Are Paid Facebook Ads Worth It For Small Businesses?

When you run a small business every penny counts. This means considering what will result in the highest returns for the investment you put in. One aspect you may be considering are paid Facebook ads. Given the fact that millions of people are on there every day there is a big opportunity to reach your target audience. In this article, we are going to look at paid Facebook ads and whether or not they are a worthwhile investment for your small business.

How it works

Essentially Facebook advertising works on the same principles as a pay per click campaign whereby you pay for the amount of times someone clicks on your post. This can either be done by a specific paid for advert or by “boosting” posts.

Boosting posts is where you pay to get your posts seen by more people whereas a Facebook advert is more specifically targeted. One of the major benefits of this is that the targeting can be for a very specific demographic- if you only want to promote your services to 30-year-old female mechanics in Bungay then this is totally up to you.

Disadvantages

One issue people have with Facebook advertising is that it may not be specifically for an audience. While you can adjust the demographic, they may not necessarily want to see your advert and if not handled in the right way this can be counterproductive.

How it is most effective

It is recommended that any Facebook advertising campaign focus on either increasing awareness of a brand or getting more leads for potential sales. In order to gauge whether or not this has worked there are a few ways to measure the success of a campaign-

• Page impressions (the number of times people saw your advert)- remember this does not necessarily equate to engaging or wanting to buy!
• Reach- How many people looked at it (this is different from impressions as some people may have seen the page more than once)
• Likes and shares- If people are actively sharing it then the campaign is effective enough to warrant that
• Comments- It is important to look at these because any questions about your business should be followed up as well as acting on any feedback
• Click through rate- The number of times people went to your site after seeing the ad

Follow up

Once you have finished a Facebook ad campaign you can then look at the results. Sometimes they can be surprising- you may have targeted a certain audience only to find a completely different one was interested in what you have to offer them.

Furthermore, make sure that you build on any feedback and have additional content running alongside the ad campaign as this will show you are engaging on a number of levels.

For more information on how we can help with your promotional campaign contact Digi Toolbox now and we will be happy to discuss your ideas in more detail.