This is a guest post by our fan & follower, Mohit Maheshwari, Chief Strategist at IT company NMG Technologies. These are his personal observations/views/opinions & this Website may or may not agree with them.
Millions of people worldwide use Facebook for entertainment purposes & even for carrying out their usual business dealings. This makes Facebook the perfect hub to advertise your business on. What makes advertising your business on Facebook different from usual advertising mediums is that you have the liberty to make your ad appear on the Facebook-owned media platforms as well such as Instagram, Audience Network, & even Messenger.
As with other media advertising platforms, Facebook has its own set of pros & cons when it comes to advertising businesses. Below are a few advantages & disadvantages of using Facebook for business advertising:
Pros Of Facebook Advertising
Setting An Ad Objective
In this primer on the pros and cons of Facebook advertising, here we go. Once you have decided to use Facebook as your advertising medium, it will ask you to define an ad objective. This is the greatest benefit of using Facebook for advertising purposes. This is because it gives you a chance to define clearly your goal & what you wish to achieve with your ad. Other than this, Facebook also divides the ad into 3 marketing techniques: awareness, consideration, & conversion. Awareness is concerned with gaining the attention of people, whereas, consideration deals with engaging the audience. Lastly, conversion is for measuring how the results turned out in terms of store visits or catalog sales.
Setting A Target Audience
Another advantage of using Facebook for running your business ads is that it provides you with a chance to select your target audience. These are the people towards whom your ads are directed. Again, Facebook has 3 audience selection tools to choose your relevant audiences, & they are custom audiences, core audiences, & lookalike audiences.
Custom audience tool lets you deal with the people who have shown interest in your business in the past. They are the ones present in your contact list, app users, & those who dealt with your business in the past.
The core audience is present to let you choose your audience based on the geographical location, age demographics, interests, & connections. You can apply whatever you deem suitable to target your ad to a specific audience.
A lookalike audience, as the name implies, is a tool to let you pick out the audience that has similar interests to your present customers. If you are not familiar to use this tool or you do not have time to perfectly create an ad campaign then choose the Facebook ad agency that can help you to grow your business.
Other than these 3 tools, Facebook can also place your ads to a suitable audience automatically.
Variety Of Ad Templates To Choose From
Another added advantage of using Facebook advertising is that it has a large variety of ad templates to choose from so that you can pick the one that is the most relevant to your business & the type of advertisement you are aiming to achieve. All these ad formats are designed in a way to function on any device & connection speed. Some of the ad types are mentioned below:
- Dynamic ads
- Video
- Slideshow ads
- Lead ads
- Messenger ads
- Playable ads
- Story ads
For those who have no time to learn or do not feel comfortable running a successful campaign, hiring a Facebook ad agency is a better option.
Picking Your Own Budget
When you pick Facebook as your advertisement medium, you have the reins of your budget in your hand. Only you have the liberty to choose how much you wish to spend on your advertisements. You can base your budget on a lifetime or daily budget. This is the time that you decide for how long you wish your ads to run.
Facebook also gives you the opportunity to calculate your required budget by inputting the reach of your audience & the frequency of your ad. This is a huge pro as it enables you to calculate the budget you would require to achieve your desired ad reach.
Check How Well Your Ads Are Doing With Facebook Analytics
It is through Facebook that you can also monitor how well your ads are running. One of the tools of Facebook measurement is Ads Manager. Ads Manager can run smoothly on the phone app, therefore, you have the freedom to see how well your ads are running anytime & anywhere. Besides this, you can also track the progress of your ads on other Facebook-owned platforms as well such as Instagram, Audience Network, & Messenger.
The major advantage of having this tool to work with is that it allows you to speculate what is working in your ad campaign & what isn’t. You can also see which areas of your ad you need to work on to increase your audience’s engagement.
Cons Of Facebook Advertising
The Huge Competition Between Ads
If you are looking to run your ad on Facebook, then you need to be fully aware that competition between ads on Facebook is a real thing. Facebook makes use of ad auctions to determine which ad gets to run on their platform. They do this by carefully analyzing the quality, bid, & estimated action rates of all ads that are submitted. Therefore, if you are a small company that has not put in a huge bid, then the chances of your ad getting to the audience at a certain point in time are slim to none.
Age Demographics
If you are looking to advertise on Facebook, then you need to understand the age demographics fully. It is understandable that people of all ages use Facebook with the senior community engaging on Facebook at a fast rate. On the other hand, the younger generation is now quickly shifting from Facebook to other social media platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, & Instagram. So, if you are hoping to target that particular age group with your Facebook ads then you need to think again. You should analyze the age demographics fully to figure out if Facebook advertising will work in your favor or not.
Handle Negativity
There is no doubt that posting an ad on Facebook can get you many views and engagement. However, there is a negative aspect to this as well. If you have a customer who is dissatisfied with your product, he/she can post a review on the social networking Site & drag your name through the mud. Therefore, it is best that you keep a close eye on your Facebook page & monitor it regularly. You should also have a backup plan if things seem to go downhill & know well how to tackle such customers. If you do not have time to manage your Facebook page, you should consider hiring a Facebook ad agency for your business.
