After doing a deep dive into all things LinkedIn, it’s time to set our sights onto one of the most used platforms globally – Facebook.
Whether you’re scrolling through your feed or actively engaging with communities, Facebook has seen some monumental shifts over the years.
While Facebook may not be suited for all businesses, there’s a strong chance you can tap into your audience on Facebook, with at least 2.96 billion active international users actively using the platform monthly.
But Facebook has evolved throughout the years to become a marketing go-to for many.
As a white label digital marketing agency, we know all too well about the value of Facebook. So let’s turn back time and walk through the history of this social media marketing staple.
The Facebook Ads Origin Story
If we go back to 2004, founders Mark Zuckerburg and Eduardo Saverin took small steps to try and make money off the platform. We’re not talking billions, just enough for the duo to get their foot in the door.
However, Zuckerberg did say in a 2004 interview that, “It might be nice in the future to get some ads going to offset the cost of the servers”.
And it was then Facebook started selling small ads to local companies. While they weren’t the elegant pieces of content we see today, it was the start of something big.
Making it Official
In 2007, Zuckerberg made Facebook ads an official part of the platform.
This allowed businesses big and small to create an individual profile to post and share content, while engaging with users.
One of the neat features of these pages was the inclusion of social ads. This type of ad fused social actions with an advertisers message, which would appear on either the user’s news feed or on the business’ ad space.
Three-Level Ad Structures
Jumping ahead seven years later, 2014 saw the introduction of a three-level advertising campaign structure.
By going down this route, businesses could set certain goals and develop an ad set for each objective that falls within an overarching campaign. The ad sets empowered organisations to hone in on a certain target audience.
For example, if you want to increase website traffic, you can create a campaign for this goal. From there you develop ad sets that reflect who you want to target, such as people in your mailing list. The final step in this process is to create as many ads for your campaign as you’d like!
Bots Joined Messenger
With messenger becoming a separate app outside of Facebook, the social media giant added bots to Messenger as a way to make the most of the bonus app.
Depending on the type of business, this was an effective way of engaging with consumers. There were two types of Messenger-based ads businesses could use.
Sponsored messages are an ad type that appears directly in a person’s inbox. By clicking on the chat, users can talk to a chat bot.
Meanwhile, click-to-Messenger ads use call to actions to entice users to click on the Facebook ad they see in their feed and get a message straight to their inbox once they’ve clicked on the ad.
Where to From Here?
Did you know that Facebook offers eight different advertising options for businesses?
You can expect that number to grow over time as Facebook continues evolving to adapt to new advertising formats.
But at the end of the day, whether you’re going down the Messenger route or opting for a video campaign, high quality and engaging content will be crucial to success.
Make sure that your content doesn’t feel like an advertisement. After all, people don’t use Facebook to look at ads all day – make your content feel natural and authentic, which you can outsource copywriters to do for you!
If you need someone to guide you through the ins and outs of Facebook advertising, then Agency Stack’s got you covered! We’re the go-to agency for paid advertising and white label PPC services.