Harnessing the Power of Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger Ads

It’s likely no surprise that Facebook holds the #1 position for the world’s most active social media platform and most minutes spent on a site per day. Despite all the information about privacy issues impacting its billions of users, it seems it’s just too hard to break away from viewing all the posts about people you know, barely know, or don’t know at all, and monitoring the likes and shares of your posts that seem to validate your humanness.

The question to ask yourself about advertising on Facebook, whether you’re a business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) brand, is not if, but how much? You can build a page, but no one will come if you don’t alert targeted audiences that your page exists and what they can gain by following it and viewing it regularly.

With more than 60 million active business pages on Facebook, getting noticed and followed isn’t always easy, which is why paying to get noticed matters. The good news is, nearly 2 billion people are connected to a small business page on Facebook.

Meta is the parent company for Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. As a result, when you create an ad for one of Meta’s platforms, you can easily populate it across the others.

Fortunately, creating and placing ads on Facebook is as easy as posting about your pet, vacation, or fun night out with friends. Following is an overview of the steps Facebook will walk you through to set up your ads.

Setting up on the YouTube stage

As videos become more and more a mainstream part of our social media experiences, advertising on YouTube becomes more relevant for just about any brand. Statistics provided by YouTube show that viewers engage with brand messages on the site and make purchases as a result. Consider:

• Viewers say they are twice as likely to buy something as a result of seeing it on YouTube.
• More than 70 percent of YouTube viewers claim they are more aware of new brands from watching videos.

Building a presence on YouTube includes setting up a YouTube channel to host your videos and creating and publishing ads. You can set up your ads to drive people to your channel to view more of your video content or direct them to your website, where you can promote further content, engage in live chats, and more.

To set up a YouTube ad to drive traffic to your website, you will need to set up a YouTube account and channel for your brand. The channel is where you house your videos. You can invite people to subscribe to your channel to improve your chances of viewership.

Your YouTube ads can direct people to your channel or to your website. You can also choose the country or location you want your ad to target and the characteristics of your target audience. As you select your variables, you will get estimates for reach, views, and cost per view (CPV). For example, if you set up an ad to promote a software company’s new platform, you may get an estimated weekly impression count of 10,000 to 20,000, and actual views of 6,000 to 13,000 from among that audience. Your YouTube CPV may be between $0.01 and $0.03. These variables will change with each audience you set up.

Additionally, you can sort for specific interests among the audiences YouTube will target. A software company that provides fleet management or dispatch applications may sort for technophiles and viewers with an interest in transportation. As you select more variables, YouTube will update the estimates for reach, views, and CPV so you can see how you can best reach your goals and desired ROI.

After selecting audience variables, you will be prompted to set your daily budget like you do for ads on Facebook and other social media channels. (See “Harnessing the Power of Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger Ads” earlier in this chapter for more about advertising on Facebook.) You can program your budget for awareness or consideration. For awareness, you can use a bidding approach that charges you for every thousand views of your ad. For consideration, or to get viewers to fulfill a call to action, you can pay per single view. You can also set up a targeted cost per action or conversion if you want to pay only for the conversions from viewers to engaged visitors to your website or some other site.

Your ad will then be submitted for your review before it starts to appear on YouTube. Like the process for approving Google ads, the review process may take 24 hours or more, so plan accordingly.

Your ad on YouTube will be a video. It will either be placed in the video menu feed consumers see when they go to YouTube.com, or it will play before, during, or after a third-party video they choose to view.

To get the most out of your YouTube videos, you need to create professional, interesting, and highly relevant ads. Your ad will be most successful if it’s short (30 to 60 seconds) and fast-paced to keep viewers’ attention, and has a call to action to get more engagement or spark a transaction. To preserve your brand reputation and keep viewers from hitting the Skip Ad button, maintain a high level of professional quality for all your videos.

