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Facebook ads: unfashionable, enormous, effective.
Three billion people, industrial-strength delivery optimisation, and - run properly - a cost per qualified lead that embarrasses pricier channels. We've made Meta's platforms work in categories everyone swore they couldn't.
Facebook stopped being exciting years ago. It also never stopped working. While everyone chases newer platforms, Facebook and Instagram remain the largest, cheapest, most operationally mature audience machine ever built.
What testing actually teaches you
In funeral care, for example, we ran heavy asset A/B testing across a portfolio of brands - structured, on live budgets, for years. What audiences responded to: the human. The animal. Winning something. Something to believe in. What they didn't respond to: being talked to about funerals. (Surprise.)
None of that comes from a best-practice guide. It comes from testing enough assets, honestly enough, in a category where everyone said the channel couldn't work - and it's the kind of finding that then quietly improves every campaign after it.
The B2B result nobody expects
For one enterprise B2B client, Facebook's cost per qualified lead has come in below LinkedIn's - on more than one occasion. Early qualification is admittedly messier: lead gen forms bring in people who aren't right, the way cheap volume always does. But take the campaign apart later in the funnel and Facebook's contribution is the cheaper one.
You only see that if your measurement reaches that far down the funnel. Judge Facebook at the form and it looks scrappy; judge it at the pipeline and it starts winning arguments.
What we focus on
- Creative velocity: on Meta's platforms, creative is the targeting. We plan concepts and variants against fatigue curves so performance doesn't quietly decay.
- Signal quality: the algorithm optimises whatever your pixel and Conversions API tell it. We make sure that's revenue, not noise. (Our analytics team handles the plumbing.)
- Full-funnel structure: prospecting and retargeting balanced deliberately, so you're not just re-selling to people who'd already bought.
- Revenue reporting: one client's brief said it best: increase revenues, not likes or clicks. That's the column we watch.
InvoCare came to us sceptical that Facebook could work for funeral services. The results - their words - "certainly changed my view." If your instinct says the channel's wrong for you, that's usually where the cheap auctions are.
One more finding worth stealing: the mobile-friendly builds of ads consistently outperform on both Meta and LinkedIn. Your buyers are on their phones; we design for the phone first.
Questions we get asked
Do Facebook ads work for B2B?
Often, and at a far lower cost per qualified lead than LinkedIn - the only comparison that matters; CPM and CPC comparisons are how agencies flatter themselves. Your buyers don't stop being buyers at 6pm. Targeting is broader, so creative does the qualifying and downstream lead filtering does the rest. For many B2B budgets the right answer is Facebook and LinkedIn, weighted by what the pipeline data says - we've compared them properly.
What actually moves performance on Facebook and Instagram now?
Creative volume and conversion signals. Targeting has mostly been absorbed by the algorithm - what's left in your control is the quality of the events you feed it (fix your tracking) and the freshness of the creative you give it (plan for fatigue).
Our category is sensitive. Can this still work?
We ran Facebook advertising for funeral services - sensitive enough? Done with respect and the right creative, it changed the client's own mind about the channel. Sensitive categories need judgement, not avoidance.
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