How does Social Advertising Work?

Meta ads are a powerful form of online marketing that allows businesses to promote their products, services, or brand to a highly targeted audience on Facebook and its family of apps (such as Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network). These ads appear in users’ newsfeeds, stories, and other areas of the Facebook platform, and can be customized based on a wide range of targeting options.

Social Advertising differs from Paid Search in a few key ways:

• Prospects are not shopping for your services at the time they see your ad. Therefore, they may take more time and require more nurturing to actually become a customer.
• That said, Social Advertising is ideal for brand awareness and usually leads to cheaper results
• Your ads compete with all brands in your area who want to reach the same audience, regardless of industry. This means the cost to display your ads will be higher at certain times of the year when the competition is the most intense.
• There are many more options to convey your message to prospects, such as different image/text combinations, video, lead forms, etc.

What to expect when your ads go live

1. When we turn on your campaigns, your ads will begin to show in your targeted area
   • We divide your total monthly budget by 30 and set that as a daily budget in order to pace your results throughout the month. Your ads will run throughout the day until the daily budget has been met as people click on your ads.
   • For example, if your monthly budget is $1000, we will set a daily budget of $35 on the campaigns.
   • You can change your budget at any time, but we recommend maintaining a consistent amount for the first 90 days to gather data on performance, search volume in your area, market rates for keywords, competition, and more.
   • All spend accumulated by your campaigns will be billed directly to your credit card by the ad platforms. Click here for more information about how Facebook will bill you for ad spend. 
2. What happens when someone clicks on your ads?
   • The prospect is sent to an optimized web page (often called a landing page) specific built to encourage them to take action, such as contacting your business via a form or phone call, purchasing a product online, or scheduling a visit.
   • These actions are referred to as “conversions” in our reporting
   • Our goal is to get the most conversions for the most cost-effective rate within your budget
3. How do you know your campaigns are performing?
   • If you are running lead generation campaigns, you will receive an email notification when someone fills out a contact form or calls from a tracking number. You can also log into your lead tracking dashboard (customize link per brand) to view all your leads and export them.
   • Check your lead tracking dashboard often; email notifications can easily bounce or have other delivery issues.
   • Contact support immediately if you are not receiving your email notifications.
   • You can also log into your reporting dashboard at any time to view performance, including the total amount you’ve spent so far, the number of clicks on your ads, how many conversions were generated, and more.
4. How long will it take to optimize performance?
   • Social Advertising takes 60-90 days to fully establish benchmarks for your account. We are constantly testing, learning and optimizing on Facebook. See details of those optimizations here.
   • Keep in mind that every campaign change puts your account in a 3-5 day learning period on Facebook. You may see reduced performance in that time as Facebook re-identifies ideal candidates to see your ad.