Facebook is the leading social media platform in the world, with over 2.9 billion average monthly users. The Facebook online community continues to grow, attracting businesses and companies to market their products and services. Digital marketers have prioritized Facebook as the top channel for social media marketing and advertising, and for good reason. Using Facebook marketing and advertising campaigns has become very popular on the platform and the ROI is undeniable.
Facebook marketing benefits brands with a target market that frequently uses the platform. The main concern of every brand when running any marketing strategy is the overall cost and effectiveness. While Facebook marketing is very effective in brand awareness and increasing leads, most brands worry about the cost of running Facebook Ads.
How much will I be paying to use Facebook Ads? The internet will give you plenty of answers from different digital experts and businesses that use Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads experts will only give you an estimated figure, not an actual cost. Several factors determine the cost of running Facebook Ads and marketing campaigns.
Our digital experts at Signal have spent years researching and testing Facebook Ads to give you a detailed guide to running effective and successful Facebook Ads.
Using Facebook Advertising to Promote Your Brand
Facebook marketing and advertising are both necessary parts of an effective digital marketing strategy. Brands pick digital marketing channels which can meet their marketing needs and goals. Facebook advertising is unique in reaching the target and tracking user engagement. While organic posting and user engagement serve as the core of a Facebook marketing strategy, the deployment of strategic Boosts and other Facebook Ads helps to amplify the reach of your content.
While some brands continue to pour thousands and millions of dollars into old school advertising tactics like TV, billboards, and print, the truth is no one is paying attention to those ads anymore. We all skip or ignore that old fashioned form of advertising. But we hardly ever put down our smartphones. The ROI value of Facebook ads continues to be one of the lowest costs for consumer attention in the media environment – and many brands are still sleeping on it!
Facebook is the most popular social media platform, providing brands with a massive population of engaged users scrolling through content that’s a mix of friends and family, plus brands and media. As a brand, this audience is engaged in the platform, even if they’re scrolling quickly, so you have a chance for their full attention.
One of the biggest challenges faced by brands all over the world is running cost-effective marketing strategies. Facebook has a low budget threshold, allowing even the smallest campaigns to get a sample of the audience metrics. This allows you to test and try different ad campaigns to see what works best for your needs. There are two main pricing models: the Facebook ads cost per click (CPC) and cost-per-1000-impressions (CPM). CPC is great if you only want to pay for visits to your website or landing page. CPM is fantastic for getting a wide swath of user eyeballs on your content– for much less than TV or print and with much better targeting and tracking. Facebook has other features which make advertising on the platform affordable and adjustable to suit the budget of any brand.
The market targeting options on Facebook are the best of all social media platforms. Your brand can customize your Facebook Ads to your needs and make them visible to the most relevant audience, who can be potential leads. Since the same company (Meta) owns Facebook and Instagram, you can run your Facebook Ads on Instagram too, increasing market coverage when running ads.
Facebook advertising is still a must-have for digital marketers and brands whose target markets use the platform frequently. It allows the brand to focus more on creating ads which are more consumer specific and targeted, resulting in a better ROAS (return on ad spend) than any other medium.
The Fundamentals of Facebook Advertising
Before implementing any marketing strategy or using a marketing channel, you must understand the channel’s basics. Facebook for Business provides a vast user base and excellent market targeting features, making it a reliable social media marketing platform for brands.
Facebook Ads Manager
Facebook Business Suite has various tools which brands can use in Facebook marketing strategies. The tools help the brand manage its presence on the social media platform through strategic marketing and advertising campaigns. You can easily track and monitor the page activities, schedule the posting of marketing content, and manage timely responses to customers.
You will see the Facebook Ads Manager when you access the Facebook Businesses Suit. The primary function of the feature is managing the brand’s Facebook ads including:
- Creation and setting up of Facebook ad campaigns
- Creation and management of the ad creative and targeting
- Adjustment of the Facebook ads budget by reducing Facebook ads CPM and CPC
- A/B testing of the Facebook ad campaigns
- Optimization of the Facebook ads and their targeting via market targeting
- Track and monitor insights related to Facebook ads performance
The above functions of the Facebook Ads Manager increase the efficiency of Facebook marketing on the platform. It also allows brands to customize and adapt their Facebook ads to align with their social media marketing needs and goals.
Types of Facebook Ads
Facebook Business Suite has several options when it comes to creating Facebook Ads. Brands have the following type of Facebook ads to choose from when creating their Facebook marketing content:
- Image ads
- Carousel
- Lead ads
- Stories ads
- Video ads
- Instant experience
- Dynamic ads
- Playable ads
- Video poll
- Slideshow ads
- Messenger ads
- Collections
The best Facebook Ads type(s) should be able to achieve maximum consumer engagement. Depending on your market targeting, you can use more than one Facebook ad type.
