Imagine a giant billboard in the middle of a busy highway with thousands of cars passing by it every day. The giant board is advertising an accountancy firm with services varying from simple bookkeeping for small businesses to full tax report preparation for corporates. We all know advertisement works but I can’t stop thinking about how many people who are passing by the billboard would actually be interested in accountancy services? Out of thousands of cars passing the giant board every day, how many are looking for an accountant? I can imagine the numbers are quite slim. Without a doubt, many of the passers are already employed so they wouldn’t be interested in accountancy services, a lot more could be unemployed housewives, children, pupils, pensioners, university students, even senior managers and business owners, but many of them are already in contract with another accountancy firm and they may be quite happy with the service they’re receiving. What do all these people have in common? They are all IRRELEVANT audiences of the ad. Even I dare say, among those passing the billboard might be people who know the accountancy firm and are actually a client. And yes, you guessed it right. The ad is irrelevant to them too. They’re already paying clients, why would anyone want to keep advertising to people who have converted successfully into customers.
Of course, we all know putting ads on billboards do actually work, there’s no doubt they help generate more revenue, but the problem with physical advertisement is that you won’t be able to target your ad to those who are relevant to what you offer, while billboard agencies don’t care about this very important fact. They charge you based on the volume of traffic (or footfall if it’s a smaller urban billboard) that pass the board any given day. So, in effect, you are paying for every single passer while you know only a tiny minority of them might actually be interested in your services or products. This is one of the reasons only big brands often end up in large billboards, because they’re the ones who can absorb the enormous cost of showing their advertisement to an audience of which 99.999% have no interest whatsoever in their brand.
After talking about the pitfalls and disappointments of physical advertisement, I think it’s time for some good news! The good news is that it’s the 21st century and we have quite a few magical tools at our disposal. I’m sure you have heard about Facebook and you probably know Facebook runs advertisement to make ends meet, that’s how they can afford to offer their networking services to more than 1 billion individuals for free! They run ads and they’re astonishingly good at it. I’m going to mention some of the magic trickeries of Facebook Ads in this post, but before I begin let me tell you the single biggest and most important aspect of Facebook Ads: Almost anyone can benefit from Facebook Ads. From a freelance photographer who started their carrier a week ago and the local florist, to the mega multi-national conglomerate that operates in 5 continents they all use Facebook Ads to find new customers and to generate more revenue.
But what makes Facebook Ads so special?
- The ability to target those who are a lot more likely to be interested in your business.
- Accessibility to everyone with any budget, from $1 to $(you name it!).
- The ability to test and try different variants of ads so that you can pick the most successful.
- Tens of millions of people use Facebook every day, so it’s like having your own giant billboard displayed on the world’s busiest highway!
- The AI looks for and finds the audience who look like the ones that have already shown interest in your business.
- The ability to run ads on Facebook and Instagram at the same time. (Facebook owns Instagram after all!)
There are a lot more to say about the wizardry of Facebook Ads but let’s keep it simple and get a little deep into audience targeting. It is the most interesting part in my opinion.
There are hundreds of different parameters that you can tune to target the most relevant crowd. Here are some of them just to name a few:
- Age: You can select the age range so that your ad won’t be displayed to those who are not your potential buyer. For example, if you sell video games you probably don’t want to show your ad to +50-year-olds.
- Sex: Do you even want to show your ad to men if you were a female-only hairdresser?
- Location: You can target your audience based on their geographical location, it can be as small as an urban block or a small neighbourhood to as large as the whole world. So, if you’re a local plumber, you wouldn’t show your ads to someone living in a different state, let alone different country!
- Interest: Now, this is one of the real magics of Facebook Ads. You can target people based on their interest. For example, Tesla target those who are interested in Green Revolution, clean energy and low carbon footprint. If you sell designer handbags, you can target people who are interested in designer brands and fashion shows. How cool is that?
- Annual income: I know this is getting eerily personal, but let’s face it, Facebook knows a lot about us. So, if you’re a high-end mortgage broker you probably want your ad to show only to those whose salaries are above a certain level.
- Anniversary: You can target people whose wedding/engagement anniversary is in the next 30 days or so. If you run a gift shop, you know those people are looking for gifts for their loved ones on their upcoming event.
- Language: This can be really useful for certain businesses. For example, if you provide immigration services to Mexicans, you can target those who speak Spanish and are in a certain geographical location.
There’s a lot more about Facebook audience targeting and we will cover more interesting subjects in the future posts. But for now, what’s important is to acknowledge Facebook is an extremely powerful tool that is helping countless businesses generate more income through efficient, accessible and affordable advertising.
Of course, as with any other profession, running Facebook Ads require expertise, knowledge and experience. The internet is full of stories of people who have invested a significant amount of money on Facebook Ads hoping it can automatically do magic, only to realise their budget is exhausted without a tangible growth in sales. You have to know how to shake the magic wand or else it’ll be a useless stick! Here at DigitalBMS, we are proud to have the best team with years of experience and exceptional talent in creating and running Facebook Ads. Our services have helped business grow their revenue by as much as 5,000% in the course of just one year!
So, if you’re interested in presenting your business on Facebook and/or Instagram; or you have previously used Facebook Ads and didn’t see great results, why not giving us a call so that we can discuss the opportunities and see if we can help you become one of hundreds of thousands businesses that are generating more revenue through Facebook Ads?
