Understanding the Different Ways to Leverage Facebook for Marketing

Facebook has revolutionized how we communicate with each other, how we behave online, and how we make purchases. With an average of more than 1.73 billion people logging onto the social media platform every day—not to mention, 2.6 billion monthly active users—Facebook has not only incredible reach, but also consumer data that can be very valuable to both B2B and B2C organizations.

FACEBOOK MARKETING TOOLS

Maintaining an active Facebook page is an important element in many social media strategies. It’s a great way to connect with customers in a more organic and personal fashion. However, as Facebook continues to decrease organic reach for business pages, it can be challenging to be seen in your community’s news feed without spending some money. Below, we provided an overview of the different advertising options available to businesses on Facebook.

FACEBOOK ADS

Facebook Ads can be one of the most effective marketing tactics to promote your brand, events, and special deals. When building Facebook ads, you have a few options:

• Link Ads: Drive audiences to specific pages of your site to help build the traffic to your website, such as video ads or carousel ads (displaying up to 10 images or videos in one single post)
• Lead Ads: Gated content that requires individuals to submit personal information into a form in order to view the content
• Business Page Like Ads: Promote your Business Page to increase your number of page likes

One of the key advantages to using Facebook ads is that you can target your ads based on any number of criteria, including location, interests, gender, age, and much more. The ability to run ads that precisely target a specific demographic can help ensure your ads reach those who fit your target audience.

Another great aspect of advertising with Facebook Ad Manager is the wide selection of ad placements options. Depending on the goals of your campaign, advertisers have the choice to place ads in many different places including:

• Facebook News Feeds: Ads placed on the Facebook News Feed appear among organic posts, which can make the ads feel more organic themselves.
• Instagram Feeds: About 1 billion people use Instagram every month, making any Instagram Ad placement a great option to target and reach large audiences, especially for ecommerce campaigns. With this placement option, your ads appear in users’ Instagram feed when scrolling through the app.
• Facebook Marketplace: Facebook Marketplace is used by 800 million people every month. Ads placed on Facebook Marketplace appear among other relevant products on the Marketplace homepage, which helps these ads seem more organic.
• Facebook Video Feeds: Video is a great way to engage audiences. With this placement option, video ads appear between organic videos on Facebook Watch and on the Facebook News Feed.
• Facebook Right Columns: These ads only appear to people browsing Facebook on a desktop computer, as they appear in the right-hand column.
• Instagram Explore: Instagram Explore is where users go when they want to see relevant content related to their interests from accounts they don’t already follow. This can be a great placement option for businesses looking for more exposure, especially since more than 50 percent of accounts on Instagram use Explore every month.
• Messenger Inboxes: Messenger Inbox can be a favorable ad placement option, especially with younger generations. In fact, it’s reported that more than 60 percent of Gen Zers want to be able to communicate with more brands via messaging. This ad placement is an interactive way for consumers to learn about your brand on a level that feels more personal.

BOOSTED POSTS

Boosting a post is a great way to promote a post that’s already present on your Facebook business’ page as a way to receive more engagement. Boosted, or sponsored, posts are different from Facebook Ads; however, because they require a monetary investment, it’s still considered a type of ad.

When boosting a post, you’ll have the option to either push the post to people who “like” your page and their friends, or people you choose through targeting. You’ll also be able to set your budget. There are certainly pros and cons to choosing either option—when you target people who like your page, you’re also pushing it to their friends who may or may not have similar interests.

For greater customization in who your boosted posts reach, you can target people you want to reach, as well as their location, age, gender, and up to 10 interests. What differentiates this type of boosted post from an ad is that boosted posts don't have all of the same customization features to target specific audiences as ads that are created in Ad Manager.

 

Are you interested in advertising your business through Facebook? Our team of digital marketing professionals are experts both organic and paid social media. Through high-quality content, smart promotional strategies, and paid advertising campaigns, Aztek can super-charge your social media presence and turn it into one of your company’s most effective marketing tools. Contact us today to learn more.