Over 1.4 billion people in the world use Facebook and more than 900 million people visit every day. This social platform’s large engaged user base unlocks advanced targeting capabilities for advertisers to provide highly relevant ads to a specific audience of users, helping businesses reach the right people. This network can help you drive brand awareness by showing your ads to users who are likely to love what you offer, but might not know you exist. Because people are not using Facebook to make a purchase decision, your brand can catch their attention and stir up demand early on.

A few weeks ago at Hero Conf in Philadelphia, I had the privilege of attending several sessions on social advertising. The main takeaway I heard loud and clear is this: Facebook advertising needs to be considered a main part of your paid search strategy.

All too often, advertisers keep their Facebook ad strategy separate from their strategy on Google AdWords, Bing, Yahoo, etc. In reality, an effective integrated paid media strategy should consider all of these in tandem, working together to facilitate the customer journey. Paid social advertising on Facebook is a vital piece of your paid strategy because it can be used to reach new audiences, create remarketing lists, and reconnect with past customers and fans to drive them down the funnel.

Brand Awareness

Facebook offers a great opportunity to reach and attract new users with their millions of active users daily. Before potential users even know they need to start looking for your product or service, Facebook can help you create and drive demand. In turn, this has the potential to increase searches via Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other engines.

Facebook’s targeting methods empower advertisers to reach a specific group of people they want to attract as new customers. Whether it is a specific demographic (age, gender, income, location, etc.), an interest, or a combination of both, users who meet your credentials can easily be reached. Therefore determining those audiences is a critical step in the strategy. Facebook also allows advertisers to create lookalike audiences based on email lists or remarketing lists. Lookalike audiences are an easy way to get started and learn more about the demographics and interests of your potential new customers.

Since the users you target on Facebook may have never heard of your brand, it’s important to catch their attention with the ad’s title and creative so your brand stands out against the noise of their newsfeed. Once you’ve grabbed their attention, be sure the content you provide is worth reading. This is crucial as you begin to build a potential relationship.

Example:

As there is currently an adorable dog at my desk, due to the fact we are lucky enough to be able to bring our dogs into the office, let’s use a pet store as an example. If you are a local Excelsior pet store and want to start building your brand awareness in the community, an awareness campaign on Facebook could target 30 miles around Excelsior, MN and those who are interested in dogs, cats, birds, etc. 

Remarketing

Facebook remarketing opportunities are extensive. Whether it is based on email list, website visits, specific landing page visits, an eBook download, the possibilities are endless. It’s easy to encourage users down the funnel by providing them with reminders. For example, the people who landed on your website from your initial brand awareness campaign can now be nurtured through a remarketing campaign.

Utilizing Facebook remarketing should be one in the same as your Google and Bing remarketing strategies. Corresponding between the different networks to ensure they provide the same offers, messaging, and creative will help solidify and strengthen brand recognition among these audiences.

Example:

Keeping with the local pet store example, they could next setup a remarketing campaign in order to reach the people who found out about them through their initial brand awareness campaign. These users can be remarketed to through Facebook, Google & Bing after they have reached a designated landing page. If the pet store wanted to emphasize their new pet daycare program, this could be a great way to provide additional messaging on the benefits to an audience they already know would be interested. 

Reconnect with Past Customers & Fans

Facebook also provides the opportunity to reengage previous customers. Keeping your brand fresh in their mind and building their trust is important to increase the lifetime value of your customers. Utilizing Facebook to reach this audience can help transform past users into promoters of your business.

These people have already invested in your product and/or services, so you want to keep them engaged by informing them of new offers, sharing your brand story, communicating news and events, etc. It is always a good idea to test different value propositions and highlight various benefits of your offer. The ads should provide your customers with content that will ultimately compel them to share and interact with your brand. You are advertising on a social platform, after all!

Example:

Now that our pet store has successfully gained new customers for their local pet daycare program while also increasing Facebook page fans,  it is time to reconnect with this new audience again. For this campaign, they could target the customer email list of anyone in their daycare program and provide them with helpful and relevant information regarding upcoming events at the store or an exciting new pet product that is coming. These ads will help to keep the pet store’s customers engaged and loyal to their store.

Facebook advertising has evolved and advanced over time to provide significant reach and exceptional targeting options for advertisers, making it a pivotal part of your overall paid marketing strategy. Including Facebook within your paid search strategy opens doors to attract new users before they even start searching for your product or service on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. and provides consistent messaging throughout all paid mediums.

Browse our Paid Media capabilities to learn how we can help you launch a unified paid search and social advertising strategy.