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In the middle of last year, I began the research that would ultimately lead to me giving a presentation at “Distilledathon” (our company conference) about my vision for the future of marketing.

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Posted by briancarter

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

For the last three years I’ve constantly recommended Facebook ads. I recommend them to both B2C or B2B businesses. I recommend them to local theaters and comedians here in Charleston, SC. I recommend them to everyone who wants to grow awareness about anything they’re doing.

How advertising has changed since the 20th century

Before the Internet, it was unlikely that the average person would advertise. Many businesses used the Yellow Pages or radio, but not all. Even in the first decade of the 21st century, only a percentage of companies used search advertising. Many found that pay-per-click was too expensive or too complicated for them.

Why Facebook Ads are the biggest marketing opportunity ever

With Facebook ads, we have a totally unique opportunity. There are several things about them never before seen together:

• They can reach as many people or more people as radio or TV, and in whatever country.
• They have sophisticated targeting like AdWords, albeit on different criteria.
• The minimum spend is just $1 per day.
• They are the lowest cost-per-mille (CPM) ad in history. They average around $0.25 CPM, which is only 1% of the cost of TV. Are you kidding me? Nope, it’s for real.

In other words, Facebook ads are mega-awareness raising, have good targeting, require very little commitment, and are unbelievably affordable.

Here’s the one thing I tell people about Facebook ads that usually gets through:

If you just spend $1 per day on Facebook ads, you will get in front of 4,000 people that wouldn’t have seen you otherwise. If you are doing that and your competitors aren’t, you win the awareness game in your niche.

You can’t sell to someone who doesn’t know you exist, and you can’t sell a product or service the consumer has never heard of.

If you can’t spare $30 a month, you shouldn’t be in business.

Facebook Ads for awareness and ROI

In my opinion, because of AdWords, many companies now underestimate the importance and value of awareness and mindshare. I drank the instant-ROI kool aid too; I was Mr. AdWords from 2004 until 2010. We still do it, but we also know its limits. It can harvest the low-hanging fruit and look good in terms of attribution, but it can’t raise awareness affordably.

There are people in SEO and PR who look down on ads. I understand that aesthetic, but it’s not as important as this opportunity. We know that organic Facebook without advertising is a tough road that’s becoming more and more impassable. Pages with millions of fans find themselves only reaching 10s of thousands with their posts. Adding advertising to promote your posts ensures you get 10-100x the exposure of page posting alone. We have one big national brand client that’s receiving $0.01 engagement clicks on several of their most engaging posts.

There are enough case studies of companies getting positive ROI from Facebook advertising to know that it’s feasible. But there are a lot of companies doing Facebook poorly or without sufficient analytics. One stat said that 41% of B2B companies didn’t have the tracking in place to know what Facebook was doing for them either way. In fact, as of a 2013 HubSpot survey, 34% of businesses either cannot or do not calculate their inbound ROI at all.

There’s Facebook conversion tracking code you can use, and you can create ads that automatically optimize for conversions. Here’s how to use it:

Facebook Advertising targeting options

If you’re not super-familiar, here are some of your targeting options (use one, a combination, or all):

1. Geography
2. Language
3. Age
4. Gender
5. Workplace
6. College
7. Interests (including job titles)
8. Categories
9. Your own email lists
10. Relationship status
11. Education level
12. College major
13. School

I have worked on and seen other great case studies (a few examples are Marketo, InfiniGraph, Hubspot) of B2B Facebook advertising for lead gen. I’ve targeted media, bloggers, and journalists, and secured interviews I wouldn’t have received otherwise.

Facebook also has retargeting options like AdWords does if you want to diversify your owned media beyond email and fans.

They’re also great for promoting events. You can not only get people to join your event for sometimes as low as $0.15 each, you can also reach the friends of the people who’ve already said they’re going.

Do at least $1 per day!

Altogether, Facebook advertising is a powerful platform with a lot of options, and given its power, your company should have someone testing our Facebook ads for it, even if it’s just at $1 per day!

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You may also want to participate in The Carter Group’s 2014 Digital Advertising Survey, Sponsored by Moz. Here it is!

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