Advertising on Facebook for the first time can be overwhelming. Where do you start? What works and what is a Facebook pixel? With so much information out there it can be tricky to know what information is accurate and what will work best for your business. Remember, every business is different so try not to compare results between businesses. Focus on your campaigns, set a benchmark, monitor your results and see if you can improve them each time you advertise.
Whether you are a small or large business, Facebook is a great place to advertise as you can reach your target audiences with valuable information for a relatively modest budget in comparison to traditional forms of marketing. But what are your options? When it comes to Facebook there are 3 different types of adverts you can create.
Yes – boosting posts is a form of advertising on Facebook! This is the easiest way to advertise on Facebook as you are promoting a post you have already published. Simply click the ‘boost post’ option underneath the post you would like to promote to boost a post. You can set your budget for the post as well as choose your target audience. Most boost posts will perform the best when you boost the post for 5 days. This is because Facebook wants to keep content fresh, avoiding your customers from seeing the same ad over and over again, resulting in your audience becoming tired of your content. Boosting a post is an easy way to elevate a post and create more awareness of a subject area with just a few clicks.
This is the middle tier in creating an advert on Facebook. You can find the Ad Centre through ‘Meta Business Suite’ You have more options available such as boosting a post on Facebook and Instagram as well as creating a new ad. The Ad Centre is user-friendly and ideal for beginners, however, you will not be able to get all the features that the Ads Manager system provides and tracking your results may not be as accurate through the Ad Centre.
This is the most advanced of all the 3 adverts. You can find this in the ‘all tools’ / advertise section and then click on Ads Manager. Alternatively, you can search: business.facebook.com/adsmanager
With Facebook Ads Manager it is important to set up a Facebook pixel so you can track and monitor your results accurately. You can do this by going into the Events Manager / Data sources section and following the relevant steps. The pixel lets Facebook see who is looking at your advert and follow the customer’s journey to your desired destination. This for example could be a landing page, completing a signup form or watching a video.
In Ads manager you can choose a range of different campaign objectives, specific targeted audiences, and adverts with multiple ad sets and dynamic options, therefore giving you the best choices to really build a successful campaign specific to you.
Two heads are better than one and in the case of Facebook, your advert needs to marry up in order to be successful. Your campaign objective and the audience need to be in sync and working together!
When you choose the campaign objective, you are telling Facebook what you want to optimise! Facebook will then run your campaign to produce the best results for the objective you have selected. There are different campaign options to choose from, from Brand Awareness Campaigns to Conversion Campaigns, but which one should you choose?
This comes back to your audience!
If you are relatively new on Facebook with a small number of followers then a brand awareness/engagement campaign is a great place to start. This will increase awareness of your company to new customers and it’s your chance to make a great first impression.
SCENARIO: Let’s imagine this… If you were to walk up to two people in the street and randomly say to one of them, ‘do you want to buy this product?’ the likelihood is that they will say no. You haven’t introduced yourself or the product. However, if you walk up to another person, introduce yourself, explain who you are and your product, you’re more likely to gain a customer. That is the same approach you will need to take with your social media strategy and objective as a new company on Facebook.
SCENARIO:
Let’s imagine this…
If you were to walk up to two people in the street and randomly say to one of them, ‘do you want to buy this product?’ the likelihood is that they will say no. You haven’t introduced yourself or the product.
However, if you walk up to another person, introduce yourself, explain who you are and your product, you’re more likely to gain a customer. That is the same approach you will need to take with your social media strategy and objective as a new company on Facebook.
If your company is already well established on Facebook with plenty of followers then this is your chance to reach new customers, prospect customers who are likely to be interested in your company and showcase your products or services from the get-go. In this case, you may want to opt for a conversion campaign. This tells Facebook that you want to target your audiences with the aim to convert them into customers. This could be for them to make a purchase on your website, complete a signup form or be directed to a specific landing page.
You can tailor your audiences in a range of ways. This could be based on age, location, gender, demographics, interests, behaviours, the industry your customers work in and much more.
You can also create lookalike audiences. Lookalike audiences are based on who your current customers are. Facebook will then find new people to target who are similar to your current customers and therefore likely to be interested in your company’s products or services. This is a great way to find new customers!
You can also re-target audiences on Facebook. A way to re-engage your audience is to click on ‘custom audience’ for example and select ‘customers who currently follow your page/everyone who has engaged with your page in the last 30 days. By doing this you can re-target customers who have recently shown interest in your services but may not have made a purchase.
By knowing your audience and selecting the correct campaign objective you can have a real impact!
The fun part begins when you’ve selected your campaign objective and audience. Did you know that on Facebook the average user spends 40 minutes a day on the platform, scrolling through a massive 90 metres of content?! What is going to make your content stand out?
Choose a punchy tagline or start with a question. Keep your copy text short, sweet and relevant to the image/ video. Some reports suggest using just 50 characters in a Facebook post, but this is dependent on your audience. Try using a limit of 240 characters, to begin with, and test it out in future campaigns to see if shorter copy is more effective for your business. Finally, finish it off with a clear call to action.
Your assets need to be of high quality! This can be a single image, a range of high-quality images for a carousel or you guessed it… a high-quality video. Try to make images bold and colourful so they will make your customers stop mid-scroll to find out more!
Once you have published your campaigns, keep a track of how they are performing. You can have a quick look to see how your ads are performing each couple of days and make any adjustments if you need to.
Bear in mind that your ads may take a couple of weeks to get out of the ‘learning phase’. This is just Facebook sorting out how they can make your adverts perform to their best. After a month or so you will have enough data to start creating a benchmark of what is working or what isn’t performing so well. Is the reach high, and is the conversion rate okay for your budget? Can you improve on the results? You may need to update the copy or assets to make it more relatable for your audience.
Creating ads can be difficult to work out, if you need some specific advice on how to set up a successful paid social media campaign for your business, then get in touch with us to see how we can help. Call us today: 01788 288020 or email: [email protected]