We’re entering into the busiest time of year when consumers are on the prowl for information about products and services before making holiday purchases. Considering that consumers trust social media recommendations (particularly on Facebook) more than traditional advertising, Facebook offers a powerful way to spread the good word about your business.

Of all of the social media channels, the Facebook advertising platform and its wide array of targeting tools is recognized as being one of the most effective ways to reach your audience. The Facebook advertising platform is constantly being tweaked to help businesses get better results with paid advertising on the site.

In preparation for the holiday season, the following enhancements have recently been made to Facebook advertising:

1. New ways to drive offline outcomes.
Facebook now offers marketers the ability to create custom audiences using customers that have made purchases offline (in-store purchase, phone call, or other offline channels). The advertising platform also allows marketers to drive more foot traffic to brick-and-mortar store locations by using geolocation targeting tools to reach prospective nearby customers.

2. The addition of message objectives.
Want to spark conversation with members of your audience? Facebook recently added message objectives to generate leads, provide support, address questions, and drive conversions. Because these ads will be optimized for replies, your audience will be more likely to jump into a conversation with your brand. Combining this new feature with Facebook’s click to Messenger ads will help to optimize results.

3. The ability to customize your thank you screen.
Historically, businesses have not been able to customize the “thank you” screen on forms. The Facebook advertising platform now allows marketers to customize their thank you screens to show their appreciation and increase conversions. While some may view this as a minor improvement, we think it goes a long way in enhancing the customer journey.

4. The addition of new Canvas templates.
Since more Facebook users now visit the social media network on mobile devices than desktop computers, Facebook is encouraging marketers to create better content to reach these mobile users. Canvas is the ideal feature to reach mobile users, and Facebook recently rolled out several new and improved Canvas templates. Marketers can use these Canvas templates to create an immersive experience by using a collection of ads to help guide prospective customers through the discovery of new products and services.

5. Enhancements to custom audiences.
This new feature is still in the process of being rolled out, but marketers will soon be able to create custom audiences by taking into account dwell time and link sharing. With the dwell time feature, marketers can retarget prospective customers that have spent time on ads, but didn’t take an action. The new link sharing feature will allow marketers to retarget consumers that have shared your ads to re-engage them. Stay tuned for when these two new enhancements to custom audiences will go live.

In summary, it’s become necessary for businesses to use a combination or organic content and paid advertising to effectively reach their audience on Facebook. Thanks to the impressive targeting features offered through the Facebook advertising platform, businesses are able to use this social media platform to effectively drive conversions and get results. Facebook is continuing to make enhancements to its advertising platform to make the social network more appealing to marketers, and the latest additions outlined above will allow businesses to serve their audiences with more relevant Facebook ads.

There’s no question that Facebook will continue to enhance its advertising platform to create a better user experience for marketers. Be sure to stay tuned to stay in-the-loop with the latest Facebook advertising updates.