Alternative Facebook Advertising for Creating a Newsfeed Presence
Alternative Facebook Advertising for Creating a Newsfeed Presence
If you've already read our article on remarketing and its benefits then you will be familiar with the retargeting process and understand the value it can add to your marketing mix. What we didn't discuss in that article however was the ability to serve your remarketing ads in the Facebook Newsfeed which is pretty hot property as you can imagine.
Facebook advertising has gradually expanded its offering from sponsored ads in the sidebar to boosted posts and page promotions and only relatively recently has incorporated retargeting as an advertising option. What this means is that once a user has visited your site you can then bid to serve them a sponsored display ad in their highly frequented Facebook newsfeed.
The Numbers
According to published Facebook data summarised by the NZH earlier this year, in New Zealand there are 2.5 million active Facebook users each month with 1.9 million accessing the interface each day on average 14 times. Globally the numbers are huge with 1.4 billion registered users.
As you could expect, Facebook facilitates great demographic, geographic and interest control of who ads are served to as each user has a profile which generally states birthday, gender, location and often occupation and hobbies. The huge numbers of highly active users and great audience data availability makes Facebook advertising quite attractive.
Performance Tips
Because of the nature of remarketing combined with the wide range of ad serving options in Facebook you can be very targeted with your advertising. This provides a great opportunity for improving the ROI of your campaigns.
To put this in perspective imagine that for a retail ad to be served to a particular user they must have first visited that retailer's website, performed certain actions on this site but also be female, between 24 and 30 and living in Wellington. The audience for this ad is thus very well defined and any imagery and messaging should be tailored to that person, increasing the chances of engagement and conversion.
A bit of a balancing act is necessary however as if you become too specifc in your audience definition then the size of that audience quickly shrinks so keep this in mind when building your lists.
Users of social media have certain expectations and the ads you create for this medium will likely be more successful if they are easily digested and evoke emotion. This could be anything from a humourous or clever image through to short motivational quotes.
Our Take
The Facebook newsfeed is a very competitive environment where posts from friends, pages a user follows, posts friends have liked, comments, and other ads and distractions all wrestle for attention. Facebook advertising might not be a catch all for your business' needs but in our opinion it can add great value to a digital marketing portfolio.
If you would like assistance with getting Facebook advertising campaigns or other digital advertising underway, touch base with This Side Up and we can suggest the best approach for your unique situation.