Advertising on LinkedIn

LinkedIn provides B2B brands with a platform to engage with customers and prospects in a non-sales environment, building awareness for business news, personnel updates, and thought leadership. The goal is to spark dialogue about business topics or industry issues that can lead to one-on-one conversations about a brand, and ultimately turn contacts into leads and prospects. The key is to use LinkedIn pages to post content that inspires viewers to click through to your website for further engagement.

Like all social media, the competition for followers and to get your posts noticed among targeted LinkedIn members is fierce. The workaround to increase visibility for your posts is to advertise on LinkedIn, which is like advertising on Facebook.

Instead of selecting for consumer behavior and interests like you would on Facebook, you select targeted followers for your LinkedIn ads by the industries in which they work and the positions they hold. For example, if you want to reach people responsible for choosing manufacturing partners for aerospace parts, you would select aerospace as your industry and target profiles of people that have job functions related to manufacturing, including quality assurance, engineering design, product management, and so on. You can also sort your audience to reach people by their job titles, such as directors, VPs of operations, engineering, manufacturing, or product development, chief manufacturing officers, and so on.

As you sort your audience, LinkedIn will calculate the forecasted results. It will show you a breakdown of the functions represented by the audience you select, and the projected reach, cost, and frequency of ads over a 30-day period.

Think back to the aerospace manufacturing search. If you’re selecting an audience based on engineering, operations, quality assurance, and project and product management, LinkedIn may show you an audience size of 30,000-plus with a function breakdown that shows 70 percent of your audience working in operations, 23 percent in engineering, and just 9 percent in program and product management. Forecasted results give you a glimpse of whom you will be paying to reach. If you really only care to reach program and product development managers, you may want to change the sort terms for your audience profile so your reach is more than 9 percent of those you’re paying to target.

In-app advertising

Research conducted by data.ai in 2021 showed that Americans on average spend one more hour a day browsing around on their mobile devices than watching TV. It’s not just our social media pages we overconsume; it’s also the dozens of apps on our smartphones that keep us connected, entertained, informed, and healthy that we simply can’t seem to do without. We have game, entertainment, food, finance, fitness, and many other apps helping us live our best lives in the real world, despite the amount of time we spend in the cyber world (which most people don’t consider to be actual “living”).

With so many of us apping to find our happy places in our “real” lives, apps have become a formidable channel for advertisers. Globally, in 2021, according to data.ai, app users spent 3.8 trillion hours conducting 230 billion downloads and dropped $170 billion on apps. That’s a lot! Just for fun, the most apps are used by people in China, India, and the U.S., in that order.

Advertising in apps needs to be carefully planned. Think about playing your favorite game, like Scrabble, Solitaire, Angry Birds, Marvel Future Revolution, or Candy Crush, or reviewing exercise or finance tips and constantly getting interrupted by videos you can’t click out of. Sometimes you have to wait a full minute or more to get back to your game, or recipe, or fitness app, while a video about something you have no interest in drones on. As an app user this can be very annoying and can cause resentment toward the brand interrupting your experience. As a marketer, you don’t want to be that annoying brand. Instead of gaining customers, you may end up missing opportunities.

App advertising platforms

You can place your ads in a wide variety of apps: health, finance, shopping, travel, entertainment, and other apps your target consumers may be using. In-app ads can show up as a banner above or below a game, in the information feed of the app, or even as a video that can be used to reward viewers. If a user watches a video ad, they can earn more time, extra plays, or other incentives as they play games or stay engaged with the app.

If you choose to run in-app ads, you’ll need to work with an advertising platform that sets up and serves your ads to targeted audiences. For example, AppsFlyer serves ads across a wide variety of apps and provides tools for ad development, analytics, audience segmentation, predictive analytics, and much more. Pricing ranges from a free package, to paying for each conversion, to custom prices depending on your target audience and budget.

Alternatives to AppsFlyer suggested by G2.com, a business software and services review site, include

• Kochava
• Adjust
• CleverTap
• Branch
• Singular
• Google Analytics (or Google Analytics 360)
• Mixpanel

Be sure to compare app advertising platforms’ reach, service, and pricing in order to find the one that best meets your target audience and budget needs. Advertising platforms change often, so visit review sites like G2.com and pay attention to what customers say and how they rate ease of use, support, analytics, and more.

