Do Facebook Ads Really Work?
With the Facebook algorithm changes that have taken place this year only a fraction of your fans see your Facebook posts, which means fewer clicks, comments and shares and consequently fewer conversions, leads and customers. Whereas Facebook once encouraged businesses to acquire as many followers as possible, it now seems to be steering businesses towards taking out advertisements. Facebook’s reasoning is that there is more content competing to appear in newsfeeds, and that they want people’s newsfeeds to only contain posts that are of relevance and interest to them. The aim is to give users high quality original content and less spam. However, they are clearly never going to say they are after more advertising revenue, but do ads on social media really work?
The aim of any kind of marketing is to stay in the minds of your audience, and obviously advertising puts you in people’s minds, if they see it, and more so if they relate to it. The Nielsen Trust’s study in advertising last year listed the percentage of global online consumers indicating that they completely or somewhat trust various forms, and showed that 84% of people trust recommendations from people they know, 64% trust consumer opinions posted online but only 48% trust ads on social networks.
Although the ads clearly come way behind personal recommendations and online consumer opinions, 48% is still quite high and advertising has its place and can be used to fill a gap, and can be bought and controlled.
Clearly however it is important to also generate organic engagement on Facebook to stay on top of your audience’s minds and to show them the connection between your friends and your brand because people trust friends’ opinions.
According to Media Bistro’s research Social Impact on Purchase Decisions – 2014, 38% of Facebook users report having purchased a product after liking or sharing it on the network. This figure is 29% for Pinterest and 22% on Twitter. 78% of respondents said that companies’ social posts do impact their purchase decisions and 41% said they just came across the item they purchased and hadn’t previously thought of buying it. It is these two latter categories that support the contention that social media advertising works.
Social media advertisements need to be combined with the right kind of social media engagement. There is no point in posting photos of kittens which get dozens of likes, if your business sells cars for example. Create content with the intention of generating engagement around your brand which friends of your audience will see as positive connections between them and your brand and therefore be more likely to buy your product or service.
The key is connecting the brand to the customer to fuel social spread through organic word of mouth, for this you will need unique, relevant, quality content that will result in them taking the desired action.
