Do Facebook Ads work for Small Business? We investigate.

Here’s what we know: If you’re a business in the United States, your customers are on Facebook. (Same is true of most countries, but I’ll spare you the super-size list.)

Don’t believe me? Check out these amazing stats about Facebook usage and business adoption.

65 MILLION BUSINESSES ARE USING FACEBOOK PAGES, AND 4 MILLION ARE ADVERTISING ON FACEBOOK.

5 MILLION BUSINESSES ARE USING INSTAGRAM BUSINESS PROFILES, AND 2 MILLION ARE ADVERTISING ON INSTAGRAM.

More advertisers mean more diversity of business types and sizes.

In Facebook’s fourth quarter, their top 100 advertisers represented less than 25% of their ad revenue, an all-time low. But Facebook’s ad revenue is always increasing, which means that smaller businesses are making up for most of the growth in ad spend.

SMBs are starting to “get it.” They are flocking to Facebook, testing things out, and when they see results (which they are) they are spending more and more money.

Facebook has more than 2.2 billion active users every day, and Facebook has the biggest reach of any social media network. By far.

Their advertising gives you the opportunity to create highly targeted audiences, too, which you wouldn’t necessarily reach through something like print or TV advertising. And when you consider that you can spend as little as $1 per day, Facebook Ads can be both incredibly effective and super affordable for small businesses.

Now for the bad news: 62% of small businesses fail when it comes to Facebook Ads.

That doesn’t mean that your business will fail, though, which is why we’re here to help.

Your customers are almost definitely on Facebook, but if you don’t know the best ways to reach them, you’ll be throwing money away. Plus, when you pay for Facebook Ads that aren’t delivering results, you hand your target audience over to your competitors – the ones who are handling Facebook Ads better than you are.

In this article, we’re going to help you become part of the successful 38 percent.

We’ll talk about why Facebook may not work right now for your business. Then, we’ll go into how small businesses can set themselves up for success, covering everything from the industries that perform well (and poorly) on Facebook to how knowledge and strategy may be more important than business size. We’ll talk about the time it takes to handle Facebook marketing and help you understand what’s needed in terms of a budget for advertising.

And at the very end, we’ll tell you about the work we do here at Jumper to help businesses just like yours.

3 TIMES FACEBOOK ADS WON’T WORK FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS

Facebook Ads are designed to be successful; Facebook wants them to work for you because then you’ll spend more and more on them. The ads themselves are not the problem. Here are three times when you may want to rethink running a Facebook Ad.

1. YOUR AUDIENCE ISN’T SPENDING TIME ON FACEBOOK.

The more time you spend getting to know your audience, the better you’ll be able to meet them where they spend their time – and it may not be Facebook.

For example, older adults may not use Facebook (or the internet) at all. You also may have trouble targeting other B2B marketers on Facebook who are used to, and sick of, seeing advertising all day long.

2. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE.

Even if your audience is on Facebook, you can’t reach them if you don’t know who they are.

Facebook Ads are only as strong as their targeting, and to reach the right people you need to know your audience demographics. While a minor test budget on Facebook Ads may help, simply knowing your business better – which doesn’t cost anything – is what you need most.

3. YOU DON’T HAVE A HOOK.

It’s incredibly difficult for a consumer to take action if they don’t have something enticing to make them move. You may have the greatest product or service on the market, but a consumer who’s never heard of you won’t care.

In order to reel in new customers, you need some sort of deal, freebie or offer. Whether you don’t have one yet or you’re not willing to create one, trying to get traction from a Facebook Ad without a compelling offer is a waste.

HOW TO MAKE FACEBOOK ADS WORK FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS

When deciding whether or not Facebook Ads are right for your small business, you have to take a few things into consideration, including how capable your company is of handling social media and if you have a budget to support your efforts.

UNDERSTANDING HOW DIFFERENT INDUSTRIES SUCCEED WITH FACEBOOK ADS

It’s not easy to narrow down the industries that have the most success on Facebook. There are a lot of examples of brands within certain industries that have been successful with Facebook Ads (and plenty more that haven’t), and Facebook has a number of industries that it says their ads can help with

According to Entrepreneur, 38% of sales come from favoriting or sharing, particularly when a favorited or shared post alerts the soon-to-be buyer of a deal or sale. The product categories that are most socially-referred on Facebook are tech and electronics (25%), beauty and clothing (22%) and food and drink (14%). The other 39% is made up of art, design, DIY, and photo; gardening and décor; and a generic “Other” category.

This graph may also help – it shows the average CTR in Facebook ads across a number of industries. The legal industry seems to do the best, while the employment and job training industry does the worst.

Click the link here to read more from Jumper Media. Blog by Colton Bollinger.