Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms in the world. In recent years Facebook advertising has become commonplace – but is it an effective means of advertising for your business?

Facebook is one of the world’s most popular social media platforms with a global audience. Users tend to access social media on their mobile phones as well as their computer.  Social media is 24/7, this gives you a bigger window of opportunity to target your audience. Your target market is just as likely to see your advert on their morning commute as they are when sitting at their desk browsing social media updates.

In theory, Facebook advertising offers the potential to access a huge audience at any time of day. However, to create effective Facebook advertising you need to set some objectives for your campaign. For example, are you trying to increase your brand awareness or are you trying to drive traffic to your company website? Do you want to encourage people to buy a product or subscribe to updates? Does your firm have an online store that you want to drive traffic to?

The Facebook Ads platform focuses on placing your products and services in front of an audience. However, it takes careful planning in order to create a successful campaign. Think about your target audience and what you want them to do as a result of seeing your advert. If you want them to subscribe or buy a product, you need to give them a reason for doing so. Your audience wants to know what’s in it for them, so tell them.

If you are trying to generate leads from your Facebook campaign, remember that people come to social media to be entertained. If you craft the right message, you will be able to engage your audience, but you will also need to have a compelling offering. For example, if you run a photography business you could offer a free photo shoot for the first 2 businesses to sign up via Facebook for some corporate headshots. If you offer services via an app, you could offer a free 1-year subscription to the first 10 people to download your app, and so on.

If you are trying to generate brand awareness, you may want to share some thought leadership or video content for free. For example, you may decide to produce an interesting video that encourages users to like and share it with their friends on Facebook. If the content is engaging and interesting, they are more likely to share it.

If you are a local business offering local services to local clients, you will need to be very targeted in your approach. You can use Facebook’s geo-targeting options to market to a set of specific users based on their geographic location. If you want to target an audience based on age profile, this might determine whether Facebook is the right platform at all. Perhaps younger customers are using other social media sites whereas older generations may not use social media at all.

Whether Facebook advertising is right for your business really depends on what you are trying to achieve.  The most important thing is to set out some clear objectives, identify your target market and select the most appropriate communication channel. Does Facebook advertising work? Yes, if it is used correctly but it is only one tool. The key is to make sure that you choose the right tool for the job.