Accessing Facebook Ads Manager
The Facebook Ads Manager is the central part of managing all your Facebook campaigns. You can access the Facebook Ads Manager section by clicking on the Ad Center menu tab on the left side of the Facebook desktop version. The Ad Center is located on the top right of the Facebook mobile application when using the mobile version. The other more convenient option is downloading the Facebook Ads Manager mobile application from Apple App Store or Google Play Store.
Cost of Running Facebook Ads
There are different estimates given by Facebook Ads experts online regarding the cost of running Facebook Ads. Brands can use the figures to benchmark and estimate how much they will be paying to run Facebook Ads. WordStream gives an estimated $1.72 on Facebook ads CPC, while Karola Karlson estimates the average cost of the Facebook ads CPM is $9.8. However, this shouldn’t be the final figure.
Facebook Ads experts will confirm several factors determining the final cost of running Facebook Ads. The process gets more complicated because Facebook utilizes an auctioning system in picking the ad placements. During the auction, every Facebook digital marketing company will bid and compete with each other. The company that wins the bid will have their Facebook Ads displayed in one particular placement. The bidding process allows brands only to spend money on Facebook Ads, bringing the expected results.
Unfortunately, placing the bid doesn’t guarantee a company that they will have their ad placement. Facebook will analyze and determine the relevance of your ad to the target market. The process ensures maximum market segmentation and targeting of prospects through online marketing. The effectiveness of Facebook Ads depends on Ad relevance, which refers to the ad’s quality and estimated action rate. The two factors determine the probability of the Ad achieving the desired outcome when displayed to a user.
Other vital factors also determine the budget for running Facebook Ads. Apart from the auctioning system, the following features will determine the cost of running Facebook Ads:
- Ad Quality
- The target market
- Ad placement
- Seasonality
- Industry
Facebook Ads have high demand, and the competitiveness of Facebook marketing makes Facebook ads to be extremely valuable. The more Facebook digital marketers push for their ads on the platform, the higher the cost of the ads. Hence some industries will have more costly Facebook ads than others because of the competition. Frequently monitoring the price changes of Facebook Ads will give you a precise estimate of the total cost.
How Much Should You Pay for Facebook Ads?
Some industries are new to Facebook marketing, while others have used Facebook ads for years. Finding the cost estimates will help your brand curate a budget for Facebook marketing. The historical data will help you in building a budget. You can get information from industry benchmarks and Facebook marketing experts.
It depends on your market and your goals. A bare minimum for any campaign is $10 per day. This will allow you to test a single ad in your target market. The downside is that you don’t have enough data to really determine ways to improve your performance metrics. This is why we advise $30-$50 per day budgets so you have the room to split test different messages and creative, target key sub-groups within your audience demographic, and allow the Facebook algorithm to determine which ads to give preferred service to maximize exposure and return.
If there is no available historical information, you will have to collect your information by having a test run. Consult with an expert and run several marketing campaigns on the social media platform. During the test marketing campaigns, collect as much information as possible. You should also perform A/B testing against the various Facebook Ad types and find which ads are most suitable for your marketing needs and goals. Brands can use the information collected during the testing session to optimize Facebook ads and increase effectiveness.
Having an optimized campaign will achieve more market targeting and user engagement. An optimized campaign requires a Facebook marketing strategy and time. The A/B test will determine the ROI of your Facebook ads. The Facebook ad cost calculator effectively analyzes the overall cost of running a Facebook campaign. It will also give you a detailed estimate of how much you should set aside for your Facebook marketing budget. The best Facebook marketing strategy should generate maximum returns.
Getting Started with Facebook Ads
Running marketing and advertising campaigns on digital platforms requires patience and strategy. Facebook marketing is the most popular social media marketing channel and is very efficient, but requires some work to understand and perfect. The platform’s effectiveness in brand marketing has put Facebook Ads in high demand.
In our guide, we have covered the critical fundamentals of the costs of running Facebooks ads, however Facebook Advertising doesn’t run on fixed costs. Hence it’s essential to have a flexible budget that is easily adjustable. As you learn your market, you’ll need to pivot to take advantage of the opportunities you discover along the way.
Facebook marketing is ideal for any brand which wants to increase its digital footprint on Facebook. To utilize Facebook ads, you don’t need to be a Facebook marketing expert or agency. The tools available at Facebook Business Suite make it easy for businesses to grow their brand on the platform while gaining valuable consumer insight. If you are new to Facebook marketing, it’s best to consult a marketing agency or expert to provide the needed advice and recommendations. You don’t need to break the bank to run Facebook ads; strategic digital marketing practices will help make the process cost-effective.
Many small and medium sized businesses struggle with managing an effective Facebook Advertising campaign because they simply lack the resources and knowledge to properly take advantage of the platform. At Signal, we’ve been learning the Facebook Ads platform for years and have a dedicated team of experts to help you serve the most cost-effective, and successful ad campaigns.
Let’s chat about your next campaign!
