For years, Meta (Facebook) ads have been known to be an effective marketing tool – in large part because they’re super dynamic in how they can be used. In this blog, we’ll share 8 ways your business can use Meta ads to grow.
Build Awareness
With 2.93 BILLION monthly users worldwide and 70% of American adults using its platform, it’s needless to say Meta is an ideal venue for getting your business in front of a massive audience.
If your business wants to improve brand awareness to steal consumer mindshare from competitors or to increase demand for your services, Meta ads can be a great tool for helping you accomplish it.
Given its demographic, location, and interest targeting; Meta ads can allow you to build an audience you can hit with your ads over long periods of time to let your brand and messaging really sink in.
If you are running ads to improve awareness it’s important to have patience. This is because your audience will need to be exposed to your advertisements frequently and consistently over long periods of time before they will remember and recognize your brand.
Note: If you’re skeptical or unsure about running ad campaigns to build awareness, check out our blog post to determine whether awareness campaigns are right for your business.
Nurture Leads
Most people think of Meta ads as a tool for generating leads, but it is also an effective tool for nurturing them.
*Note: Lead nurturing is the process of building and maintaining relationships with potential and existing customers by sharing valuable content with them to increase their chances of doing business with you.
Using Meta ads to nurture leads requires creating custom audiences of leads who have already been exposed to your brand. You can do this by uploading your list of leads onto Meta or by targeting people who have interacted with your previous Meta campaigns.
The contents of lead nurturing ads will also look a bit different than that of lead generation or awareness ads.
Depending on which stage of the buyer journey your leads are in, your nurturing campaigns might:
Provide FAQs about working with you.
Distinguish your business from competitors.
Offer educational or planning resources.
Share customer testimonials to build social proof.
Promote case studies to strengthen credibility.
Discuss your values, guarantees, and benefits of working with you.
Share industry insights or best practices to add to your credibility.
Recruit Talent
Though most people think of using Meta ads to get more sales and customers, it can also be an amazing employee recruitment tool!
Here’s a screenshot of an employment Meta ad our team ran for our client, Commercial Cleaning with Commonwealth. With this ad, we got our client 150+ applicants and 30 employees in 4 months.
It’s important to note that these ads work best for businesses who are recruiting for entry-level positions or roles that require minimal experience. Businesses recruiting for positions that require depth of knowledge or extensive experience in the respective field will not find as much success in using Meta ads for recruiting.
Meta ads for employee recruitment work like any other Meta ads. Meta will charge your business each time someone clicks on the ad. Those who are interested in the position will be sent to your landing page to view more information and to submit an application.
Note: When using Meta ads to recruit talent, you must indicate that they are employment ads by checking the box under the “special ads” category. Because they are employment ads, Meta will not allow you to target audiences based on demographics or interests.
[Read: Improve Employee Recruitment with Online Presence for more ways to strengthen your recruiting efforts]
Strengthen Credibility
Campaigns and content that establish credibility should be incorporated at every step of your customers’ buyer journeys and your sales funnel.
Whether you’re running campaigns to generate brand awareness or to nurture leads, your ads can circulate content that demonstrates your team's capabilities and positions your business as a leading expert.
Some content your ads can promote to bolster credibility include:
Customer testimonials and reviews
Industry information or best practices
Before and after photos
Photos of your team in the field or working with customers
DIY tips, tricks, and how-tos
Preparation or planning guides
Generate Leads
Despite the hurdle posed by the Apple iOS 14 update and the oversaturation of online advertising, Meta ads are still good at attracting leads for businesses.
However, lead generation ads addressing the end of the buyer journey might not be super fruitful for your business depending on what you’re selling, the level of competition in your industry, and the price point of the service you offer.
This is why we recommend in our Why Your Online Marketing Isn’t Working blog post to use Meta ads to generate leads who are earlier in their buyer journey. Approaching consumers earlier in the buyer journey will require a change in the type of ads and content you use.
For example: If you’re a floor covering business, then your ads targeting consumers at the decision stage (last stage) might target people who are thinking “I need to call flooring companies near me” and will have a call to action of “call us to schedule a consultation.”
If you begin to run ads targeting consumers at the awareness stage (first stage), then they might target people who are thinking “my carpets are outdated” and have a call to action of “check out the latest flooring trends in our online photo gallery.”
Targeting people earlier in the buyer journey improves the likelihood of getting more leads because there’s less commitment involved on behalf of the consumers, and there’s less competition for them which results in lower lead acquisition costs.
Broadcast Social Proof
Social proof is the psychological concept that people are influenced in their decision making by others, compelling them to act within societal norms or expectations (definition provided by Sprout Social). In plainer terms, you can think of social proof as FOMO (fear of missing out).
Your business can leverage social proof by running Meta ads that promote evidence that an abundance of customers benefited from working with your business. By tapping into social proof, you’re amplifying credibility while making your business seem more attractive than competitors.
Here are some ad content ideas that can help your business use social proof to your advantage:
Video testimonials from customers
Written testimonials from customers
Customer survey data
Influencer endorsement or testimonial
Customer/client reference list
Company awards and achievements
Promote a Launch
Whether you want to generate buzz for an upcoming launch or gauge interest before announcing a launch, running ad campaigns on Meta can help you achieve it.
By launch, we’re referring to any new roll out or release of a:
Product or service offering
Brick-and-mortar business location
Business unit or department
Promotional offering or sale
Program or membership
Unlike brand awareness or lead generation campaigns, launch campaigns rely on an intense advertising push over a condensed timeline (2-3 months) rather than a slow, rolling burn over a longer timeline (5-12 months).
Meta ads are great at accommodating the shorter timeline because they give you the unique ability to quickly and frequently deliver your ads to as many people as you’d like (budget permitting) within a short window.
Because Meta ads only take less than 1-2 days to go live, you can make adjustments to your launch campaigns to share launch updates or to incorporate feedback you’ve received from the buzz surrounding the launch.
Promote an Event
As we mentioned in the previous section, Meta gives you the ability to quickly and frequently deliver your ads to your selected audience, and it allows you to make adjustments and updates to the campaigns without huge delays.
Meta ads also allow you to reach national and international audiences, which makes Meta an ideal promotional vehicle for events that source attendees from multiple regions.
Given Meta’s custom audience targeting feature, you can deliver ads to:
Past event attendees
Email list subscribers
Current or past customers (if you have their contact information)
People who are like past event attendees or email list subscribers
With the Meta event feature, you can run ad campaigns that send people directly to the event signup page in Meta.
By keeping people within the Meta platform, you increase the chance of people completing the event registration. This is because they avoid the mental hurdle of having to leave the Meta platform and the lag associated with loading a new website page on their phone.
Another benefit of promoting the event within Meta is that event pages in Meta show a count of how many people have RSVP'd – which helps you leverage social proof as your event gains more registrations.
If you don’t want to use Meta’s event feature because you want to collect contact information from event registrants or want to collect payment during the registration process, Meta is still a great platform for promoting your event.