The advent of social media ads (especially Facebook ads) has changed the way businesses do online marketing.
It has presented brands with so many options. You either run ads on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, or several social media platforms.
Facebook ads keep evolving. As more brands run ads on Facebook, new preferences come up, and Facebook keeps incorporating these new things to satisfy the users.
Facebook has become a platform for brands to get in front of new people and to get them to convert.
When it comes to social media advertising, Facebook offers a competitive advantage with its ownership of Instagram. Via Facebook, you can create Facebook and Instagram ads with ease, which saves your team time.
Why should your business run ads on Facebook?
- You would reach more people than on any other platform.
Facebook has the evenest distribution of users compared to other popular social media platforms like Instagram and Linkedin which means you can target a larger range of age groups with your ads.
- It has more potential for specific targeting.
This is because Facebook has more people using the platform, and their data is large. It is easier for you to target a specific audience from Facebook’s large user data
- Facebook ads are more affordable
With Facebook, you have more tools for testing, remarketing, reporting, and analysis. These tools will help you make the most of every dollar you spend.
According to wordstream, the average CPCs for each of the four major social media advertising platforms in 2021 are:
- Twitter: $0.38
- Facebook: $0.97
- Instagram: $3.56
- LinkedIn: $5.26
- Also, Facebook has more flexibility when it comes to budgeting.
Facebook offers two types of budgeting to accommodate different advertising strategies. Lifetime budgets, which are good if you run ads on a schedule and/or a fixed budget and end date; and daily budgets, which are good for maximizing ongoing campaigns and planning around a fluctuating budget.
How Does a Facebook ad work?
Facebook ads work the same way your Instagram ads work I.e taking your brand’s message to the faces of people who needs to see it.
Facebook Ads Work on an Auction.
This is to prevent bombarding users with ads and creating a bad perception of the platform.
So Facebook limits the number of advertisements that each user sees.
In other words, there’s only so much ad space available and there are many people that want to use it to grow a business.
Advertisers must bid against each other to secure an advertising placement. In the simplest terms, whoever bids the highest gets to show their ad.
How much do Facebook ads cost?
Facebook has three types of cost for their ads
- CPC (Cost Per Click)
- CPM (Cost per thousand impressions), and
- CPE (Cost per engagement).
Cost per click
This is the price you pay for each click on your Facebook ad. Facebook will try to get you as many clicks as it can within your budget if you choose this option.
Facebook CPC ranges from $0.25 to $3.30
Cost Per thousand impressions
This is the amount you pay for every 1000 impressions you get for your ads.
The difference between impressions and reach is that impressions are the number of times your ads were seen while reach is the number of people that saw your ads.
The average CPM on Facebook across all industries is $11.54.
Cost per Engagement
Facebook CPE is the cost of the total amount of engagements on a Facebook post. these include: likes and reactions, comments, shares, clicks to page, etc
The average Facebook CPE by campaign objective ranges from $0.11 to $0.70.
Factors to consider when creating Facebook ads
- Dimensions of the ads
- Character limits
- Image size
Factors that affect the cost of Facebook ads
As a small business, understanding how Facebook ads cost helps in keeping them low.
Facebook ads costs are influenced by several variables just like that of Instagram ads.
Campaign objectives
This is related to the nature of your desired goals.
For example, Brand awareness or Engagement campaigns will cost less than action-oriented campaigns like Conversions that drive purchases. It’s easier to get someone to engage with an ad than it is to entice them to click through, open up their wallet, and complete a purchase.
Your Industry
If your industry is highly competitive, you would have to pay more.
Advertising to competitive industries like fashion, food, health, etc. will result in giving Facebook more work and this will cost you more.
Audience size
Targeting larger and broader audiences will generally cost less than for smaller audiences.
When you target a more specific audience, Facebook will have more work to do and that will cost you more money.
Targeting a small number of people tend to be more specific, smaller in size, therefore more competitive.
Budget
Small money for a small value. If you want to get more results, you would pay more money.
Also, costs for new ad sets are often higher because the system is still getting to understand your audience and their reactions to your ad.
If your ads are well engaged with, Facebook and Instagram will reward you with lower costs over time.
Think of it like this, when faced with more resistance, Facebook will cost you more. But when they’ve understood your audience, the resistance will be lesser she which means less money.
Click through rates(CTR)
Also, think of CTR as the measure of resistance that is more action-driven.
If your CTR is low, especially in a website traffic campaign, you would pay more because Facebook will interpret it as a disconnect between your target audience and the messaging in your ads. In that case, you’re paying them for the more work they would do to get your audience to interact with your ad.
It is the opposite when your CTR is high. It means that your audience likes your ad and so Facebook wouldn’t do much to get them to engage.
Seasonality
Facebook ads costs tend to temporarily increase as more people are advertising within a certain period. Say Christmas holiday or any other important celebration.
During this period, the competition for your audience is higher and you already know that more competition will lead to you paying more money.
Your chosen ad placement
With Facebook, your ads can appear in six spots:
- Insta Stories
- Desktop newsfeed
- Facebook right column
- Fb Messenger
Your ads appearing on Instagram and Instagram stories usually cost more than other placements.
Relevance score of your Facebook ads
Relevance score is a Facebook metric that scores how relevant your ad is to your target audience.
When users engage with your ad, its relevance score increases. However, if many users ignore your ad or click “this ad isn’t relevant to me” your score will go down.
This is extremely important.
If your ad gets a high relevance score, it’ll be favored by Facebook’s algorithm and can even cost less for the same placements.
How to lower your Facebook ads cost
Now that you’ve understood how Facebook ads work and what determines the cost, you might want to learn how to spend more while achieving your goals with Facebook ads.
The following are tips to help you lower your cost for running Facebook ads for your brand
- Use the Automatic Placements setting
- Choose the right campaign objectives
- Monitor your ads relevance and maximize the information for your subsequent ads
- Lower your ad frequency: Your ad frequency is the estimated number of times each person saw your ad.
It’s recommended to keep your ad frequency below 3. If the number is higher, you’re at risk of overloading your potential customers and running into ad fatigue issues.
- Focus on one objective at a time
- Maintain high relevance scores
- Keep your ads fresh
- Select an audience for each specific campaign
- Use retargeting and remarketing
- Cap your bid
In conclusion, always test your ads to see how it’s doing and whether you should change anything or stop the ads. The goal is to achieve your campaign objectives.
Do you need the help of a professional to run your Facebook ads?
The professionals at Socialander would do it for you.
Hire Socialander by clicking on “I need your social media ads services”
