Video is the future of Facebook.
Someday, Facebook might even be all video, all day.
And there’s good reason for that. People love to watch videos. At last count, Facebook users are watching 100 million hours of video per day on the social network.
Are you using Facebook Ads to grow your business?
If not, you should be. Here are nine reasons why.
Facebook has many great ad formats, targeting options, and campaign types.
Here are my top 10 favorite Facebook advertising features.
1. Lead Ads
In addition to being cheap and insanely effective, Facebook Lead Ads totally eliminate the need for people to visit a landing page on your website.
With Lead Ads you can acquire valuable contact information from potential customers who are using Facebook on a mobile device.
You can use these ads to get people to sign up for your email newsletter, offer deals or discounts, schedule appointments, and more.
2. Video Ads
Video ads are an awesome and cheap Facebook advertising features–you can pay as little as a penny per video view!
More memorable than the usual text and image combo, Facebook video ads deliver strong brand recall and high engagement–and drive purchase intent.
Simply upload the video to Facebook’s native video player, customize the description, thumbnail, budget, and targeting, and go!
3. Engagement Ads on Wall Posts
Engagement ads can help make your Facebook Page look super popular to anyone who is checking out your business.
Facebook will only show this type of ad to the people who are most likely to engage with your post–reacting, commenting, or sharing.
Sure, getting thousands of comments and reactions is ultimately just vanity – but people want to be part of the in-crowd. Facebook Pages with zero fan interaction always looks a bit suspect. If your business is so great, where are all your customers?
4. Remarketing
Facebook remarketing lets you reach people who have already interacted with or checked out your brand in some way. Maybe they visited your website (or a specific page on it), took some sort of action in your app or game, or gave you their email address or phone number.
Facebook tags these people with cookie. Your remarketing ads will show to those people as they go through their Facebook News Feed so they will remember you and perhaps convert on one of your hard offers.
People who are familiar with your brand are 2x more likely to convert and 3x more likely to engage. Ridiculously powerful stuff!
5. Interest Targeting
Facebook’s interest targeting helps you find the people who are likely to be interested in buying your product or service.
You can reach specific audience based on their interests, their activities, and the pages they’ve liked. You can also combine interests to expand the reach of your ad.
Whether you want to target people who are interested in technology, fitness and wellness, entertainment, or a certain business/industry, this Facebook advertising feature will help you do it.
6. Demographic Targeting
You can target people based on where they live, their age, their gender, their political leanings, their job title, or by specific life events (e.g., engagement, birthday, anniversary)
Facebook also offers financial targeting. You can specify that you only want to show it to people who make more than an income level you specify, whether it’s as low as $30,000 or more than $500,000
If you sell a pricy product, you want to make sure your ads are shown to people who can afford to buy your stuff!
7. Behavior Targeting
Facebook’s behavior targeting lets you reach people based on purchase history, intent, device usage, and more.
Facebook uses data from third-party partners to figure out what people are purchasing, online and offline. After matching up that data with user IDs, Facebook lets advertisers target audience segments based on thousands of different purchasing behaviors.
For instance, you can target ads to people who have purchased clothing, health and beauty, technology, or pet products. Or if you wanted to target based on travel, you could choose options such as frequent travelers, international travelers, cruises, or whether someone has used a travel app in the past month. You can also go to this site for more information about the health measures that can be taken to avoid any health difficulties while travelling.
8. The Facebook Pixel
Facebook’s tracking pixel tracks actions that happen on your website as a result of your paid ads (as well as your organic posts). All you have to do is add some code to any pages you want to track.
Actions include things like adding an item to a cart, viewing content, making a purchase, and completing registration.
The tracking pixel will help you measure conversions, optimize your ads and targeting, and gain insights about the Facebook users visiting your website.
9. Website Conversion Campaigns
You want to use conversion campaigns when the objective of your ad is to get people to do something specific on your website or in your mobile app.
You define that action, whether it’s completing a purchase, adding something to a cart, or a page view.
10. Carousel Ads
Carousel Ads let you display multiple images or videos (up to 10) within the same ad unit. Each image or video can link to a different page of your website
You can use these images to highlight products, features, or a promotion.
When done well, Carousel ads have proven to significantly increase conversions and click-through rates.
Bonus: Facebook Messenger Bots
Businesses can now create bots for Facebook Messenger that will “talk” to your customers anytime, 24/7. How cool is that?
Facebook’s chat bots have a ton of potential in terms of customer service and sales. They can provide automated information, take orders, help you buy products or services, or provide shipping notifications.
And you never have to leave Facebook Messenger to shop or get the information you want.
Those are my favorite Facebook advertising features. What are yours?
Originally published in: Inc.com