FACEBOOK ADS FOR BUSINESS: Engage with Customers with Precision Targeting
Find your customers on the most popular social media platform.
Whether you’re looking for new customers or reaching out to your current customer base, it makes perfect sense to use the platform that most people use. Facebook is the world’s most popular social media network in terms of the number of active users, with over 2.7 billion monthly active users as of October 2020 (Source: Statista).
In Singapore, 74.4% of the population or almost 4.45 million people are active Facebook users (Source: NapoleonCat), of which 1.53 million are between the ages of 25 and 34.
Facebook is the third most visited website in Singapore after Google and YouTube, with over 82.5 million in monthly traffic
At 79%, Facebook is the third most-used social media platform after YouTube (86%) and WhatsApp (81%) in Singapore
Singaporeans spend about 9 minutes and 12 seconds (Source: Similarweb) or about 17 minutes and 48 seconds (Source: Alexa) on each visit to Facebook
Singaporeans visit about 9.3 pages (Source: Similarweb) or 7.8 pages (Source: Alexa) every time they visit Facebook
Facebook says ads can reach 3.70 million people in Singapore
Facebook’s reported advertising reach of Singapore’s total population aged 13 and up is 71%
48.6% of Facebook’s ad reach in Singapore is female, while 51.4% of it is male
99% of Facebook users in Singapore access via any kind of mobile phone, while only 1% use a laptop or desktop computer alone
On average, Facebook users in Singapore like 1 Page, like 9 posts, write 3 comments, share 1 post, and click on 17 ads over a period of 30 days
31% of Facebook Pages use paid media with an average page reach of 29.2%, with average organic (or non-paid) reach at 7.2%
The average engagement rate for Facebook posts of any kind is 4.11%—video posts have an engagement rate of 5.83%, image posts are at 4.37%, and link sharing posts are at 4.10%
Source: Datareportal, Digital 2020: Singapore
Reach your marketing objectives with specially designed campaigns.
94% of businesses on Facebook have invested in paid ads or sponsored posts (Source: Buffer). As 78% of marketers consider Facebook most effective for reaching their business goals, it’s no wonder why 46% of businesses plan to increase their budget on Facebook in 2021 (Source: Hootsuite Social Trends 2021).
The key to this effectiveness is the way Facebook allows you to choose from 11 marketing objectives which are directly tied to what you want your ads to do:
Create brand awareness for your business
Help your business to reach more potential customers
Drive traffic to your website
Encourage engagement with your content
Encourage app installs
Rack up video views
Increase lead generation
Encourage people to send messages to your business
Get people to convert (e.g. download your brochure)
Generate catalogue sales or buy from you
Drive store traffic for your e-commerce site
Engage with not just anybody, but people who are interested in you.
Precision audience targeting is what makes Facebooks ads so powerful—by making sure that your ads reach only the people who are highly likely to choose your products or services. This not only makes your ads more effective, but also helps to make sure you don’t waste your advertising budget reaching people who most probably won’t become loyal customers.
You can target Facebook users according to
Location
Demographics (e.g. age, gender, education, relationship status, job title)
Interests
Behaviour (e.g. previous purchases, device usage)
You can also create custom audiences targeting people who have visited your website or based on your contact lists, as well as lookalike audiences made up of new users who share characteristics with an audience you’ve targeted before.
Be seen in far more places than just the feed.
Facebook gives you a wealth of options when it comes to ad placements, which you can either let Facebook choose automatically or choose yourself, by hand. Automatic placements are set to make the most of your ad budget and reach as many people as possible.
Within the Facebook feed itself, your audience may see your ads in the
Facebook News Feed
Facebook Marketplace
Facebook Video Feeds
Facebook Right Column
Facebook Stories
Facebook Instant Articles
Apart from the feed, your Facebook ads may be shown on Instagram (in the feed, Instagram Stories, or Instagram Explore); Facebook’s Audience Network, or on Facebook Messenger (Stories or the inbox). The Audience Network is a display ad network run by Facebook, where your ads come out on mobile placements within various apps and websites.
Show your customers what you can do with a variety of ad formats.
Facebook also gives you several options for showcasing your business’ products or services in creative and engaging ways.
Single Image ads which are quick and easy to create
Single Video ads which are great for storytelling and remarketing
Carousel ads of up to 10 images or videos for multiple products or product features
Carousel ads of up to 10 images or videos for multiple products or product features
In Singapore, 74.4% of the population or almost 4.45 million people are active Facebook users
~ NapoleonCat
Keep track of your ad performance.
