Facebook Advertisement: Is it worth your money in 2023?

Facebook is where it all began. The platform that revolutionized how people interact with each other on daily basis. Though you can point out the negatives of social media but from a business perspective you cannot deny the incredible advert reach it offers. Meta platforms which include Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp collectively has billions of users. Now, what is a better way to showcase your product or services to these billions of users than Facebook Advertisement. On top of that you can target a group of audience, based on interests, region, gender, age, and what not. On top of that Facebook/Meta Advertisements are quite cheap. If Meta adverts are so powerful why did we raise the question is it worth it in the first place?

Reach

If you google Facebook advert reach it has grown over the years. But, the organic reach has been decreased for businesses on Facebook as a step taken to increase adverts business. The decline in organic reach of businesses is intentional. Facebook made several changes to its recommendation algorithms to incorporate this decline in organic reach. More content was recommended based on user's inner network instead of mere interest. User activity and interest was used to drive traffic towards target advertisement. Because, of this the content recommendation quality dropped and user's activity on the platform decreased. In view of this Facebook again improved the quality of recommendations and also a new feature of reels was introduced. Now, if you are a small business and you can produce good quality reels content.

The reach that you will get via reels will be far greater than you will get with paid advertisement in terms of quality. That's why there is a shift towards content creation. Even though this content creation approach is free and brings quality traffic to your products or service yet you might need some paid advertisement to grow faster. In that regards I recommend using micro influencers for advertisement instead of Facebook advertisement. These micro influencers are far more connected to their userbase than Facebook and you will get far better engagement than advertisement. And this is not just my opinion look at the trend how big brands are using micro influencers more than adverts themselves.

Engagement

Reach is fine but engagement is a completely different metrics. When we talk about engagement in terms of business and advertising we can categorize engagement in three categories awareness, consideration, post purchase. Awareness basically means traffic, bounce rate, subscribers in this category Facebook advertisement clearly win in this category. Being a platform with billions of users Facebook will bring you far more traffic than micro influencers or content creation. Though content creation may act a cherry on e cake as it will get you free traffic. But, Facebook advertisement are important to drive vast traffic. But, when it comes to consideration we see a drop in Facebook quality. Consideration basically means click through rates, cost per lead, cost per acquisition.

And if you look at the cost per consideration engagement it is higher in Facebook compared to micro influencers. Because, the traffic that you receive from Facebook is targeted via data collected by Facebook and the traffic you receive might not fully entrust you to buy your product or services. However, the traffic that comes through a micro influencer comes with trust of the influencer is more likely to generate sales and drive revenue. The third category is post purchase. Every lead that comes from Facebook is charged whether that leads to revenue growth or not. And there is a very low chance of leads becoming returning visitors and giving a higher lifetime value. On the contrary the traffic that comes through micro influencers has a higher rate of returning visitors, lifetime value, leads to higher revenue growth.

Target Audience

When it comes to targeting. There is no competition with Facebook because of its abundance data tracking methods. You can dictate which interest should the target audience have, their age, gender, region, and what not. Though Facebook allows you to target audience very efficiently if you want to tap into a niche audience micro influencers will get you better results. Say, you want to access an audience of techies who buy products only after a through research. Instead of targeting that audience with Facebook adverts hiring a tech micro influencer makes more sense.

\Whatever, the micro influencer would say to the same audience would be heard louder and on top of that you will get more niched audience without experimenting with targeting rules. On top of that these micro influencers can give you access to niches audience across all their platforms YouTube, Spotify, websites, and also their Facebook, Instagram, twitter. Most Micro Influencers have presence across all these platforms. And Unlike Facebook with micro influencers you get access to all these untapped opportunities.

Is Facebook ads worth it?

In one word I would say yes. But, the answer is much more complicated. The way I see it Facebook ads can be utilized best to create awareness. Facebook ads can really help your brand to be known but it is then micro influencer marketing that will drive most revenue. If you are big brand you must focus on building a strategy around using Facebook ads as awareness tool combined with your own content creation and using micro influencers to build trust in the brand and drive more sales. However, if you are a small business you should use targeted either use nano influencers for your niche product or service and put more focus into content marketing.

I would love to here your thoughts about this article. Do you think this article provides some valuable information? And if you have any opinion on the article feel free to comment.