Last week we had a webinar with Dennis Yu, Facebook marketing guru and CEO of BlitzMetrics. Dennis gave an extremely comprehensive and detailed presentation. Basically all he did was go into Facebook.com/advertising and demonstrate how to create, modify and target.
You can watch the entire Facebook marketing webinar here.
How Targeted is It?
Let me preface this by saying that I have dabbled in Facebook ads a bit, not a great deal. So, I was fairly surprised at the specificity with which marketers can target Facebook users.
BtoB marketers can target based on title, type of title, interests, company and even location. So, if you wanted to target only the VP of Marketing at Toyota, you could. Or, if you wanted to target all marketing managers in North Dakota, you could do that too. PR professionals could target bloggers, editors and writers at specific publications.
The ads appear either in the newsfeed or on the side of the News Feed.
In the BtoC world you can get even more targeted. This is where Facebook has true power. Marketers can target only moms that like a certain restaurant, or only moms that have babies, or only moms that shop at certain stores, etc. al. Long story short: marketers can hyper-target any group of consumers, or even specific consumers, based on their interests.
Wow.
What About Click-Through Rate?
The reason that Facebook has been beaten up a bit in the marketing world is because of low CTR. Dennis says the News Feed CTR averages around 1% and the traditional CPC CTR, the ads that appear on the side of the News Feed, average around .5%.
These are slightly lower CTRs than some retargeting tactics, but not so low that a marketer would simply discard Facebook as an advertising option.
Keep in mind that these ads are more targeted than most retargeting campaigns could ever hope to be AND they are generally promoting some sort of content. This builds your name as a content ‘expert’ even if the ad isn’t clicked.
Now Facebook is Rolling out Video Ads
AdWeek and Hubspot reported last week that Facebook is now coming out with video ads for News Feeds. They will reportedly play automatically, but will be muted.
It is unclear right now whether the videos will only be in the News Feeds themselves, or if they’ll appear elsewhere on the site.
Should You Try Marketing with Facebook?
Honestly, it is worth a try. Your budget doesn’t need to be very substantial, so your risk is relatively low. You can promote content and get very valuable traffic to your site. Plus, with the ability to target SOOOOOOO specifically, you can truly get the audience you want for your content.
So, whether you’re a BtoB marketer, a BtoC marketer, or an agency, you should try Facebook ads to determine if they work for you.
Remember, most Americans log on to Facebook multiple times each day.
