Is Facebook Advertising Still Effective?

The answer is yes, extremely effective.

And the reason for that is quite simple: Facebook wants you to succeed. In fact, the more users are happy with their Ad results, the more money will continue to be invested in paid Ads - which is a way for FB to make its exorbitant revenue.

However, the condicio sine qua non (the non-negotiable condition) for Facebook to maintain this profits is to retain the billions of Users that make this happen.

As a matter of fact, would you pay for advertising on a platform that has no audience?

The reason why you want to advertise on FB in the first place, indeed, is because it’s still the most used social media in the World, with 1.79 billion daily visits.

The catch for Facebook marketing is to influence the audience to spend as much time as possible on it - scrolling, chatting, commenting - whilst being constantly exposed to paid Ads.

So, it’s not in Facebook’s interest to see you fail. Or to leave the network.

Therefore, there is no secret algorithm to beat, or Zuckerberg conspiracy to discover - like many Marketers (Gurus) clickbait Ads you see out there are claiming.

Actually, FB aims to help you improve your Ads performances - and it explains the metrics of their algorithms quite openly on their website. You're welcome to check yourself.

But if it is so effective and so straightforward, why is it so difficult to obtain results?

Because this process it’s a nonlinear equation - meaning there are many variables that can make the solution unpredictable.

Let’s start to mention some of these variables.

• The Bid: First of all, the Facebook Advertising platform works through bidding Auctions: which means that the highest bid gets the most visibility. The amount you bid for a click, is not what you’re actually going to pay. It’s the maximum you’re willing to pay. If you bid $10 and your competitors bid $2 you will only pay $2.01. If you try to bid too low you might not get any exposure. Knowing how competitors bid, and what amount is purposeful for your goals is something you learn from experience;
• Ad quality: Ads with better quality perform better. Ads with lower quality ranking tend to cost more. The metrics that the algorithm follows are explained by FB itself. As mentioned before, Facebook algorithms don’t like clickbait type of Ads - or misleading outrageous offers. In general, they do prefer Ads that keep the User Facebook.
• Campaign Goal: Defining what your goal is, is crucial to be on the same page with your results. For instance, if your CG is “Reach”, means that FB will try to show that Ad to as many people as possible - outside the range of people that are the most likely to take action. If you expect this Campaign to increase the sales or even the likes on your page you might not think it has been effective, even though the reach might have been very ample.
• The Targeting: this a huge one and would require a chapter by itself. How broad or detailed depends on your strategy, on your product and your goal. There is no one formula and it’s something you need to research - or get professional help to understand your audience.
• The duration: again, let’s remember that all these factors are correlated and therefore it’s impossible to offer a forever solution. However, regarding duration, there are two main things to consider: a) The time taken for the algorithm to learn where to place your ad and to whom, in order to run effectively can be unpredictable. b) running an Ad too long may cause “Ad blindness” that could lead to the opposite result (such as Users hiding your Ads).
• Your Ad itself: if your Ad itself is boring or too "salesy", most likely, it won't perform well. People get interrupted with Ads all of the time and unless they are already interested in your product, you need to understand that it’s not easy to convert somebody from cold to a hot customer. Not even with discounts or offers.

The variables are too many for one FB post, but I hope you will get this idea clear:

?You Ad needs to show quality; value has become the most important metric for all social media platforms. This is even more true after the iOS updates. Nobody likes Advertising. Everybody likes entertainment, humour, inspiration, learning something interesting, feeling engaged and understood.

By the way, we are considering creating a series of Webinars to help you learn more in-depth how to achieve organic and paid traffic. Please, feel free to express your interest if it is something you would consider useful.