Four Myths Of Facebook Advertising

Facebook is the latest online platform to experience rapid growth in Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, so much so that it is already being compared to Google in its ability to take a significant bite out of the search advertising market.

In this post I want to debunk some of the myths that have emerged about facebook PPC advertising and hopefully encourage you to think how your business would benefit from reaching your market in their social down time.


#1: My audience is too old for facebook

This is probably the most commonly referenced obstacle to businesses choosing facebook to target their audience, and in the early stages of the medium, people who made this claim would have been correct. But while facebook may have began as a playground for Generation Y, it has long since been limited to younger users, and a quick look at the figures reveals a very different story.

In the US, facebook users aged 55+ is the fastest growing audience segment, experiencing a 513% increase in the six months to April 2009. And in Australia younger audiences are leaving facebook, with the 16-17, 18-24 and 25-34 audience segments all dropping around 2% in the last month. The 50-64 year-old audience segment accounts for about 790,000 active users in Australia, which is fairly staggering considering the Sunday Mail is read by (just 612,000 people 55+).


#2: facebook's audience is too broad

Yes, there are a lot of people on facebook (400million and climbing), but that doesn't mend you have to target all of them at once. The facebook advertising interface offers targeting criteria so ads can be targeted as broad or specific as you like. It even allows targeting based on keyword matching to users' profile data, like targeting males aged 18-34 who live in Brisbane and are interested in rock climbing (of which facebook tells us there are 4,960 active users, in case you're wondering).

This level of targeting opens up some incredible opportunities for honing in on custom audiences and tailoring ad copy to your audience, no matter how specific or stylized. 


#3: You can't get leads from facebook

It's easy to think "I never click on facebook ads, therefore nobody does". Believe this at your own detriment! Traffika has generated some compelling data to prove that facebook is an excellent vehicle to expose your brand to the market, drive traffic to your website, and generate enquiries and leads. In all cases, facebook makes the top three most popular traffic source to our clients' websites, and the number of leads generated from facebook often matches the number generated by Google AdWords, at a quarter of the price.


#4: facebook advertising isn't suitable for small business

There are always numerous fancy facebook campaigns running for huge brands who have a lot of money to spend on social media advertising. But that doesn't mean a small businesses can't be just as visible to their target market and generate quality interest in their brand for a smidgen of the spend.

All it takes is some intelligent planning behind the targeting criteria, timing of the campaign and killer ad copy that cuts through the clutter. This makes facebook perfect for businesses with small budgets and specific products, and along with the ability to direct traffic to your company's own page, ideal for generating interest in your brand within the social atmosphere.


Hopefully this sheds some light on the basic myths around facebook advertising and makes it a little more approachable for you and your business. Feel free to post any comments or questions below, we'd love to hear from you!


Chris is a specialist in Search Marketing at Traffika. You can follow Chris on Twitter @chrispahor.