At the moment, the number of Facebook users has long passed the mark of 2.5 billion active accounts per month. According to the official data of the social network, in the 1st quarter of 2020, they spent 17.44 billion dollars on advertising. Revenue from advertising for the 2nd quarter amounted to slightly more than 18.32 billion. In the third quarter, the figure fell slightly short of 21.5 billion (21.22). Based on the statistics, we may conclude that during the Covid-19 pandemic, the demand for online promotion on Facebook not only does not fall but, on the contrary, tends to grow rapidly. Naturally, along with the demand for advertising, the competition also increases, so it is essential to follow the news and use modern promotion techniques. In this article, we’ll talk about how to advertise on Facebook in 2020-2021, why Facebook Ads always show good results, and also examine examples of viral creatives that blew up the internet. Let’s start!
How do Facebook Ads Work in 2021?
Given that the bigger quantity of users, during the pandemic, make their choice online, it is reasonable why more entrepreneurs compete for their attention and consciously or are forced to move into digital. It directly entails an alteration in the average (standard) indicators of advertising campaigns in one direction or another. In case you are a beginner Facebook advertiser or are just going to start using the services of setting up advertising from the outside, then most likely, you will not notice the difference.
An experienced user will be able to track that despite the increased cost of advertising, the CTR (Click-Through-Rate) and CPC (Cost-Per-Click) indicators of the ads most likely increased, but the conversion rates at best remained at the same level, at worst – slightly decreased. Mostly these changes affected areas that previously sold well online, such as e-commerce, delivery, and others. If you are a representative of one of the areas that before quarantine worked mainly outside of digital, then for your niche, the changes are very imperceptible or even absecost per Click.
Below are the average for your niche:
- Statistics is based on data from 257 advertising accounts.
- CVR (Conversion Rate) and CPA (Cost-Per-Action) statistics are based solely on conversion campaigns.
1. Average Click-Through Rate
The average CTR on Facebook Ads is 0,93%.
2. Average Cost Per Click
The average CPC in Facebook Ads is $1,87.
3. Average Conversion Rate
The average CVR on Facebook Ads is 7,8%.
4. Average Cost Per Action
The average CPA on Facebook Ads is $27,1.
Now when you’ve got statistics on the niche, let’s have a look at what is worth and what NOT to do when launching advertising on Facebook this year. So…
How to Advertise on Facebook in 2021?
Perhaps the main advice in promotion is not to use common interests (or combine them with narrower ones). For instance, you are in the jewelry business. One of the easiest ways is to choose the female gender, age parameters, and the “Jewelry” category from the drop-down list when setting up the ad (see screenshot).
The benefit of such targeting is:
- You give Facebook the ability to look for the target audience among the specified and self-optimize. It is, in fact, all.
Cons:
- You will compete with a huge number of advertisers (interest is simple, predictable, readily available). Therefore, the price of your advertising will be higher;
- with limited budgets, you won’t be able to compete for the most paying customers. With large ones, you’ll spend most of the budget on finding the same paying audience.
What do we recommend doing? For those who are just starting to use Facebook advertising, it will be quite enough to click on the ‘Suggestions’ button and choose the category you need from the list or try to enter it manually.
We advise you to select up to 5 interests and not expand the audience by more than 1-2 million. This ad setup will allow Facebook search for the potential customers among those who match at least one of the selected interests.
To narrow the audience even more, you can click on the ‘Narrow Audience’ button.
In this case, Facebook will search for customers among people who match at least one interest from the 1st level of interests and one from the interests of the 2nd level. We do not recommend narrowing the audience more than 3 times, as this usually greatly reduces the reach, which negatively affects advertising.
When standard Facebook interests aren’t enough, you can take advantage of the company’s hidden interests using the Facebook API. To do this, follow the link: https://graph.facebook.com/ and in the opened window, enter the needed interest in the required field.
