When is the Best Time to Run Facebook Ads for Maximum Exposure?

So what is the best day or time to post ads on Facebook? This is a topic that many great minds have given their highly esteemed opinions about. One article even went as far as to say that the best time to post ads online is when your followers or subscribers to your page aren’t online. When is really the best day for Facebook ads?

Is it on weekdays? Maybe, cause many people are actively working online? Or weekends? Cause many are now chilled and have the time to be online? Or maybe it depends on the industry you’re in? Wonder how they came to that conclusion.

Since Facebook’s introduction of the news feed in 2009, online marketers have been busy trying to get the better of the algorithm that limits marketing and advertising content on user’s news feeds.

Even while trying to do this, the reality is, for the average “at home” marketer, most of the posts you make on Facebook will “disappear” really fast.

You post an ad about your business and in seconds, users have moved on to the next post and your ad is all forgotten about until your next post. It’s quite an annoying cycle, don’t you think?

It’s good to realize that posting Facebook ads is like a game, you have to know the best time to do this or else your post will sink into Facebook’s timeline oblivion and this is not good for you nor your business.

Organic and Paid Facebook Ads

We all like different pages on Facebook and expect to receive regular updates from them. This is what we call the organic feed, where you post something but only the followers who’ve subscribed to your page get to see your Facebook ads.

It’s very dependent on likes and shares which might boost the ad but really, it just sucks.

Have you ever seen an ad on your newsfeed and you wonder, how did this get here?? Paid ads are every marketer’s dream.

They can appear on everyone’s news feed regardless of whether they’ve liked your page or not. Can you even begin to imagine the reach or potential of such an ad?

Now that we know the difference between organic and paid ads, let’s get back to the question at hand.

The Best Time to run your Facebook ads depends on …

I’m sure you want to get a paid ad now, huh? The catch, however, is that it could turn off the audience; think of that cat food ad you saw on your feed that really irritated you because you’re a diehard dog person. Get it? Good.

It’s all a fine balance of narrowing down to your audience. To do this, you will really need to have a deeper understanding of your audience, your peak “activity” times, your industry and your customer.

If for example, you sell summer wear, it makes no sense to advertise them to Russians during their hard winters. Do you get the gist?

It’s more complex than that, however, you need to understand your consumer habits: what times do they spend more, both monetary and time spent online.

It’s all about doing a very sound in-depth analysis. You may ask yourself these questions:

• When do I get the most email subscribers?

• When are my posts are read the most?

• What days do I make the most sales?

Spotify and e-bay noticed that the time when they make the most sales is Monday between 11 am and 1 pm.

Get the data, analyze it and find out your peak times. Different studies have shown that different industries show different peak times.

So, what works for another may not work for you, get your own data analyzed. Having all this information enables you to streamline your ads to specific times when they will have the highest reach and impact.

So, what’s the best day for Facebook ads? Get all this data and you’ll be able to glean the best day that works for you.

Lander has an amazing team that can take your social media marketing and online game to the next level for you to make those sales.

Scheduling your Facebook Ads

Being in control of when you can run your ads is a great feature you can use for online ads. It ensures you reach your target audience at the best time for you to get the best engagement and of course, it saves you money too!

NOTE: It gets even better, the times the ads appear are in different time zones, so from 3 pm – 9 pm, the ads will run in the specific local time zones of different locations.

But generally, when Is The Best Time To Post?

“I’m here and I don’t have the time/resources to get all this data. Is there anything else I can rely on?”

This is a question on your mind maybe. There are several studies that have been carried out by social media management and other companies that give a general understanding of this.

Coschedule, for example, found out that Sundays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays are more active, 3 pm posts get more clicks but 1 pm posts will get more engagement.

The reasons behind this are varied as people have different sleep/work schedule: think of a high school student, a college student, a housewife, a doctor, a busy professor.

All these people have completely different schedules, the high school student will probably be in class at mid-morning while the housewife may have this time to wind-down, the college student is still probably sleeping.

The professor and the doctor might be online at midnight or 2 am in the morning. You can already see how the online engagement time would differ and the opportunities it presents to you.

If your target audience is the college student, then it would not be very smart of you to run your ad at 8 am in the morning while they are snoring away in bed.

On the other hand, weekends are the best times for B2C brands.

It might be a bit trickier when you have a new page with a new product/service. Start from the above and have a posting schedule, post during the “best” times and also the times surrounding them.

Do this daily, experiment, and over time, you’ll be able to analyze manually and tell at which times your posts and what content got the most engagement and you’ll be able to streamline your ads more accurately.

It takes time to accurately get all this information but it’s totally worth it.

NOTE:  It’s not just about getting the peak times right. The content you write will matter a lot. Good content matters.

While researching the best times to post always consider the best content to post to your audience at that particular time.

In conclusion

Posting at the right time could be the difference between effective or ineffective Facebook advertising. You will only get your best day for ads when you really dig deep into knowing all about your business, industry and customer habits.

Remember that you want to get the best possible return on your money, therefore; monitor, test and optimize. That should be your mantra when running ads.

All this applies to Twitter and Instagram as well.