About a year ago, I came across some great marketing advice, in a piece on the Moz marketing Blog.
The short article was simply titled “Why Every Business Should Spend at Least $1 per Day on Facebook Ads.”
While I recommend checking out the whole article here, first take in these three lines that really stress a valid point to small businesses:
“ 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.
If you can’t spare $30 a month, you shouldn’t be in business”
Valid point right?
But to add context, let’s start by reviewing most common marketing strategies that small businesses attempt to deploy.
While almost every marketer or business owner realizes they need to implement social media into their marketing strategy, it is often viewed as an opportunity to reach your audience at no cost, other than the time and effort put into the content.
There is a true misconception that Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are free services. Well they are… but really they aren’t. Not for a growing business anyway. I like to call them ineffectively free.
Remember, as the article stated, marketing is often about doing what your competitors won’t. And honestly, many of your competitors won’t make the small investment. According to TechCrunch, over 30 million small businesses have active Facebook pages. Only about 1 million (1 in 30 small businesses) are currently advertising.
Hopefully you now see the opportunity. Here are three quick reasons to add a bit of advertising into your Facebook plans.
You will receive a better ROI immediately on your marketing strategy.
Remember that your marketing strategy and your social media strategy are not independent of each other. You should want to receive the same ROI and rapid success that you would expect from a commercial, radio spot, or billboard.
By using Facebook advertising tools you will see immediate payoffs on the great content you are providing every day.
You will find an easy way to reach new customers.
One of the main limitations of sharing content on Facebook without advertising or boosting is that it will have very limited reach, and only to your current page likes.
The advertising platform allows you to share your content with anyone, by using the parameters and filters to target specific locations, genders, ages, etc.
This turns Facebook into a marketing tool, as opposed to just a retention tool.
You will control the power of your content.
Have a big event or sale you need to actively promote? Maybe you are on a deadline or tight window to sell. You no longer have the option to run a creative small scale marketing campaign. Facebook is now your ticket to create sudden awareness.
Facebook allows you to immediately reach huge groups of people, if you are willing to pay for it.