If it is present, it will definitely appear on the list. Also, all relevant interests will be there. If it consists of several words, then you can easily enter it in the same field separated by a space, for example, “handmade jewelry”. So, you can find suitable interests for yourself, which are not used by 90% of employers, and thus more accurately get into the target audience and reduce the cost for the advertising campaign.
And finally, once you’ve identified relevant interests, try Facebook Audience Insights.
For instance, your target audience is females in their 20s to 50s living in Canada. In the left column, you fill in all the required fields, then go to the Page Likes tab and scroll down the page.
You will be exposed to the list of pages that are also liked by people interested in jewelry. Try to select a page and enter it as an interest. Not always all the pages from the list are available for selection, but, in any case, by targeting related hobbies, you can significantly outperform competitors, greatly reducing the price of advertising.
Basically, interest adjustment is the key factor that will help you advance in advertising during the 2020-21 period. The full list of tips can be found in other articles on our blog, but for now, let’s look at the Facebook advertising benefits.
Why does Facebook Advertising Work so Well?
1. Branding and recognizability
Compared to Google Ads, where your company can easily get lost among a bunch of other text ads, Facebook makes it possible to increase the recognition of ads using logos, corporate colors, and style. Actually, compare yourself.
2. Ability to customize advertising without having a website
You can collect requests directly on Facebook using internal lead generation forms
or with the help of Facebook Instant Experience, creating your own “mini-website” within the platform in a matter of minutes.
3. Visual (photo and video) advertising
Perfectly suits for advertising or visualizing products/services.
4. Low CPC – Huge ROAS (return on ad spend) and ROI (return on investment)
The numbers speak for themselves. When a click can cost $800 in Google Ads in some niches, the average cost of a click on Facebook is in the range of $1-2.
5. Contact with the client when he/she is in a good mood
Do not forget that people use social media mainly when they are relaxed or want to distract. Usually, at this moment, it is easy to evoke a positive emotion and make him/her go to the website/leave a request. And even if at that moment he/she was not serious, you can always convert it using high-quality follow-up or retargeting.
Facebook Ad Templates
Also, one of the greatest points about Facebook advertising is that you can always do it yourself. Of course, we always recommend using videos or design solutions in your advertising, as this makes it more unique and creates possibilities to stand out among other advertisers. But if you do not have the opportunity to work with a designer, and a creative is required now, you can easily use services such as Crello or Canva, where you can make a creative that is most relevant to your ad in a matter of minutes.
Examples of the Best & Most Effective Facebook Ads*
*with some insights to apply to your own Facebook marketing
Finally, to inspire you to create your own ad campaign, we will provide examples of several viral ads from well-known companies, as well as explain how and why these ads work.
Case 1 – Bloomberg
Despite the terrifying colors of this map, the ad has incredible statistics. What led to such impressive results? Using relevant, socially important topics in your creatives has a 99% chance of making your ad go viral. The well-known magazine took advantage of this. The result is obvious – free clicks and transitions as a result of active reposts.
Case 2 – Shopify
You don’t have to sell anything in your ad. A popular brand shares free tips on Instagram advertising in exchange for blog clicks and brand awareness. Not a bad deal, isn’t it?
Case 3 – Google
The number of likes and reposts is not always an indicator of good advertising performance. It often happens that an ad has good engagement but no sales. In the case of Google, the opposite is true. Despite the fact that ads have a small number of thumbs up, they perform well. This is because, in its ads creatives, the corporation is talking about you, not about its services. Getting through to the consumer and solving his/her problem is the key task of any advertising company.
Final Word
Facebook advertising campaigns are a powerful tool with which you can increase not only the quantity of your customers but also brand awareness, as well as its reputation on the Internet. Every day, the number of Facebook users is growing. The same does the number of advertisers eager to take their place in the digital world. Whether you will be among them is up to you. But how will your customers know about you if you don’t claim yourself online?
If you are still hesitating whether to implement Facebook advertising, contact us. We will analyze your business and offer a comprehensive solution that suits your aims. After all, we know what your online business needs.
