Facebook PPC in 2022

Is a Facebook Pay-Per-Click Campaign Beneficial in 2022?

Social media has long been a powerful marketing tool to reach specific audiences and increase brand awareness. In recent years however, the popular social platform has become a much more competitive environment for brands and businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Due to its competitive nature, marketers have turned to paid options to reach their target audience. Facebook Pay-Per-Click, or Facebook Advertising, is currently one of the best platforms businesses utilize to boost their social media presence.

That said, diving into the world of Facebook PPC can be a costly endeavor, so making sure your marketing budget isn’t wasted is vital. So, is it worth investing ad dollars into a Facebook PPC campaign? Let’s start from the beginning.

What is Facebook PPC?

PPC, or Pay-Per-Click, is a form of internet advertising where the advertiser pays the platform they’re using only when the ad is clicked. Hence, “Pay-Per-Click”. PPC strategies rapidly increased in popularity in the digital marketing world as it enables people to create ads and generate tangible analytics to a hyper-specific audience. This helps marketers understand how their target demographic engages with the content.

The two biggest PPC platforms are Google AdWords and Facebook Advertising. Although they both offer similar services, optimizing ads for each platform is vastly different.

At the core, they function similarly. Based on the audience or keyword selected, you pay X amount each time the ad is clicked. The CPC (Cost-Per-Click) is determined by potential reach, and how competitive that audience is on the respective platform.

Because we’re focusing on PPC Facebook Ads, let’s explore a bit more. One of the ways Facebook differs from Google is that your ads can use photos, videos, or carousel items. Once the ad sets are created, they can be used in a variety of locations within Facebook, including the sidebar, desktop and mobile news feed, and audience network. And now that Facebook owns Instagram, these ads can be seen there too. Two birds, one stone.

Facebook PPC Ads
Facebook Ad Campaigns

How Facebook Ads Work

So how do PPC campaigns on FB work?

First, you need to select an Objective – Depending on your goals and what stage of the funnel you’re trying to target, Facebook offers a variety of marketing objectives based on three stages.

  • Awareness Stage: Brand Awareness, Reach
  • Consideration Stage: Lead Generation, Website Traffic, Engagement, App Installs
  • Decision Stage: Conversions, Store Visits, Product Sales

Next, you need to select your Audience –  Facebook allows marketers to create highly targeted ads in order to reach the right segment of their market. You can create custom audiences using the following:

  • Basic: Age, Gender, Location, Language
  • Detailed: Demographics, Interests, Behaviors
  • Connections: People that like your page, friends of people that like your page, people that have visited your site, friends of people that have visited your site

*Pro Tip: If you plan on running PPC campaigns on Facebook, be sure to add Facebook Pixel to your website. Trust us.

The third step is placement – Now is the time to decide where you want your ads shown. If you’re unsure or don’t know where to start, we recommend keeping this set to “automatic”. From there, you can use the data later to do A/B testing.

Last but not least; budget and scheduling – This is the step where you need to decide how much your ad budget is and how long you want the ads to run. You have the option to pay per day or use a set budget for the lifetime of the ad.

Facebook PPC Ad Set
Finished Ad Creative

The Advantages of Facebook Pay-Per-Click

There are tons of platforms that offer PPC advertising. While the best for your business can be determined by your business’ target segment, PPC Facebook Ads has a large list of features that give it the edge over the rest.

Global Audience

For starters, Facebook has nearly 3 billion users worldwide. Facebook’s penetration rate for the United States in 2021 was 70.59%, up from 67.4% in the previous year. Just in Q4 of 2021 alone, FB had 1,929 users in millions.

The odds of your target audience hanging out on FB are pretty good. Because of the mass amount of users, engagement rates are really good. For a Facebook marketing expert, like us, this gives us the opportunity to reach segments that might not have found your business otherwise.

Target Audience

Because of the large global audience the platform attracts, targeting a hyper-specific segment is easy. Simple everyday tasks like sharing a post, liking a post, and following a page are tracked by Facebook. With all this collected data, the platform lets Facebook marketing experts narrow down audiences. Whether it’s by age, location, gender, behavior, etc. Paired up with a pixel on your site, you can target and retarget endlessly all while hitting a fresh group each time.

This retargeting technique serves as a fantastic way to remind people about the value your product or service offers and keeps eyes on it at all times.

Analytics & KPIs

With built-in tools, Facebook ads manager lets you track and analyze data such as: reach, impressions, clicks, CPC (Cost-Per-Click), CTR (Click-Through-Rate), engagement, and more.

These KPIs are extremely valuable metrics that help marketers determine what works and what doesn’t. From there, A/B testing and campaign tweaks can happen, making sure your ad sets are always optimized.

ROI

With a continuously updated algorithm, the platform does a great job of getting ads in front of the right eyes, at the right time. That means amazing ROI. Facebook ads have been shown to have a 9.21% conversion rate across all industries.

In The End

So in the end, is Facebook PPC a worthwhile investment? YES. From B2B to B2C, your target audience is actively using the popular social platform. As mentioned above, Facebook is constantly updating their algorithm in an effort to show ads to groups who are more likely to engage. Algorithm changes and a competitive landscape has caused organic reach to decline, making PPC on Facebook even more valuable.

Having said that, we think Facebook PPC has the potential to really help business and marketers take their campaigns to the next level. To better understand the value Facebook Ads brings, it’s vital to look at industry benchmarks, budgets, goals and your target audience.

If your specific industry has no active audience on the platform, then dumping money into a PPC campaign on Facebook may not be ideal. If all of this sounds a little intense, don’t worry, we’re here for you. Our team of Facebook marketing experts are well-versed in the space and we can help get your brand in front of the right eyes.