In spite of what you may have heard, Facebook ads consistently convert and drive serious revenue for those who know the formula – but for those who don’t, it’s like pouring money down the drain.
Facebook Advertising the Real Deal
Lately, there’s been a lot of debate about whether or not Facebook’s popularity among marketers is justified. Can your sales funnel profit from using Facebook advertising or not? Well, just let the numbers speak for themselves:
- About a fifth of the world’s population is on Facebook. That’s quite an audience!
- Nearly 800 million people log in to check their Facebook profile each and every day.
- Considerably more Americans go to their Facebook newsfeed for daily news than pick up a newspaper (let that sink in).
- Facebook’s ad prices are still pretty cheap. You can still pay around twenty-five cents per thousand impressions for some campaigns.
- 90% of B2C marketers use Facebook advertising in their marketing strategy.
But why? Why is Facebook different from everyone else at the social media party? One word: targeting. Yes, I know, other social platforms have targeting, too. But the extent of Facebook’s targeting and what you can DO with that targeting truly differentiate them from the rest. Not only can you target based on apps liked, favorite music, purchase behavior, and life events, but you can also do two really amazing things when marketing on Facebook:
- Custom Audience: Unlike any other social platform, Facebook allows you to create your own audience by importing email addresses, sharing a Google+ circle, etc., which Facebook then matches with their own records, pulling all this data together for a highly optimized, customized, and targeted audience to market to.
- Lookalike Audience: You can select an audience based on various criteria, and simply task Facebook with creating another audience just like it. This can be based on visitors to a specific website or page or even users for a specific app.
Conversion Secret Sauce
So, everyone knows videos convert amazingly well, right? Then why aren’t you putting them in your Facebook ads? As is, Facebook enjoys massive success when it comes to conversion rates, simply because audiences are hyper targeted. But many of the most successful online marketers have begun to see the power of using video in their ads.
In case you need a refresher or just hadn’t heard, video, as a medium, is like marketing pixie dust. Most people already know to use video on their landing pages for better conversion rates. But just in case you aren’t one of them, check this out…
Marketing research firm, Demand Metric, surveyed 235 marketing professionals in a research study sponsored by leading video marketing firm, Vidyard. Of those professionals:
- 71% found videos to convert better than any other form of content.
- 95% confirmed that video was an important (more so than ever, in fact) and valuable form of marketing content.
- 69% indicated that video had been a good vehicle for lead generation.
Marriage Made in Heaven
So, if Facebook Ads can be super targeted and reach a ton of people, and videos convert way better than anything out there – maybe it’s time we introduced them to one another! And in fact, that’s what many in video marketing are already doing.
Imagine the conversion power of using videos on Facebook to drive traffic to your landing page where you already have an awesome converting video waiting to reel them in. It’s just common sense. But if you want a case study, Heineken recently tried it and scored a slam dunk, reaching 35 million users in just three days! Their click-through rate was a sweet 16%, leading their senior media director of marketing, Ron Amram, to comment that Facebook had exceeded their expectations and even outdid TV advertising.
“YouTube and Facebook are equal players now, or at least close to it. What we’re finding is that we have to consider Facebook as the key video partner going forward because not only does it have the reach but the effectiveness.” -Ron Amram, Heineken
Heineken found that Facebook was the perfect home for their videos, due to the engaging atmosphere and high likeliness for conversion. When viewers clicked on their ads and went to their landing pages, they were already ready to act, ready to opt in, ready to buy.
Heineken isn’t alone. Others are catching on to the whole Facebook-video thing. In November of 2014, more videos were uploaded to Facebook than to Youtube! Auto-play only enhances this dynamo – since about a year ago, all videos in the Facebook newsfeed automatically play as you scroll over them. This is also adding to the effectiveness of this medium. And with engagement climbing 25% on Facebook earlier in 2014 and a report from Adobe announcing that video was the most popular medium on social sites, it’s not hard to see the trend.
Videos convert. Facebook ads convert. Putting them together is where the smart marketers are going now.
