Celebrating and Supporting Good Ideas That Need to be Found

Last year we introduced Good Ideas Deserve To Be Found, a campaign that celebrates small business ideas and helps people understand how personalized ads enable the discovery of those ideas. Today, we’re introducing the latest spot to support this campaign and providing new resources for small businesses as they navigate toward a post-pandemic recovery.

While there are some glimmers of optimism, small businesses are still facing the challenge of a lifetime. Meta’s most recent Global State of Small Business Survey showed that 20% of small businesses around the world were still not operational as of January 2022. Personalized ads have been a lifeline for small businesses through the pandemic, helping them find new customers and grow when it was difficult for people to be in person. In fact, 74% of SMBs using personalized ads reported that these advertisements were important to the success of their business.

Frank Mortimer, founder of Frank’s Honey, credits personalized advertising for keeping his business alive during the pandemic. In March of 2020, Frank had 1,800 pounds of honey to sell, but with farmers markets and local stores closed, he had no customers to sell to. Personalized ads were his super power, allowing him to find the right customers locally, ultimately keeping his business not only alive, but thriving.

In Meta’s new creative campaign, we bring alive that magical moment when someone discovers a small business's incredible idea that perfectly fits their interests—like honey from a local farmer in New Jersey—all thanks to personalized ads on Facebook and Instagram.

When we talk about personalized ads, it’s also important to address the recent ads ecosystem changes that have adversely impacted the value small businesses are seeing when they run ads across the Meta platform. We remain committed to supporting small businesses as they navigate these changes, and as we continue to build ad solutions that can do more with less data. That’s why, in addition to the Good Ideas Deserve To Be Found creative, we’re sharing some best practices and solutions that small businesses can adopt today to maximize their ad performance in the short-term, and help them connect with the people who are most interested in discovering their good ideas.

• To start, we live in an increasingly mobile world where people engage with content mostly on mobile and watch videos 5x longer than static images. Short, mobile-first video ads are a great way for small businesses to capture attention and drive more engagement with consumers on Facebook and Instagram.
• We are also introducing more creative tools to help small businesses streamline their marketing activities and stand out from other online content. We recently launched a tool that allows businesses to test up to 4 versions of a post to see which performs best with your audience. And we are making it easier to build great creative with tools like third-party creative apps within Meta Business Suite.
• For businesses who are looking to improve their measurement and performance technology, we recommend using the Conversions API. This solution can help you improve ad performance and measurement by creating a reliable and privacy-safe connection between your marketing data—such as information about actions that occur on your website—and Meta. Advertisers who have implemented the Conversions API following recommended best practices have experienced improved measurement and lowered costs per action. For small businesses without a commerce platform such as Shopify or WooCommerce, we recently introduced a faster and easier way for you to integrate with Conversions API: Conversions API Gateway. Like all data sent through our business tools, Conversions API data is also subject to Meta’s user privacy and consent controls.
• For businesses that have both sales and service objectives, we’re seeing Click To Message Ads emerge as a personalized ads format that can drive new value. By adopting this ad format, small businesses can do what they’ve always done best—provide personalized, white-glove customer service and build strong customer relationships while making a sale.
• Finally, if you are a professional service like an accountant, beauty salon or plumber, Lead Generation tools (such as Instant Forms to collect information about potential clients to reach out to at a later time) and Call Ads (to connect with potential customers immediately during your business hours) are a simple way to build your CRM and engage with potential customers at scale.

And as always, when trying out new advertising products, we encourage a healthy test budget, following creative best practices and allowing our systems the time it takes to optimize a campaign to get the best results. Small businesses can now visit Meta’s updated Small Business Ads Ecosystem Hub for more information.