As with any advertising platform, it’s best to start small with app advertising. Test your ad designs, messaging, copy, tone, and offers frequently.

Editorializing your content page placements

Sponsored content on editorial pages can be in the form of an article, a checklist, a decision guide brief, or even a video. Whatever format you choose, the publisher you are using for distribution will run it among the editorial pieces so it fits in naturally.

Using e-newsletter placements

Placing editorial-type content in newsletters produced and distributed by media organizations covering your industry or consumer newsletters about your product category is a strong way to get exposure for your content and credibility as thought leaders.

Your article will be labeled as sponsored content. When readers click on the visual that represents your article, they will be directed to a content page with your full piece. Depending on the publication you are working with, this content page could be on your website or their website.

Don’t add commercial messages or offers to your educational content. That type of language can come off as gimmicky and may make readers feel they’ve been baited, jeopardizing trust for the sponsoring brand. Keep your article educational.

Often, the publisher will provide the email addresses of readers who clicked through to the paid article. You then have permission to use this email list for future marketing and sales follow-up, giving you even more value for your investment.

Sponsoring third-party content

Another form of sponsored content is a paid mention in someone else’s content. Podcasts and webinars are great examples of this. There are numerous opportunities to sponsor informational programs that focus on your industry. Some media outlets will host webinars that are promoted to hundreds or thousands of followers they have permission to email. They sell sponsorships for these webinars to companies whose products or services are related to the webinar’s theme.

For example, an advertising media site may host a webinar on how to use CRM platforms to nurture customer relationships and secure lifetime value. A logical company to ask to sponsor that program would be HubSpot, Act-On, or any other CRM platform. Sponsors often get their logo on all marketing and program materials and are usually able to post articles or participate in presentations during the podcast or webinar.

There are numerous opportunities to sponsor programs produced by third-party experts or media sites. Before agreeing to spend your valuable resources on sponsorship, be sure you know the following:

• Who is the audience? Are they direct purchasers, influencers, or decision makers?
• What is the anticipated audience reach? Does the program usually attract 200 audience members per episode, or 2,000?

• How many leads have past sponsors generated?

  Divide your sponsorship cost by the average anticipated number of leads to calculate your estimated cost per lead (CPL). Then compare your sponsorship CPL with other marketing programs to determine which channels and formats deliver the most for your dollars.

• Will you get a list of contacts who participated in the event so you can follow up with a program summary or offer? This will clearly add to the overall value and return of your sponsorship.

Getting attention with banner and pop-up ads

Placing digital banner ads (clickable image-based ads) on websites that your target audience visits is a great way to get exposure despite a low return on clicks to your own website. A good click-through rate (CTR) for banner ads is 2 percent, but the average, according to WordStream, is closer to 0.25 percent. However, sometimes the awareness alone can pay off, especially if you’re an emerging brand in an established field.

For comparison, take a look at CTRs for other types of digital advertising:

• Email newsletters: 10 – 20 percent
• Facebook: 0.05 – 0.10 percent
• Google Ads: 2 – 5 percent

To ensure banner ads drive traffic to your website, be imaginative and clever. Essentially, regardless of the shape and size of your banner ad, you’ll have space for only a single visual accompanied by a compelling headline. You need to create curiosity, intrigue, and value in that small space that’s meaningful with a single glance.

Here are some examples of compelling headlines:

• “Looking to save thousands on your mortgage?”
• “Ready to write your first book?”
• “Top brand outdoor gear at warehouse prices”
• “Free website grader — no strings attached!”

Your banner ads should always have a button that clicks directly to your website. For best results, link the button to a special landing page you’ve created to specifically address the topic or offer teased in the banner ad. Sending people to your home page can be confusing, because they’re looking for an article that directly supports the banner ad copy, and if they don’t find it, they’ll likely leave.

