316 million people, so each day this social media site has a number of active users equal to roughly 40% of the American population.

But what do these statistics actually mean for your business? It means that your business has an unparalleled opportunity to connect with masses of people like never before. When users like or follow your digital presence, an opportunity exists to spread your message exponentially. The most powerful form of advertising is word of mouth, and Facebook has mechanisms that allows its users to rapidly share your content with each other. Startups, small businesses, and mature brands alike can all benefit from the highly advanced digital Facebook marketing mechanisms that simply don’t exist with traditional ads.

Directly Reaching Your Audience

The ultimate competitive advantage of Facebook advertising is the algorithm it uses to target specific groups of people. As opposed to other forms of traditional advertising that are displayed to many different demographics, Facebook ads allow you to pinpoint who sees your message. These older forms of advertising seem to take a shotgun approach and can be far less effective than social media marketing alternatives. You have the ability to sift through audiences based on metrics such as age, location, interests, gender, education level, and relationship status. These are just a few metrics than can be utilized to ensure your message reaches only who it applies to, but there are many more. This means that your ad campaign can drastically improve the quality of leads and in turn, increase conversions.

Advantages of Mobile Advertising

Yet another of the great advantages of utilizing Facebook is that it allows you to reach mobile users. Mobile internet trends show that the number of mobile users are multiplying. Of the 1.25 billion monthly active Facebook users, 1 billion of them use their mobile devices to connect to the social network. This supplies you with an extraordinary tool for market penetration. Now you have the ability reach your audience wherever they are. Whether your audience is taking a taxi, eating lunch, or relaxing in the park, you have the ability to communicate your message to them on the fly. They no longer need to be sitting in front of their computer, reading a magazine or newspaper, or watching T.V. to see your ad.

Multi-Product Ads

Now advertisers can showcase groups of products in a single ad on Facebook using multi-product ads. In the past, each ad only allowed a marketer to display a single image, description, and link per ad. Essentially, Facebook has made a 5-in-1 bundle option for your marketing needs. Yet another attractive quality of these types of ads is that they are dynamic. Previous ad types were static, meaning the image and text didn’t move. Additionally, there was no dynamic communication to change the message of the ad if certain variables changed. Multi-product ads, on the other hand, are animated to scroll between your different products and communicate updated information.

Other Uses of Multi-Product Ads

It seems that Facebook created this new advertising method to allow businesses to showcase multiple products in a single advertisement. However, understand that this is not the only use for these new types of ads. At their most basic level, you have the ability to advertise 5 images, descriptions, and links to a highly targeted audience.

This has useful implications for other types of websites that aren’t necessarily ecommerce based. For example, what if your website provides informational content as opposed to tangible products? In this instance, you can creatively leverage multi-product ads to increase traffic to a blog or even an eLearning membership website.

Cost Savings and Increase Performance

Web marketers and social media advertisers seem to have really liked the multi-product ads feature. Many report that they are seeing increased traffic to their sites at a lower cost per click, but it is hard to quantify without hard data.

Although, it makes a lot of sense. The ability to present five different products to your audience at a time is much more effective. The disadvantage with only presenting one product is that even though a potential customer might like the type of product you’re selling, they may dislike the style, make, or model of a single instance of your product. To put it simply, with multi-product ads you are given a better chance of displaying an appealing product to your viewers.

Template Tools to Save Time

Yet another benefit of Facebook’s ads are their templates. Templates are applicable to both single and multi-product ads, and you have the ability to communicate information from a catalog using the template. One of the applications of linking a catalog is creating an out-of-stock notice if you run out of a product. Take a moment to consider how this is a huge benefit to your audience.

One of the most annoying things on the web is the feeling that you were lied to or taken advantage of. Nothing is more irritating than links that advertise one type of content, but instead send you to a low quality site with tons of pop-up ads and advertisements. Users will feel the same amount of annoyance and irritation if they click on your link only to find out that your product isn’t available. The ability to dynamically communicate product offerings with you audience is a huge game changer for online advertising. There are so many advantages of social media marketing and multi-product ads that you would be remiss not to take advantage of them.

Exploiting Opportunities for Growth

If you haven’t taken advantage of Facebook advertising or have neglected your marketing campaign, you may want to reconsider your options. As each day passes Facebook advances and becomes more refined, and so does your opportunity to connect with your clients. Taking advantage of Facebook marketing opportunities is critical for the growth of your business. Don’t get left behind, it is worth the time to investigate your options.