The Different Types Of Ads You Can Run On Facebook

Facebook today has over 2 billion monthly active users. In South Africa alone approximately 8 million people regularly use the platform to check in on the latest news or to see what their friends and family might be up to. This is one of the main reasons the platform is such an attractive advertising channel because with the click of a few buttons, you can advertise your brand to a large number of South Africans.

Facebook launched in 2004 and within a few years they had millions of users flocking to the platform on a daily basis. Today the platform has over 14 years’ worth of data on its users. This is another reason why the platform is hands down one of the best digital marketing tools around as Facebook allows it’s advertisers to show their ads to people whose data indicates that they might be in market for your specific product or service.

However, Facebook is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Today you can run all different kinds of ads on the network and some work better than others depending on your objective.

What Kind Of Ads Can You Run On Facebook?

Are you familiar with a digital marketing funnel? Well, this type of funnel basically consists of the three stages of the customer journey which are:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Action

The Awareness Stage

In a nutshell, the awareness stage is aimed at the prospects you are trying to reach who might not have heard about your product or service. This is why this stage is about making the more “aware”.

The good news is that Facebook has got different types of ads that are designed for the three stages of the marketing funnel:

1. Reach Ads:

Reach ads are display ads (in the form of video and images) that you can run to reach as many people as possible. Bigger brands might find this useful because, at a low cost, they can easily reach millions of people.

However, this doesn’t mean that the people who see the ad will end up engaging with the ads or even become customers of the brand. See, Facebook’s goal here is just to show your ad to as many people as possible and not necessarily the ones that are prone to take action.

2. Brand Awareness Ads:

Similar to reach ads, Facebook has a brand awareness objective. This allows advertisers to put their brand in front of users who are more likely to remember the ad.

How does Facebook know this? Well, they have so much data on users that they can easily see which of them are more prone to stop and actually take a look at what you are saying as they might have done so before with similar services or products related to your business.

The Consideration Stage

This is mainly when a specific prospect is already familiar with your brand and is at a stage where it’s not a matter of whether they need the product or service any more but rather which company to go with:

1. Traffic Ads

Knowing that the user is in-market for your product or service you can run traffic ads which are ads that link to a specific page on your website. Once a user sees the ad and clicks on it they will be taken to your website to learn more about your offering.

2. Post Engagement Ad

Another type of ad that falls in this category is a post engagement ad. With this type of ad, Facebook actively looks for people who are keen to engage with what you have to offer.

One thing to remember is that engage doesn’t always mean make a purchase. In most cases this just means the user is more likely to like, comment, share or enquire.

3. Video Ad

We all know that video is growing in popularity and that users prefer to watch more than they do to read. Knowing this you can run a video ad explaining your specific product or service. One of the key benefits of video marketing is that you can clearly articulate what your business’ unique selling points are all about.

This is usually difficult to do in writing considering that the average person has an attention span of 40 seconds.

4. App Install Ads

Got an app for your business? Well, Facebook will help you find people who are more likely to actually install and use it.

Action Stage

This stage is all about the sale. This is when a user is ready to make up his or her mind and it’s just all about timing.

1. Conversion Ads

Facebook has an ad objective called conversion ads. This means that Facebook will try and find people who are more likely to convert when it comes to your offer.

2. In-Store Visit Ads

Don’t have an online store? No problem! Facebook can help you drive customers into your bricks-and-mortar store with something they call In-Store Visit ads.

What this means is Facebook will help you find people who prefer to come into store and physically look at a product or service.

How they gather this data is unclear but experts believe it’s got to do with location tracking, check-in data and offline purchase events.

An offline purchase event is a fairly new concept. It’s when the data of an in-store purchase gets uploaded to Facebook. Many store managers do this as with that data they can see which of the in-store customers saw their ads on the platform and they can then also retarget them on Facebook and Instagram.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

If you want to learn more about social media marketing then make sure to have a look at our Social Media Marketing Course at the Digital School of Marketing.