You can also purchase lighthouse ads, which are pop-ups that cover the majority of the web page. Viewers can click on the ad to go to the advertiser’s website, or click on the X to close the ad and continue browsing the site the ad appears on.

Banner ads can be purchased in different sizes and at varying price points. The horizontal banner ad at the top of a website is often more expensive than a square ad in a sidebar in the right- or left-hand column. Pricing is also dependent on the number of visitors to the site you’re advertising on. A site with 100,000 visitors a month will clearly be less expensive than a site with 200,000 visitors.

Ad rates for banners on websites change as traffic to the site increases or decreases. Download media kits to see what the circulation and audience demographics are for sites you’re considering. Also download the editorial calendars for news sites you want to advertise on, so you can place ads during the months that focus on topics most relevant to your brand and product.

Retargeting consumers with banner ads

A great way to boost the impact of your digital advertising is to retarget consumers with banner ads. When you do this, you may improve your CTR to 0.7 percent, which is above the average CTR for banner ads in general.

Retargeting is simply serving your ads up on third-party websites to consumers who recently visited your site. You encode a JavaScript pixel in your website that tracks who came and left, connects with a platform or service that follows the visitor to other sites, and then populates your ad on those sites for that specific viewer.

Retargeting is most effective for e-commerce sites because it can follow visitors who abandoned their shopping cart, serve up ads specific to the abandoned products, and encourage consumers to come back and finish their transaction. Some retargeting platforms will actually rebuild the consumer’s abandoned shopping cart if they click on the ad, making it easier for them to pick up where they left off.

Community channels for print advertising

For small businesses serving local and regional markets, print advertising plays a strong role in establishing your presence as a community partner and resource. Many small towns still have daily or weekly newspapers or magazines that report on business news, community events and issues, and the citizens that make their community whole. These publications are read daily by both locals and visitors, and provide a valuable tool for building awareness of your brand and timely promotions.

Community newspapers are great for promotions that appeal to tourists and locals, and for introducing the people behind your brand, adding to your community partnership profile.

Industry publications

Another good option for print advertising is your industry’s trade journals and magazines. Most industries have a handful of publishing companies that print monthly magazines, buyers’ guides, event editions, and so on that feature articles on industry news, regulatory issues, best practices, and case studies. As a marketer, you can purchase full-page ads, partial-page ads, and sponsored content or editorials (see the “Winning with Sponsored Content” section earlier in this chapter). Some magazines allow you to purchase monthly columns in which you can feature your staff members as subject matter experts in your industry.

As with any advertising environment, you need to craft an emotionally appealing and relevant ad to stand out among your competitors and other advertisers. Many trade magazines have more ads than articles — or at least it seems that way — so producing a quality, professional ad is key. Your print ad should contain the following elements:

• High quality images of your product, leaders, or concepts related to your promise or value
• A clear call to action directing consumers to call, email, go to your website, or register for an event
• A reason to go to your website — for example, to download a paper, read case studies, browse product specifications or inventory, and so on
• Your contact information, including your URL, email address, and phone number
• Copy that shows how you can solve a real and immediate need or problem

Beyond those elements, your ad needs to appeal to readers’ curiosity and emotional triggers. In many cases, customers know what your products look like, so choosing images or content that appeals to their most pressing needs can get more attention than an image or ad theme based on what they already know.

Consider the Innovatus Imaging ad shown in Figure 10-1, which was published in an ultrasound imaging technology journal. Instead of using a photo of an ultrasound probe or a machine imaging professionals see and use every day, VP of Sales and Marketing Matt Tomory chose to focus on a pain point they feel every day: Pressure. The ad shows a sports car with a flat tire, which reflects the fast pace of their jobs and how debilitating it is to be sidelined when your equipment isn’t working. The ad highlights how Innovatus Imaging can relieve on-the-job pressure by repairing medical devices in a way that keeps them running when patients need them most. This approach helped Innovatus Imaging stand out in a magazine full of ads with product photos that made similar promises and claims.

