Facebook Ads: What Are My Options & How Well Do They Work

In the world of social media marketing and advertising, Facebook seemingly has the upper hand on the available options for advertising your business, especially seeing as they have recently acquired Instagram. Facebook is currently offering several types of ad styles, each with their own target markets and advantages, making your advertising potential quite extensive. With over 728 million unique Facebook users active each day, it can be difficult to decide on an ad to reach the most people while creating maximum results. Let’s take a look at each type of ad and how they work.

The Boosted Post Ad

This is one of the simplest forms of an ad unit on Facebook, though it often garners the least result as an advertising tool leading some businesses to feel that Facebook advertising doesn't work for them. In order to make advertising more appealing to all businesses, Facebook created the boosted post ad. Created by simply posting to your page and clicking the boost post button. Once you've clicked the boost post button you can set a target audience and budget for your ad. The biggest downfall of this ad unit however is that it is really easy to waste your advertising dollars if your ad is not properly targeted to your audience in the right geographical area in relation to your business, if the text in the ad does not include a call to action to ask the viewer to act in order to move further through their buying process, or if the image you chose to go with your written post includes too much text according to Facebooks advertising rules which limits the amount of people your ad is allowed to reach.

The Single Image Ad

A single image ad is about as straight forward as you can get with your social media advertising. As the name suggests, it is simply one image with a brief description of the product or service, linking to a business page or website. The problem with these types of ads is that they are very basic and easy to bypass. Especially when pitted against video ads, a single image ad can lack eye-catching appeal if they are not strategically designed, planned, targeted and executed. In fact, single image ads only obtain about 0.1% of engagement from all those who view it, meaning that less people actually view, click and engage with the ad, which can leave your advertising results extremely low.

The Local Awareness Ad

If your business is looking to gain more talk around town, a local awareness ad can really work in your favour. Typically, a local awareness ad features a map card with directions, a Google map pin and store hours, along with a call to action button, which can allow a mobile user to directly contact your business via phone, email or instant message. These types of ads have shown great results as far as bringing in new clientele and reaching an audience of “first-timer” customers.

The Offer Claim Ad

Often businesses advertise their sales, promotions and special offers by using an offer claim ad. This type of ad is similar to a single image ad, providing an image and a brief description, however, it also has a button to link the user to buy online or inquire. The problem with these ads is they can often be assumed to be spam advertising and are glossed over by online traffic. With so much “click bait” showing false advertising to lure online users into a pay-per-click scam, many promotional ads can fall into that same stereotype, preventing customers from exploring further. For those that do engage with the ad, more results have come from mobile users than desktop users. Seemingly due to the fact that Facebook offer claim ads don’t require mobile users to travel to a separate page or link to share or redeem an offer, unlike websites such as Groupon.

The Video Ad

As technology progresses in the online world, what were once television commercials can now be used on social media. Facebook is now allowing businesses to post 15-30 second videos, which begin on auto-play as soon as the online user scrolls over them. However, the big problem with video ads is the cost to result ratio as well as the content not being heard by users that do not have their speakers turned on at the time of viewing the ad in their timeline. At up to 250% more in cost than a YouTube ad, the ability to skip over and disengage with a Facebook video ad is incredibly easy. With a simple scroll of your thumb, the video is silenced, stopped and gone from view. The key to a successful video ad is to be precise, intriguing, consistent in conveying emotion and to catch your target demographic at the right time. Engagement is also greatly increased by adding simplified text to the video to help convey the message. With only a few seconds before your ad is swiped away, you’ll need to be inventive and incredibly eye catching.

The Carousel Ad

One of the most successful social media advertising options is the carousel ad. Basically, it is a multi-image advertisement that features a link with a call to action for the product or business. Carousel ads use a variety of images to show specific products and details, allowing a brief story to be told. The movement of the ads allows it to be eye-catching and the convenience of a simple click to follow up allows for great results. In fact, carousel ads get up to 10 times more engagement with online traffic than single image ads.

There are so many types of advertising that you can use to promote your business on social media, all with varying results for each target market, product or service. If you have any questions about which type of advertising, social or otherwise, is right for your business in order to achieve the results you have in mind, or if you need help setting up any online advertising to generate real results, please give us a call at 705-252-4180. We are always here to help your business grow.