Social media is becoming the ‘digital high street’ for products and brands we’re interested in – with most of us scrolling through 25 – 50 brand posts or paid advertisements on various social media channels before we’ve even left for work in the morning. If you fall into the category of people who scroll through their social media feeds while enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning, you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about.

Social selling is a real opportunity for potential revenue, and Facebook is one of the key players. Facebook is one of the world’s largest social media platforms, it has billions of users, and a high % of these are active users who are logging in daily to catch up with communities, friends and family.

Facebook can launch your products to a targeted audience, put your proposition in front of a demographic you might have struggled to reach otherwise. For financial services, it’s an ideal sales funnel to add to your customer journey – even within the B2B arena.

Here are a few reasons you should consider Facebook as a potential channel:

1. It’s one of the fastest ways to reach large amounts of people in a short amount of time

Facebook may make it difficult for brands to push their content organically, but advertising is a different story on this channel. Advertising on Facebook is extremely good value, especially compared to more expensive channels like LinkedIn and Google. The ROI is impressive and the minimum spend is reasonable (which means even small campaigns or test approaches to market are commercially viable).

For financial services, where reaching large amounts of engaged people can sometimes be a challenge, even a small budget behind a single post (we’re talking £5-£10) can boost your exposure by a few hundred people – maybe a few thousand if your targeting has been inputted successfully.

2. The targeting is precise

This is where Facebook advertising works wonders, especially within the financial services sector. You can target your adverts in a variety of ways – meaning you can play around with different formulas and experiment until you find the ideal combination. For financial services, this is ideal – because the sensitivity to different products or campaigns might need to be changed or and continually optimised to deliver results.

You don’t have to just throw your advert out at the world and hope for the best (like you often would with traditional media advertisements). Within social selling, you can plan and select who sees your adverts based on a variety of factors and behaviours. For example, you can target people who like competing brands, people whose friends already like your page or even people who have recently visited your website. Use it to your advantage, and get creative… For local financial services businesses, you can even target people who live locally, or within a certain postcode. The more you can experiment, the better results you’ll receive.

3. Facebook is a widely used social media channel

Other social media channels have limited demographics – with many only appealing to certain ages, or locations and having large gaps in marketing/advertising potential. You likely won’t find many people over 50 on Snapchat, for example.

Facebook, however, covers a broader demographic of people – which allows you to stand more chance of reaching potential customers. When your industry is as wide-reaching as financial services – you need to ensure you’re reaching as many ages, genders and interests as possible. Bear in mind also, that you can build recognition and links between audience members on Facebook – allowing you to reach more people in the long run.

4. It’s easy for your audience to convert

Facebook allows users to engage easily, and adverts are designed to make conversion easy and accessible. You can control what links are shared, how those links appear, even the names of the links. You can even control which images are pulled in with thumbnails, etc. If your advert is successful and it grabs the attention of a potential customer – you have plenty of opportunities to convert them into a purchase/ website visit or a completed lead generation form with the platform, ready for follow up by your sales team. We use a mix of rich media for our clients including dynamic ads and video which really amplifies the results and conversions.

You can also easily do A/B split testing on Facebook, a subtle but effective way to ensure your social selling campaigns perform well to create new business opportunities. Being able to split test different variations of an advert means you can narrow down what works and what doesn’t – and means you can maximise ROI or conversions with each new advert you publish.