Facebook advertising is an essential part of any Social Media Marketers toolkit and needs to be managed and finessed to ensure that best results are achieved. Here are our 5 Steps to Successful Facebook Ads.
1. CHOOSE THE MARKETING OBJECTIVE THAT MATCHES YOUR INTENDED OUTCOME
The biggest mistake Social Media Marketers make is not beginning with the end in mind!
Choose your MARKETING OBJECTIVE! Do you want to:
- Drive traffic to your website?
- Acquire email address’s to grow your list?
- Make people aware of your product?
- Nurture and warm and existing audience?
- Drive product sales/get bums on seats for workshops/ events?
Ads manager allows you to select your campaign objective in the very first step to get you started!
2. KNOW WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE?
Many business’s wander onto the Facebook ad platform, create a promotion, set a budget and then wait for the leads to pour in within a couple of days… It usually takes a couple of days for results to start coming through.
Allow your promotion/ad to run for a few days before making changes. Stopping an ongoing promotion after a week will be more likely to waste money than if you let it run continuously over a longer period of time, making modifications as you go.
3. BE PATIENT
Do your research! What do other successful Facebook Ad campaigns look like?
Lots of engagements in response to a call to action is a good sign that your Facebook ad is hitting the mark!
Know what key performance indicators you will need to measure in order to reflect your marketing goals – Engagements, Link Clicks, Forms filled, Video views.
4. CREATE AN AUDIENCE THAT MATCHES YOUR MARKETING GOALS
As a Social Media Marketer knowing your audience is paramount. Before you take to the AdsManager platform brainstorm and create your target audience Avatars.
Demographics, geographical location, buying behaviours, education and occupations are some factors to consider. Depending on what your business does and what marketing goals you have set will mean that some of these factors will be more important than others.
There are three types of Facebook audiences
CORE AUDIENCES:
This is based on basic demographics such as age, gender, location and interests.
CUSTOM AUDIENCE:
People who have interacted with your business before essentially a list of people that could include:
- People who have watched a video on your page
- Website visitors (using the FacebookPixel)
- A list from your customer database uploaded to Facebook
LOOKALIKE AUDIENCE:
Reach a larger audience that is similar to another audience. The larger the audience, the less the audience will ‘lookalike’ the smaller audience.
5. STRATEGICALLY SET AD PLACEMENTS AND FORMATS
Choosing where you place your Facebook ads and the format that it is delivered in is just as important as what content you are showcasing! Clever Social Media Marketers research where the retarget market is spending most of their online time browsing on Social Media Platforms
Will you place your ad on Messenger, Timelinefeed, Right column, Suggested videos, Facebook audience network banner, in-stream videos?
Choosing an ad format is dependant on the objective set at the Campaign level!
Clever Social Media Marketers will consider how their audience prefers to view content and how the format will lead consumers to take action.
For example, a business who wants to drive online sales will use the carousel adformat to display products for easy browsing and decision making.