Print magazines for specific industries tend to have high readership numbers and highly engaged readers. These magazines are also often posted online with the ads intact, giving your ad more visibility and your ROI a bigger boost.

Television advertising

With the cost of airing a 30-second ad on NBC during Super Bowl LVI in 2022 being upwards of $6 million, TV advertising may seem out of reach for most small and medium-size businesses. However, the different options now available for TV viewing are making it more affordable than you may think. These options include

• Linear TV: The traditional way of watching TV, where viewers watch a program on a certain channel at its scheduled time
• Connected TV: A newer way of watching TV, where viewers connect to the internet through a subscription or free streaming service and watch a show live or on demand

The content used and costs for advertising on both formats varies significantly.

Radio advertising

If television killed the radio show way back when, you may assume that digital killed the radio show. But not totally.

In truth, radio consumption has declined quite a bit over the years. A 2021 survey by Statista found that only 20 percent of U.S. adults listen to news on the radio daily. Music consumption has dropped rapidly as well. From 2017 to 2021, radio went from being the most popular platform for listening to music in the U.S. to capturing the attention of only about 31 percent of U.S. listeners. The new normal for music listening is online streaming.

The decline in listenership is due not just to technology but to lifestyle changes. The car was the most common place for listening to news or music on the radio because it provided entertainment for drivers during daily commutes and long road trips. With more people working from home and more audio options in Bluetooth-connected cars, people are tuning in to a much wider array of listening platforms, including Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, and more, in their cars and elsewhere.

However, radio can still be an effective means for reaching and building brand awareness among key audiences. Some studies claim it’s one of the top channels for building trust as well. The key is to really do your research to know if your audience listens to radio programs, and if so, what type? Talk radio, sports radio, news? Music, and if so, what kind? Easy listening, classic rock, contemporary? When you know what your audience is listening to, you can decide if this channel is good for you and how to best use it.

Radio provides various formats for advertising including

• Live read spots: A live read spot involves a radio host reading your ad in a way that makes it seem like it’s part of the programming. Often, the host uses your product and then talks about their experience with it. This type of advertising is very credible and builds the trust radio is known for, because people tend to listen to talk show hosts they trust and admire, so hearing them endorse health, fitness, finance, home improvement, and other products gets attention, and quite often, action.
• Sponsorships: Sponsorships can be purchased for prime radio programs like weather reports, up-to-the-minute traffic reports, and sports matchups. These sponsorships can be very effective for raising brand awareness, because people tend to listen to radio on the road in order to miss traffic jams, plan ahead for unexpected delays due to snow or other weather conditions that affect drive time, and monitor scores for their favorite teams.
• Produced spots: A produced spot is just that: a 15- to 60-second recorded ad the station runs multiple times a week during the time slots you designate, such as prime time (usually 6 a.m. to 10 a.m.), daytime (10 a.m. to 3 p.m.), afternoon prime time (3 p.m. to 7 p.m.), and evenings.

Pricing for radio advertising varies depending on the time slot in which you choose to air your ads or live reads and the market in which the radio station operates and maintains listenership. Just like TV, the bigger the population, the greater the reach and the higher the ad cost. As a rule, you can plan on prices ranging from $200 a week for 20 spots in a small market with maybe 250,000 or fewer listeners, and up to $8,000 for the same number of spots in top U.S. markets with millions of listeners.

For a small business in a small market, radio can be very effective for targeting consumers who tune in for community news and updates.

Tips for producing TV and radio spots

Production costs are the fixed cost aspect of broadcast advertising that can really make a dent in your budget. You may be able to cut back on the number of spots you purchase to save money during your slow times, but you can’t cut back on the quality of your production without hurting your overall ROI and even your brand reputation. Hiring professionals to help produce your ads isn’t optional; it’s mandatory.

Following are some things to think about before embarking on a broadcast advertising program.