Measuring the results of your ad campaigns is easy, thanks to Facebook’s Ads Manager, where you’ll be able to gain insight into how well your ads are working, and whether any adjustments to your campaign need to be made. Beyond just the number of engagements, leads or sales, these results will be able to show you
How many people you’ve reached with your ad and how much it cost to reach them
How many people you’ve reached in terms of age and gender
How well your ad performed according to placement
The actual and predicted value of your ads in terms of how many people they’ve reached, how many people have seen them, and how much you spent on your ads
Get the most out of your ads with optimisation.
Having the flexibility to make adjustments to your ads and get better results is another secret to the success of ads on Facebook. Careful monitoring and assessment are essential to being able to spot where, if any adjustments need to be made, and long experience will tell you exactly what to do to achieve the results you want.
Examples of these adjustments include
Increasing or decreasing how much you’re spending on your ads
Increasing or decreasing the size of your audience
Enhancing your targeting
Editing your ad copy or enhancing your image or video
Changing your campaign objectives (e.g. from lead generation to post engagement)
There will be times when the best course of action would be to not make any adjustments to your campaign at all. Indeed, editing your ads or adjusting your campaigns too frequently will make a negative impact on the way Facebook tallies the results of your ads. While adjustments can be made, they are best made conscientiously.
Play by the rules and be on top of your advertising game.
Businesses need to be aware of Facebook’s many rules that state what is, and what is not allowed in both paid ads and organic content. Examples of these Advertising Policies include prohibiting
Anything that implies that the target audience belongs to a particular race, ethnicity, religion, age, gender or income bracket, or that the target audience has a specific medical condition
Anything with adult, sensational or violent content, wrong grammar or profanity
Anything with non-existent functionality, e.g. play buttons that don’t play or tick boxes that can’t be ticked
Anything with “before-and-after images” or images that encourage negative self-perception, e.g. to promote weight loss
Anything that contains low quality or controversial content or promotes dubious financial services
Following these rules can be a challenge for businesses such as a medical practice or those offering legitimate financial services, but it is very much possible to create compliant, creative and effective ads for them on Facebook.
Non-compliance with these rules result in disapproval of your ads, where Facebook tells you why your ad can’t run, and what you can do to get your ad approved. This usually involves editing (e.g. rewriting the copy) and asking Facebook for another review of your ad. If you think your ad was disapproved by mistake, you can ask for a review just the same.
Navigate a bustling and ever-changing marketplace.
Great size often comes with great complexity—given the size of Facebook’s reach in Singapore and around the world, it’s no wonder this social media supernova continues to evolve, and how businesses track every change that affects their marketing activities.
At the moment, 3 million businesses are currently advertising on Facebook, 70% of which are outside the US (Source: Facebook).
And though organic reach continues to dwindle on Facebook, many of the 90 million small businesses on Facebook are not using paid ads, with only 24.6% of Facebook Pages paying to reach out to their audiences (Source: Hootsuite).
Some of the latest developments in Facebook’s continued evolution include
Limits on how many ads a Page can run, variable according to Page or business size and set to roll out in early to mid-2021
The Facebook Business Suite dashboard for posting, messaging, advertising and tracking results
Tools for email marketing from within Facebook
The iOS 14 update, for which Facebook advises Partner businesses to prepare
The Data Use Checkup for reviewing permissions and protecting user privacy
Enhanced brand safety options to make sure your ads don’t run on videos you don’t want them to
Data Source: WordStream
Find Facebook marketing experts who can give you the whole 360.
There’s just no knowing when an algorithm change, a new advertising policy or some other development at Facebook will throw a wrench into your carefully structured digital marketing works.
And much like any other digital marketing channel, Facebook will be better suited for reaching some of your business goals more than others, with those other objectives best met by other, more suitable channels to maximise your overall marketing resources.
That’s why using Facebook Ads as part of a solid 360 digital marketing strategy is strategically sound. Rather than using them on their own, or separately from your other digital marketing assets, your Facebook Ads become that much more powerful when its strengths and shortcomings are augmented and ameliorated by other digital media.
Doing this will require not just a big-picture view of the entire digital marketing landscape, but specialised know-how in each of the online marketing channels available. Having this expertise is a decided advantage for businesses which are either using multiple digital media now, or may decide to build on their Facebook marketing activities later on.