It All Ads Up

Facebook users may not use the social media platform to seek out their favorite brands, but data from Entrepreneur.com shows that 90 percent of users expect that their favorite restaurants and businesses will have a Facebook fan page. A fan page is a useful platform for businesses to direct traffic to their websites, improve search-engine optimization (SEO), engage with fans and strengthen customer relations. However, many brands get stuck when it comes to determining the next step to take after a fan page is built. That next step is to pay a small fee and increase brand awareness through Facebook’s advertising options. Increasing your brand’s awareness early allows your business to mark itself as an industry leader before the competition gets a chance. If one of your competitors places a Facebook ad, that competitor can corner the market, gain followers, and beat your brand to the punch. With recent changes to the Facebook news feed and the increased attention placed on pictures and videos, advertisers on the site are starting to enjoy bigger images and increased engagement. Facebook is drastically scaling down the advertising options that it offers to businesses. The social network plans, over the next six months, to cut more than half of the ad formats that it currently provides to users and will also eliminate the e-commerce aspect of Facebook Offers. “You are going to pick an objective,” Fidji Simo, Facebook’s product manager for ads, told Entreprenuer.com in a June article. “Based on that, we will show you a range of formats. The goal here is to eliminate noise among its ad options and make it easier for small brands to advertise on the platform.” To most effectively reach your brand’s current and potential customers, Facebook ads offer the easiest solution to connect. According to Facebook, people who like your page spend an average of two times more as your customers than people who aren’t connected to you or your brand on Facebook. Setting up Facebook advertising for your fan page will not only reach people who are not currently connected to your page, but it will also promote your brand’s posts, gain followers and increase engagement. Facebook has recently rolled out updates to its ads manager capabilities that allow you to view and manage the advertisements you are sending out. The updates are aimed at increasing effectiveness and providing advertisers with real-time updates of each ad placed on the social network. Facebook advertisements allow you to ensure you receive the best possible feedback from your placed advertisement, which is a step up from traditional advertising in the sense that brands can now target ads by age, gender, interests, and other characterizing groups applicable to the communities you’d like to reach. Undoubtedly, Facebook is here to stay. Your brand should seek the same kind of longevity. Facebook advertising could offer a better return for your company, as you’ll be able to more easily present and track campaigns, and reach the people who really care about your brand. Nobody knows your business as well as you. What do you think, are Facebook ads worth it for your business?