Is Facebook Advertising Helping or Hurting Your Business?
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As of 2022, over 72% of the American people have Facebook, the majority of them using it daily. Among these members, there are currently 7 million active Facebook advertisements (or AD’s) running right now. However, people across the globe, business owners and personal creators alike, are questioning daily if their advertisement money is being put to a good use. Not only do advertisers on Facebook often feel confused with the over 1300 different targeting options, 15 objectives and 6 main formats to choose from, people are concerned if Facebook AD’s are financially worth it or not. Of course, advertising your product in any form will have it benefits, but you need to ask yourself if those advantages outweigh the disadvantages. So the question is...
ARE FACEBOOK ADS WORTH IT?
Facebook Advertising Advantages
• There are nearly 3 Billion active Facebook users monthly, providing access to your business or personal products.
• Audience Transparency allows you to see in real-time how many viewers and interactions each of your advertisements receives
• Drive traffic to your website or Facebook page by adding a button link to your advertisement.
• Target the audience that you are looking to sell
• Target users who have researched similar brands or products.
• Easy to create yourself and design without hiring yet another company for your marketing, such as the actual design of your AD itself.
Facebook Advertising Disadvantages
As all of these things sound great and wonderful, understanding why these key points are actually not going to benefit you is pivotal to the financial growth or financial demise of your company. Financial gains may sometimes be "too good to be true" and spending money to Advertise on Facebook is absolutely one of those times where you are going to want to dig a little deeper into its "benefits".
We’ll start by breaking these points down.
1. 3 Billion Active Users
Facebook and its marketing team love this as a selling point but, in all reality, this is a huge downfall to Facebook Advertising. Advertising on Facebook does not mean your AD will be in front of the eyes of 3 Billion people. It’s actually a very minimal number. Yes, the more money that you spend on your Facebook AD, the more people that will see it. However, AD’s are typically scrolled past on social media as people don’t like to be sold and their main objective for getting on Facebook is that of a social reason. As an advertiser, you’ve just turned someone away from your promotion rather than to it because they feel an “AD bombardment”
2. Audience Transparency
Facebook does a pretty good job on providing information to see how well your AD’s are doing. But, what does this information really mean? Often times when you advertise on Facebook, your numbers can look really high until you realize that the interactions with your post (likes, comments, messages to your Facebook page or even clicks on your website) are actually very small. Once again, Facebook loves for you to think that your AD’s are getting in front of more people than they actually are. They also count “scroll by’s” into your analytics. Just because the numbers may look nice doesn’t mean that the actual interest in your post is.
3. Drive Traffic to your Website
Of course you want to drive more people to your company, that’s what advertising is all about. However, you need to remember that people are on Facebook to get a social break from the rest of the world. If a consumer wants to find a product or service, they’re going to do a Google search for it and not scroll Facebook hoping that it will show up on their timeline. That's why it's important to ensure that you hire the right marketing and web development company like ZZZippy so that when people are online searching for a product or service that you provide, your business shows up at the top of their chosen search engine.
4. Audience Targeting
If you own a company, it’s fair to say that you have a certain demographic that your business caters to. Maybe you’re a lingerie store and you want your Targeted Audience to be females between the ages of 21 and 25. Facebook makes this easy to input these demographics as your Targeted Audience. However, in doing so, you've just lost out on the possibility of males who would have otherwise potentially bought your product for their significant others. Once again, this is where putting your money into a great marketing and web development company is your best bet at success. Now you have reached 100% of the demographics that are searching for your products and services.
5. Targeting Related Searches
Advertising with Facebook is ineffective when it comes to Targeting Related Searches for two reasons. One, people become uncomfortable when they feel as if their devices are listening to what they say and to what they search. This is a major turnoff to consumers. Two, if the consumer has already searched for a product and chosen your competitor because they’re coming up on google searches and you’re not due to the fact that you’ve put your money into Facebook AD’s and not an SEO optimized website, you’ve already lost that customer and maybe even for good.
6. Do Your Advertising Yourself
As this can seem like it will benefit you now, cutting corners on certain aspects of advertising is a huge no no. Your advertising reflects on the kind of company that you are and, regardless if you think you are a designer guru, professionals are professionals for a reason. You may save a few dollars now by designing an AD yourself but this can lose you a lot of customers and in turn money in the long run.
That’s not all folks, there are actually even more downsides to Facebook Advertising than just these. Ask yourself these few questions before giving a multi-billion dollar company your hard earned cash.
• Are these analytics true?
• Am I reaching new people rather than the people who were already on my page?
• Am I getting a Return on my Investment?
Return on Investment
As a business owner, you should constantly and consciously be asking yourself if you are getting a Return on your Investment. If you put money into something to better your business, you want to make more money than you initially put in. Advertising in itself is a wonderful thing and can open the door to more opportunities than some people could ever imagine. However, getting yourself into a position where you are putting money into advertisement that isn't reliable, is not a good business move. Remember this, Facebook is one of the largest corporations in the world and is going to continue to grow regardless if they have your business or not. They do not know who you are which means that they do not specifically care about you, your company or your return on investment. The best thing that you can do for yourself when it comes to your business (and in turn your quality of life) is hire an Advertising Agency that knows exactly what they’re doing, knows exactly what your objective is and truly cares about the growth of your company and your happiness along the way. ZZZippy is always your first choice in Marketing Specialization.