September 25, 2014

By Intrigue

Since Facebook was first developed in 2004, it has grown to become the biggest social media platform on the web. As it grew in popularity, the executives at Facebook realized the potential it held for advertising. Flash forward to 2014, and Facebook Advertising is one of the most popular methods of online advertising.

Before we get into why its become so popular, we should start with the basics. For instance, what is Facebook Advertising?

Facebook advertising is a type of online advertising that allows businesses to advertise their products and services directly on Facebook’s website. These ads are located in two different part of the site. The first advertising location is on the right hand side of the site. These ads are separate from the social content, making them easily identified as advertisements.

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The second advertising location is directly within the social content on your home page. This news feed advertising placement is unique, as they are designed in a way that make them easily mistaken for actual social content.

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Seems pretty simple right? But how is this an effective way of reaching your ideal customers? Isn’t there something like 1.28 billion active Facebook users?! Thats where Facebook advertising excels.

When you set up a Facebook ad, it lets you customize the targeting, so you know exactly the type of person who will see your ad. This customization includes demographic characteristics such age, gender, and location, but also more detailed psychographic characteristics.

Psychographic characteristics give you a better understanding of your customer by highlighting things such as interests and behaviours. This means that if you were a soccer equipment store, you could specifically target people who like and play soccer. Facebook is able to gather and organize this information based on content that you interact with on Facebook.

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So why use Facebook Advertising? Facebook Advertising allows businesses to use detailed market segmentation to reach only their best customers. This means that you’re not wasting dollars reaching customers who have no interest in your product or services. The design of Facebook ads, specially the news feed ads, integrates them into the social content so well that many people don’t realize that they are seeing advertisements. This makes viewers more receptive to your messages as they don’t feel like they are being “sold” to.

But really, with over 1.28 billion active Facebook users, why not use Facebook Advertising?

Intrigue is a Canadian digital marketing company delivering solutions to help businesses get noticed and found. Guided by a commitment to empower leaders to strengthen communities, Intrigue offers website design and development, branding, online advertising, content marketing, graphic design, video production, SEO, and analytics. Take your marketing to the next level and Get Noticed. Get Found.® intrigueme.ca

One thought on “Why use Facebook Advertising?

  1. Hi Tori,

    This is a great post! I just so happen to be researching Facebook Ads for an assignment right now, so it was great to read your clear and concise description.

    Here’s a couple of questions for you: how can companies track the effectiveness of their advertisements? And do you see anything that can be considered a downside of Facebook Ads?

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