FBP 052: 6 Reasons Why You Should Use Facebook Ads to Grow Your Freelance or Small Business

Admit it or not, Facebook has taken over your life. You wake up in the morning and the first thing you do? Kiss your spouse and say, “Good morning”? No. You check the Facebook app in your smartphone for the latest news.

When you retire on your bed at night, do you say your prayers to thank God for a splendid day and then close your eyes? No. You refresh the News Feed of your Facebook and catch up on the happenings of the day before you go to sleep.

Yes, it’s a cycle and we have to blame Mr. Zuckerberg for it.

If you’re a freelancer or an entrepreneur, you need to be visible in Facebook because that is the place where your customers are hanging out. There are already 30 million Facebook users in the Philippines – the top 8 country in the world with the highest Facebook users, next to the U.S., Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey, and the U.K. In fact, the number 1 Filipino Facebook Page, Angel Locsin, has close to 12 million fans, almost equal to the population of Singapore and Hong Kong combined. Amazing!

Source: socialbakers.com

However, having a Facebook Page for your business is not enough nowadays. Did you notice that when you post a status update or a photo/video on your Facebook Page, it only gets seen by 1-3% of your fans? (Sometimes even less than 1%). Isn’t that a bummer?

Like it or not, the social media giant is a business and it has slowly been driving Facebook Page owners to pay a premium to allow their posts to appear on the News Feeds of their fans.

And that is why it is more important than ever to use Facebook Ads to reach the most users as possible and get them to either like your page, go to your website or to buy your product.

This week, I discuss the 6 awesome reasons why you should start leveraging on Facebook Ads to grow your freelance or small business.

1. Everyone is on Facebook.

As mentioned earlier, there are already 30 million Filipino Facebook users. And the number is expected to grow as millennials and even baby boomers (my parents and titas) are starting to jump on the Facebook bandwagon. Chances are high that most or even 99.98% of your customers are on Facebook at least 5 hours a day and you have to get in front of them through Facebook and nowhere else.

Source: countryranker.com

2. Cheaper than traditional advertising

Despite getting a lot of flak for “forcing” Page owners to spend to get noticed on their social network, advertising in Facebook is still cheap compared to traditional ads like television, radio or print. You can spend as little as $1 a day. So if you post a Facebook Ad for 30 days, that’s $30 or P1,400 only. Compare that to spending thousands (or millions) on traditional above the line ads that will never get seen by your target customers.

3. Ability to create multiple ads under one campaign budget

Facebook Ads allow you to make as many advertisements as you want without going over budget. You can create a variety of ads with different headlines, copies, images and links under one campaign and then indicate the time period and amount you wish to allocate for the campaign. If you consume your budget even before the ad expires, Facebook will prompt you to either add more funds to the campaign or stop it altogether. Meanwhile, if you do not consume your full budget when the ad expires, then good for you. Aside from spending below your budget, that means that your ad was less costly to run and therefore highly engaging.

4. Easily monitor ads through Facebook Ad Manager tool

With traditional advertising, you usually don’t have a way to know if it was indeed seen by your target audience and if in case they saw it, you don’t know if they were influenced by your ad by buying your product after seeing it. Facebook Ads come with the Ad Manager tool that allows you to get very detailed data and reports such as how many people saw your ad and how many of them clicked your ad to go to your website. It also tells you which ads are not doing well so that you can decide to stop the ad and focus on your high performing ones.

5. Reach your growing mobile audience

Facebook Ads are mobile-friendly, thanks to the Facebook App for iOS and Android phones. And according to On Device Research, last 2014, mobile phone penetration in the Philippines was at 101% while smartphone penetration was at 15%. This year, smartphone penetration is expected to skyrocket to 50%. This means that as more and more Filipinos convert to smartphones, it will be more important for your business to reach your audience through their smartphones with Facebook Ads.

6. Laser target your ideal audience

Last but not the least, one of the main reasons why I love Facebook Ads is the feature that allows you to target your ideal audience according to age, gender, location, and interest. Again, this is very counterintuitive to traditional media, which broadcasts to everyone, even to those who do not belong to your demographics or even to those who don’t like your brand. That’s why it is also called mass media and that’s why it’s very expensive to advertise through those channels. When you serve your ads to a specific niche or segment of your audience, you spend less and you talk only to those people who already like you or will eventually like you.

Links and Resources

• Facebook
• Facebook Ads
• Thanks to our sponsor for this episode: Bitwage.co – Your Wage, Your Way.

How has Facebook Ads helped your freelance business?  Please share with us your experience in the comment box below.

 

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