How Smarter Facebook Ads can Drive ROI

According to Hootsuite in October of 2016, only approximately 20% of marketers can quantitatively prove the impact of social media marketing, even though many companies have continuously increased their social media marketing budgets throughout the year. This is a strange correlation as it illustrates that brands know how important social media is but they have been unable to quantify the impact of their efforts. The customer journey isn’t clear and dark social media hides data. With attribution and data sets skewed, it can be difficult to monitor social media return on investment (ROI). The ROI of social media is the sum of all social activity that creates value. Likes, shares and comments are great but are relatively meaningless unless social metrics as a whole are connected to business objectives.

Paid social media advertisements are advantageous due to increased reach, highly advanced targeting based on consumer data which can result in conversions, lead generation and a boost in brand reputation. Social media giants like Facebook and LinkedIn have worked continuously to improve the user experience of paid advertising options of their platforms to cater to the needs of Marketers and prove a ROI for organizations. It is convenient because marketers can use advertisement testing to close in on their ideal customer persona. Marketers are also continuing to move towards mobile and video-first marketing as most users are on mobile devices. According to Emarketer, nearly 20% of the time that Americans time on digital media, is spent watching video and it continues to escalate.

Over the past few years, content has progressed from text to photo to video and livestreaming, as well as virtual and augmented reality. A Facebook representative mentioned that the platform is moving toward a video-first content system which will enhance the ability to capture, create and share video content. This opens the opportunity for companies to engage in people-based marketing through user-generated content. Fortunately, user-generated content has been proven to be an effective form of marketing and has become the digital ‘word of mouth’. The Facebook representative mentioned that 20% of the time that North American mobile phone users is spent on Facebook and Instagram, which is quite significant. Facebook continues to improve user experience (UX) by adjusting its algorithm as it is designed to be a personalized newspaper which is why everyone’s newsfeed is different. Facebook advertising allows marketers to leverage consumer data on interests, location, demographics, behaviors as well as CRM or website data and lookalike audiences to cater advertisements.

In conclusion, paid advertisements can help marketers to improve post reach, audience targeting, track key metrics and test results to identify new market segments. Digital paid advertisements are becoming more essential to companies of all sizes. Contact us today to create an effective social media marketing and advertisement strategy for your small business.

Written by: Andrew C. Belton