5 Reasons Every Small Business Should Consider Facebook Advertising

Time and again, we have been impressed with the results. It appears that Facebook Ads are bringing real, exciting, and valuable results to businesses – including Pagemodo. Not only can a Facebook campaign drive awareness through impressions and grow your Facebook Page with new likes, it also generates cost effective sales and/or conversions for your business.So here are 5 reasons why every small business should be advertising on Facebook:
1. It’s Easy
Let’s get right to the point: Facebook ads are easy! You don’t need to be an advertising genius or a design guru to create basic ads for Facebook. While many small business owners are overwhelmed when considering ad campaigns on traditional ad networks (yes, that includes Google and Bing), small businesses are actually finding Facebook ads simple and effective. Unlike other ad platforms, Facebook is doing a good job simplifying ad creation for the masses. Small businesses and organizations are more empowered than ever to own their digital marketing activities.

2. You Can Reach a Huge Audience
With 1.15 billion active users, Facebook has the largest engaged user base in the world, with 59% of users logging in daily. In the US, users spend more time on Facebook than any other competing platform: an average of 6 hours a month on their desktop, and 11 hours on mobile – pretty amazing.

3. It’s Targeted
Being able to target your ads to a specific audience is crucial to maximizing the effectiveness of any ad campaign. On average, online ads can target users with an accuracy of about 50%. But Facebook takes this to another level: Facebook gives you a targeting accuracy that is closer to 90% – a huge improvement. It’s no wonder Google is investing so much into Google+. Facebook makes you more effective by letting you target users using not only demographic data (location, age range, gender), but also using interests data and social connections. For example, if you want to target people that are interested in your jewelry line, you can specifically target people that Facebook identifies as being interested in jewelry, fashion or other related interests. Or say that you want to target people that are interested in home improvement, you can also target fans of companies like Home Depot or Lowe’s.

4. It Works and It’s Cost Effective
Targeting prowess translates directly into cost savings – 44% cost savings to be exact – when compared to other ad platforms, according to the December 2012 Nielsen OCR Benchmarks Report. Why waste your advertising budget on people that are not interested in your product to begin with?

It helps that Facebook Ads are ultra-visual. Which ad are you more likely to click on?- OR - Turns out that a lot of people are clicking on the more visual example. In the Facebook world, 8 times more people click on the more visual ad than Facebook’s text-ad equivalent, right-hand side ads. Also, the fact that Facebook Ads are social by nature helps increase their effectiveness. According to a Facebook study, 50% of Facebook users consistently say that their friends’ recommendations play an important role in their decision making process. By helping you target “friends of fans” in your ads Facebook is taking advantage of this intrinsic relationship between your Facebook fans and their friends. 

5. It’s Mobile-Ready
The last reason I’ll mention to promote on Facebook is that at the click of a button you can make your ads also appear on mobile phones. But mobile ads are not always the right option – it depends on your campaign. If your goal is to get more likes to your Facebook Page, or to simply promote a post, then mobile is a great choice. If you are actually trying to drive purchasing, then you should first consider whether your purchasing flow on your website is already optimized for mobile purchases.

Have you tried Facebook advertising for your small business or group? Let us know what kind of results you’ve seen in the comments below!