Is Facebook advertising an effective Sales Channel? 

Facebook marketing continues to grow strongly in popularity year over year. Facebook marketing refers to paid advertising on Facebook.  Additionally, companies have become strongly active in utilizing free publications, ie postings. This article focuses primarily on how paid Facebook advertising can bring additional benefits to your business in an ever-increasing market.

Is Facebook advertising worth the cost?

Fortunately, Facebook marketing and advertising effectiveness can be validated by using data analytics.  Any company can see directly if Facebook marketing and advertising is worth it for them.  There are many different points to look at for the profitability of advertising and of course the most popular metric are the direct sales brought to your business by Facebook marketing. However, we need to keep in mind that not many companies have e-commerce and without e-commerce it is not possible to directly verify the direct sales generated by advertising.  We can, however, determine direct sales impact by looking at the indicators of advertising productivity before direct sales. A few examples of this are:

How many saw the ad

• How many saw the ad
• How many people clicked the ad and ended up on the website
• How much did we pay for each customer who ended up on the website

The figures above can be used to compare the productivity to different channels. Many wonder if Google keyword advertising is more profitable for business than Facebook marketing and advertising and the only way to be sure is to enable analytics.  Without tracking analytics, it is almost impossible to say whether Facebook marketing and advertising as a whole is more profitable for your business than any other channel.

Below is a snapshot from one of our client’s Google Ads keyword advertising reports. The picture shows that in July 2020, one “click”, ie a potential customer, cost the company $0.28 on Google.

Below is a picture of our same client’s Facebook advertising report, which illustrates that in July 2020, one potential customer costs $0.16 with Facebook advertising.

Which advertising channel would you choose for your business if a visitor to your website with Google keyword advertising costs $0.28 but a visitor with Facebook advertising only costs $0.16?

In the example abovel, the company sells its services to consumers but in our experience, B2B sales may well get cheaper traffic from Facebook marketing too. For many of our customers, Facebook marketing is definitely worthwhile and the return on investment is justified through multiple contacts, leads and transactions.

Facebook Marketing and Dynamic Advertising - What is it?

What is dynamic advertising in Facebook Marketing advertising? Facebook advertising is able to take advantage of a form of artificial intelligence called machine learning, which is fairly new.  With this method of advertising, Facebook recommends products or services that are directly related to a potential client’s other searches.  For example, if you search for trips on an airline website, Facebook will match ads to your searches.   If you’ve searched for beach vacations, you might just see ads for swimwear and sunglasses.  If you search for trips to cold weather locations, you might just see ads for coats and skis. 

Dynamic advertising can also be used in all online stores to target advertising to those customers who have been browsing products on the website but have still haven’t made their purchases. In addition, the dynamic ad format can be used on any website that has a “Product List” even if nothing can be purchased from the website. Product listings are used a lot today in the structure of websites because it can easily highlight various services and products as well as related product descriptions.

Dynamic ads can be set to appear in several different places including the Facebook timeline, right-hand ads (only in a computer browser), Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and Audience Network, which contains a large number of mobile phone applications. Enabling “Product Listing” on your website can afford you really good coverage with dynamic ads.

How often should I update my Facebook ad?

An effective Facebook marketing strategy, will review Facebook advertising and its productivity through reports at least monthly but preferably on a daily basis. This allows you to optimize your ads and pause unprofitable ads before a large portion of your budget is spent on a poorly performing ad. Some of the ads work surprisingly well, and in these cases, you may not want to update the ad for several months or even years. An ad does not “wear out” by appearing too many times to the same audience if the target group is precisely defined.  Also, it can be specified, for example, that the ad may appear to the same person only once. 

After all, an advertisement does not become obsolete if the topic is relevant for a longer period of time.  We recommend choosing neutral images also in order to prevent dating the material.  For example,  avoid images with snow or a similar seasonal phenomenon. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it - if the ad gets a great result, it is usually not worth updating since you know it can lead to a great result.  However, you should make new versions of the ad and test whether these new ads get the same result or even a better result.

How should I track Facebook advertising?

Facebook advertising should be monitored almost daily but at least weekly. Otherwise, it’s possible to lose your marketing budget to a poorly performing ad. Continuous testing and creating new ads is one of the most important cornerstones of successful advertising in all digital marketing, so Facebook marketing is no exception.  In addition to tracking ads, it’s important to create several different audiences for your ads, and if some of the defined audiences don’t achieve the desired outcome, it’s a good idea to exclude less well-performing audiences within the same ad.  This will ensure your company gets the best possible outcome from Facebook advertising.

Should I increase the Facebook Marketing budget?

If you constantly monitor how Facebook advertising works and accurately measure the results with the Swydo tool, for example, you will find out very simply from the reports whether Facebook advertising is profitable and whether it is worth increasing your media budget. In addition, it is a good idea to compare Facebook advertising with other channels such as Google advertising if your company has more than one way of digital marketing.

In general, it is our recommendation to increase your media budget and reduce the marketing budget of traditional channels, such as trade fairs, print advertising, mailings and other channels with lesser ability to target reach.

How do you make Facebook advertising work?

If you are still wondering how Facebook advertising could bring more sales to your company, then contact us and we can work it out together.  We are available to meet online at your earliest convenience and would love to get your Facebook marketing strategy up and running.

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