Today's article on Facebook Ad Placements for Small Businesses comes from Spiralytics, together with a superb infographic that will lay it all out in pictorial form for you to bookmark and refer back to.
If your retirement or part-time business idea takes off, you will probably want to consider advertising on Facebook.
A Quick Guide to Facebook Ad Placements for Small Businesses
Facebook has grown from a small university directory to the social media behemoth that we know today. It has also evolved from being the largest social network to one of the largest advertising platforms out there. With over 2.32 billion monthly active users, this massive number speaks for itself. Even for a small business like yours, Facebook is the perfect place to advertise.
You might think your small business won’t have a loud enough voice to be heard amid all the ad noise happening around the social media platform, but this is just a misconception. If you know what to do and how to do it, you don’t have to worry about a thing.
To keep you up-to-date on how you can pull this off and achieve the desired results, here’s a quick guide on Facebook ad placements for your small business.
Facebook news feed
To avoid disturbing your audience during their online activities and Facebook browsing time, placing your ad on the news feed cuts the intrusiveness since they appear along with the posts of your audience’s Facebook friends. This can also help you overcome the steady decline of organic search and Facebook’s latest algorithm change, which prioritizes posts from your friend list.
This change gives more weight to advertising on the desktop news feed to make sure your audience sees your posts. It’s important to note that it’s applicable only to desktop and laptop users.
This kind of placement fits most campaign objectives, particularly if your site isn’t optimized for mobile yet. These ads have 2-4 times higher cost per click than those on mobile news feed and ten times the audience network due to its wider reach.
Mobile news feed
To achieve the same effect on mobile users, you can use Facebook mobile news feed. This will show your ads to over 1.23 billion users through the app or mobile browser. These ads will maximize the screen of any mobile device since there is the absence of sidebars, which makes them more noticeable.
The cost per click for this kind of placement is significantly lower than that of the desktop news feed but higher than the right column.
Right column
If you want to make your ads look like, well, ads, you can place them on the Facebook right column, which is the right-hand sidebar of the desktop news feed. This displays a condensed version of the ads, making them less intrusive compared to the other placements. This kind of placement is ideal for retargeting campaigns used along with the desktop news feed.
Cost per click is usually lower as compared to desktop and mobile news feeds. But with the lack of a call to action, your click-through rate is expected to be lower.
Audience network
Placing ads on the audience network, which is a group of Facebook’s affiliate apps and websites, extends the reach of advertisers to 16% more than solely advertising on Facebook.
There are three possible results when this kind of ad placement is clicked based on the ad objective:
1. It will open a link in a new browser window.
2. It will prompt the person to install an app.
3. It will launch a downloaded app on a user’s mobile device.
These ads have four times lower cost per click than mobile news feed due to the lower click-through rate.
Instant articles
Ads on instant articles are displayed on articles that can easily be found on Facebook. They are often inserted in between paragraphs of an article. This works best in targeting audiences who tend to read longer content that aren’t available on the news feed.
If you have highly visual products or services, Instagram is your best bet. In fact, 60% of users found new products and services on the social platform. It should be noted that the most successful types of businesses on Instagram are those in the art, beauty, fashion, fitness, and travel categories.
Messenger
Messenger ads allows you to connect with audiences in three ways:
1. Messenger destination lets you create news feed ads that aim to drive audiences to a Facebook messenger conversation.
2. Messenger home placement displays your ads on the messenger’s main screen.
3. Sponsored message placement displays your ads within a message exchange of a friend on messenger as long as he or she already messaged your page before.
Dominate Your Facebook Ad Competitors
Running all these Facebook ad placements will always deliver the best results, but you should be careful since some ad placements won’t work well if they don’t complement your objective. Ideally, you should constantly test, analyze, and record the results of your campaigns. Only then will you determine what works best for your advertising goals.
