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Using Facebook advertising to reach your target audience

With research stating more than one billion people use Facebook, there’s a wide and varied audience to be reached via the social network. Having a presence on social media is important, and crucially in today’s world, expected.

No longer is the social networking platform considered the reserve of B2C communications. Facebook can also be a useful B2B marketing tool when used correctly.

It’s true that Facebook requires the investment of time – in order to get the most from your page, particularly if growing a following and reach organically. You’ll need to post relevant and timely content regularly and interact with fans of your page. Many people aren’t aware that Facebook offers advanced advertising capabilities that can effectively target a business from your chosen market. What’s more, many Facebook users don’t consider they are being targeted by ads on social media, as they often appear in news feeds alongside stories from their Facebook ‘friends.’

While organic reach can be powerful in generating brand awareness and driving traffic to your website, Facebook advertising can be utilised to target specific groups of people or for generating awareness for certain campaigns. What’s more, as long as you have quality imagery and a well thought out advertisement structure, ads can be placed last minute, meaning time consuming preparation is not necessary.

While advertising via more traditional means can be harder to measure in terms of success, Facebook advertising comes with a wealth of analytics to show how well your ads performed and what return you gained for your investment. This means users are in control of the budget and can optimise and change ads according to performance.

For the uninitiated, Facebook advertising allows you to promote your products or services to those who are most likely to buy or use them.  Facebook offers ad users the opportunity to create audiences that most closely represent their target market, enabling the option to filter their audience by location, gender and even their interests in order to attract new customers.

Existing client databases can also be utilised to promote your business to people who have previously purchased from your brand. Facebook advertising offers the opportunity to target lists of people via the importing of email addresses, allowing for an alternative way to contact customers and those previously interested in your offering.

Facebook advertising allows users to set budgets for campaigns, and also to specify the duration and timeframe of the campaign to ensure its effectiveness and give the ad creator optimum control.

Facebook ad campaigns allow users to choose campaign objectives, which can help ensure your business budget is being maximised effectively and can offer the desired return. Just some of the objectives that can be created include building a following on your Facebook page, driving traffic to your website and generating impressions.

It doesn’t stop there either – Facebook allows ad creators to create lookalike audiences of people who have previously visited your website, in order to target those people that your business may appeal to most.  If you regularly post on a blog or news section on your company website, and then share the post via social media, this can also be boosted for a modest fee to expand the post’s reach. The post will then appear in news feeds of an audience selected by the ads manager, generating brand awareness and with a view to driving traffic to the relevant page on your website if that’s your post objective.

With businesses in many different industries allocating valuable marketing budget to Facebook advertising, it’s definitely not a medium that shows any signs of slowing down. Being arguably one of the most powerful online platforms means Facebook is consistently seeking to remain competitive and create new capabilities to enhance the user and advertiser experience, meaning great value and a measurable result for marketers.

While Facebook advertising can prove an extremely valuable part of an overall marketing strategy, throwing budget at campaigns without consideration of your audience is not a wise move. You’ll get far more value from your budget by carefully considering your audience selection. If you’re unsure how to go about this, you can contact our team of digital marketing experts today for more information.


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