What is Facebook advertising for?

Many digital agencies sell Facebook advertising as a tactical and conversion-driven channel. Many advertising buyers also expect campaigns to deliver quick sales results. But after all, should we take a step back in the customer buying journey and focus on something more than ROAS, CTR and CPC in Facebook advertising?

Different digital advertising channels are suitable for different parts of the sales pipeline

We have noticed a trend where many marketers have started to buy media as if they were "equal" - especially when it comes to digital media buying. But are all media necessarily equal as conversion generators? Or are other media at their best as drivers of other goals?

It's great that we now have data on conversions generated by a campaign in a very different way to what we had before. Before the era of digital advertising, you sold traditional media and just hoped that the money you invested in marketing would eventually convert into sales.

Nowadays, with the availability of data and the ability to calculate the ROAS of a digital marketing campaign, there is perhaps too much focus on conversions and direct return on investment. Many clients are hoping to achieve equally good conversion results from social media, About Google Ads than programmatic purchasing. Unfortunately, this forgets that these channels are not equal and do not work best at the same point in the sales pipeline.

Programmatic buying, Google Ads and social advertising - what's the difference?

Social media is indeed somewhat different from these two click-based media. Google Ads is aimed at a much warmer audience who are already in their shopping pants. These people are already at the stage of comparing options on their purchase path when they see an ad, or possibly have their purchase intentions confirmed. This makes it much easier to get conversions, and hence ROAS is particularly good. Programmatic buying and social media, on the other hand, are aimed at a colder audience. These media are primarily aimed at the early stages of the purchase path, where even the need may not yet be certain.

So the ideal is to use all three of these digital advertising tools to support each other. This allows for more multi-channel advertising, where the product/service becomes familiar to customers and is involved at all stages of the buying process.

The main difference between social media advertising and the other two is the importance of targeting at the beginning. Facebook's algorithm works very well and the campaign delivers results optimised for the chosen target.

If you choose reach, you get as much evidence as possible. In this case, analytics will tell you how many people have seen the ad and how much it cost to display one ad. Even if the ad has a link and a "read more" call to action, Facebook's goal is to show the ad to the widest possible audience. In this case, Facebook's algorithm targets the ad to as many cold prospects as possible.

When coverage is the target, it may not be relevant to estimate the number of clicks on an ad link or to track how many products/services have been purchased. If these are expected of the campaign, it is certainly worth letting the digital agency know at the earliest stages of planning. After all, there are specific campaign options on Facebook for these objectives as well, which will deliver the best results with these objectives in mind.

Facebook advertising - the best results come from persistent work

If Facebook advertising for the first time, it is good to approach the achievement of objectives and results as a long-term process. Unfortunately, starting a social media advertising campaign is not as simple as creating a conversion campaign and immediately achieving successful results.

If you've never advertised before, or don't have a working Facebook pixel installed, Facebook hasn't yet gathered the potential customer data that would be most profitable to target with ads. That's because Facebook's algorithm learns about your campaigns every time, and tries to find the potential customers in your target group to display your ad. Or more accurately - the potential customers that are relevant to your goal.

At a stage where Facebook has not yet learned about a business's potential customer base and data has not been accumulated, it is not even possible to run a conversion campaign with the aim of direct sales: Facebook requires 50 conversions per week on an ad account before moving to conversion campaigns. This is why it is usually necessary to start with micro-conversion targets first, rather than going straight to direct sales. This is not to say that Facebook cannot drive more ecommerce sales through conversion campaigns. Direct sales results just require time, money, good tracking, a good online store and the right product or service. An aggressive promotional campaign can also generate good sales in the short term.

Advertising is a multi-dimensional entity and it is particularly important to remember this: even if the last click in Google Analytics shows that the purchase came from Google Ads, does this exclude the possibility that Facebook advertising was not involved in the customer's buying process?

Facebook advertising as a prospecting tool

So, to return to the beginning of the text. Should media buyers take a step back in the purchase path when it comes to social media advertising? It is easy and cheap to advertise brand, awareness and traffic campaigns on Facebook, for example.

Perhaps it's worth thinking twice before rushing into conversion campaigns. This can avoid unnecessary disappointment, budget cuts and loss of potential future results.

It would therefore be important to see Facebook advertising primarily as a producer of cold prospecting in the beginning. In this case, ROAS is not always the best or correct way to measure the success of advertising, but if the target audience is right and the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of the ad is around €3, then doesn't that sound like a reasonable investment in marketing?

Before the digital age, and of course even today, TV advertising is bought, and you can invest up to €20 000 in a monthly campaign. Even then, there is no way of knowing exactly how much of the campaign will convert into sales or what the ROAS or ROI of TV advertising is. Indeed, TV advertising is often precisely brand advertising, unless it is a very tactical promotional campaign.

Perhaps the important thing is to change attitudes towards Facebook advertising and to see it, at least initially, as part of brand advertising - an investment in the future. So it is good to give weight to the choice of the campaign's target and to think of Facebook advertising as a longer-term continuum.

At Digiteam, we are happy to help our customers choose the right target. We explain the different options and make our recommendations based on your individual situation - with reasons.

Read more about our about our social media services and ask for a quote!