First and the foremost, do you have a Facebook account? Be it a personal account or a business page, majority of people nowadays are seasoned users and almost can’t live without it. Facebook can be deemed as a zone for people to stay connected with friends and families, updated with the current viral news, and even build their own business kingdom with Facebook ads. According to Statista that is well-established in their data research, Facebook had been ranked at the 1st place of the most-used social media network globally with 2,740 millions of users. To narrow the topic down, Malaysian users had been evidenced by Digital Influence Lab (DIL) of being the most active on Facebook out of other social media platforms (i.e. YouTube, Instagram) reckoned at 22,000,000 active users. It goes without saying that businesses should fully leverage on Facebook to boost their market and sales. Here are the Top 10 Facebook Marketing Advantages that Businesses in Malaysia should know before getting eliminated by the current competition and technology.
- Low Budget
- Free of charge on creating a Business Facebook Page
- A good temporary substitution of website for start-up company
- Low minimum spending of FB ads, it can be as low as approximately RM2.5-RM5
- Free entrance to uncountable amount of Facebook users who could be your next customer
Comparison of the advertising rates between Facebook ads and traditional advertising
Let’s take the most traditional advertising method which is TV advertising as an example. In Malaysia, the minimum rates for a 10 seconds long commercial advertisement to be aired on TV3 (Malaysian local free-to-air TV channel) is RM400 based on the data provided by Advertising.com.my. It can get beyond that amount varying in the slot of filmlets. Plus, businesses can’t precisely target on the audience like how they could do it with Facebook ads. This is just an entry-level example, running ads on Astro (no.1 paid satellite TV supplier in Malaysia) costs you more than that. Yes, it’ll be in 4-5 digits.
- Usability of Facebook – Quick, Easy and Convenient
- Set up a Facebook page requires less than 5 minutes
- Free tutorial of signing up or even setting up Facebook ads is available everywhere
- Everyone can be their own digital marketer
How easy and convenient to run a Facebook ad?
Facebook Advertising in Malaysia has been popularized by business owners from sole proprietor or Micronet to massive listed corporations. Everyone can create a Facebook page and buy Facebook ads with simple steps as long as you have a smart phone or laptop. Still not sure on how to navigate this? You may refer to the official tutorial from Facebook with the last update in Feb 2021: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/104002523024878
- Clear-cut Targeting
- Core Audiences – target on how young your audiences are, what they do like, where they are based in etc.
- Custom Audiences – target back on those who had previously shown interest and made engagement with you
- Lookalike Audiences – target on those potential audiences who behaves and shares interests alike to your best current purchasers
Facebook over Instagram?
Why don’t we use Instagram instead? Though both social media networks share almost the same precise targeting setting, but they cater to different groups of audiences. According to the intelligent analysis byHootsuite, the biggest advertising target aged in between 18 to 34 years old. It seems commonly in Malaysia that Facebook users are vaster in terms of age. Hence, businesses in Malaysia need to really grasp their target market in order to fully leverage on the privilege of targeting setting.
- Various Formats of Ads
- Image ads – showcase your own creatively attractive images
- Video ads– like the commercial ads you see onTV
- Carousel ads – swipeable; when you have too many vividly appealing visuals to showcase
- Collection ads – 5 product visuals (1 primary video/photo as cover) with an immediate pop up landing page
Which Facebook ad format is preferred and encouraged to be used in Malaysia?
There isn’t any specific recipe when it comes to advertising. However, statistic can sometimes be a good reference. Giving the fact provided by SoyaCincau.com, Malaysians binge-watch videos at approximately 159 minutes on various social media platforms, businesses should now have a more savvy idea on which Facebook ad format they should target at. This makes sense when there’s another research by Medium quoting that 64% of people tend to pay the bill for a product or service after consuming the video advertisement on social media networks. This also indicates that businesses in Malaysia should build the trust between their audiences and their brands via video contents which will eventually convert into sales.
- Lead People to the Website
- Boost up website traffic
- Better leads – as you can target on people who are already familiar with your brand and they have a certain extend of trust in your brand
When to use this method to increase website traffic?
If you’d already set up your own website for your business or brand, then this is more than suitable for you to apply to your business. For getting organic traffic to your website, you will need to invest a mammoth sum of money and time into search engine optimisation (SEO) and other time-consuming routines like frequent blogging as quoted by Articulate. With Facebook Advertising, you can wisely set your target audience using “Custom Audiences” (refer to point 3) to lead those who had previously shown any interaction with your business to your product or service landing page. These people are better quality than those online strangers as your brand has already been imprinted in their minds. It also indirectly brings a better degree of sales conversion.
- Enjoy a Better Ranking on Google
- For small and medium businesses, you can buy Facebook ads to gain your shares, likes and comments
- Social media network engagement contributes to higher ranking on all search engines
What’s the logic behind this?
By referring to SendPulse, although this has not been evidenced by any professional forum or data research, many online marketers believe that robot will read the good engagement gained from your social media channels and will eventually pin you to the top on the search engines. If you observe this phenomenon closely, you may see those Facebook pages with better following and engagement often being ranked on top on Google. Hence, this legend has not been proved yet, but it’s not pointless too.
- A Favourable Place for Competitors Too
- In Malaysia, the Facebook is considerably the biggest social media platform for advertisers
- Just follow the majority and your business will see a beacon of fruitful light
- Various Facebook Advertising Categories
- 3 main categories are Awareness, Consideration and Conversion
- Choose the specific engagement category to fit your specific advertising objectives (i.e. brand awareness, traffic, catalog sales, store visits)
- Strong Analytics System
- Facebook Ads Manager provides all essential analytical report and insight of each ads like how many clicks or engagements gained from the set target audience
- Free to make any adjustment to the concurrent ads which will minimise the possibility of investment lost
- Unlimited Reach of Audiences
- With only organic post, it limits the opportunity of reaching out to more publics globally
What if businesses have a good list of content ideas?
Content is always the key to your audiences’ heart. However, one fundamental fact that every business owner should understand is that Facebook holds the new tactic of limiting the visibility of Facebook pages to all Facebook users as narrated by eclincher. The reason behind is simple, Facebook is smart and they want business pages to pay for Facebook Advertising.
Not sure on how to navigate the Facebook ads? U Creative Marketing is here to assist you! We’re the leading full service marketing agency in Malaysia.
Enjoyed reading our Digital Marketing tips? Do stay tuned for other Facebook Strategy Malaysia blog posts.
Original: Top 10 Advantages Facebook Marketing For Businesses Malaysia