Leveraging the ad platform on Facebook may be one of the smartest business decisions you will make. The ability to fine tune an audience that truly fits your ideal customer demographics is one of the strong points of this platform. Facebook has made it their business (literally this is where they make their money to keep the platform available to almost 2 billion people) to collect data on users and leverage that to serve relevant ads to them that feel native and do not interrupt their user experience. Admit it! You have clicked on a few advertiser links and may have even purchased something directly from Facebook. I have! We all have!
I have yet to find a client that I am not able to find a robust target audience or audiences for their Facebook ads. My clients are getting link clicks, sign-ups and sales from Facebook and you can too. I don’t want to make this sound too easy. Setting up an audience and creating ads that deliver results requires a lot of testing, time and patience, but it can be done. I am going to share some of my best advice and tips.
Tips To Deliver Results For Facebook Advertising
1. Identify A Target Audience For Your Facebook Ad
Make sure you narrow this audience down. The most common mistake that businesses make it’s to want to reach everyone! It’s true there are many people who may be interested in your service or widget, but who are you really trying to sell to? Narrow your audience by location, age, occupation, interests and many other identifiers. You can and should set up multiple audiences and test how they perform with different ads. You will soon identify the best audience(s) to get the results you want.
2. Set Your Goal For The Facebook Ad
This is where a well planned out strategy is important. Sure you can set the ads that drive people to buy your product, but is that going to be enough? Do you need to build an audience that is getting to know you and deciding on buying? Do you want to build that audience (people who like your page and may become long term customers)? Are you looking to build up SEO to your website by increasing visits to certain pages and perhaps blog posts? We know that Google judges traffic to your website and while driving people to a landing page that you are selling something is traffic that is not enough for social SEO.
3. Select The Type Of Facebook Ad Type That Fits Your Goals
The Facebook ad platform is very advanced with many options for ad types. With choices such as traffic ads (link click ads) that drive people to your website, conversion ads that can track an action a person takes such as signing up for an email list or ads that increase video views or post engagement ads. There are options to meet almost any need. If you want to learn more about Facebook Ad types check out this post “Facebook Ads Success: Understanding Facebook Marketing Objectives.”
4. Write The Copy For Your Facebook Ad
This is the where the art and science come to play. Once you select your Facebook ad objective, you will be tasked with creating the ad copy including a headline, description and possibly other text. The Facebook Ad platform will guide you through each section of the ad that needs copy and informs you of the character limits for the ad. It’s your job to think up the creative ad copy that is going to entice your target to take action.
Some Tips Include:
- Setup the ad using the language your customer uses to identify your product. Many brands struggle with incorporation a brand identity into their messaging opting for language that is not plain and simple and what the customer identifies with.
- Include the value proposition
- Include a call to action such as “Click the link to learn more” Or “Watch the video to learn more”
- Create a hook – What type of message will entice them to click?
- Be creative but make sure the ad speaks to your ideal customer that you are targeting.
5. Select Images Or Video That Are Compelling For Your Facebook Ad
- Basic stock images can sometimes work, but the truth is that often times it is obvious that it is a stock image. And if using stock image consider branding it by changing background color to your brand color and your logo.
- If you have budget have professional photos taken, have a session where you work to get several hundred photos using one photographer and work out an agreement to purchase the entire set of photos taken.
- Photos that are taken by amateurs, customers or others can also be effective in your ad.
- You can also use artwork, but beware Facebook has a 20% text rule so you cannot have more than 20% of your image covered in text. Here is a tool you can use to test that.
- We have found that photos without a lot of words are better. When possible try to use photos of smiling people looking at the camera. We have also found that people prefer photos with a darker background versus a lighter background.
- If uploading a video it should be short (under 2 minutes) and be high energy and interesting. It should have something compelling in the first 10 seconds you may not grab the attention of the viewer and they will scroll past it.
- Videos should, when possible, have subtitles. Why? Because oftentimes people scroll through the timeline and will look at a video but not click on it to hear the sound. The subtitles can help guide them through your message and also may encourage them to click. Facebook has an ability to create subtitles within the video upload, otherwise you can add them with most video software such as iMovie or Adobe Premiere Clip.
6. Test, Test, Test and then TEST your Facebook Ad again
Here is the big secret to digital marketing, it’s not a simple set it and forget it process. If you want your ads to be maximized and get the best results you need to set the ad, watch it perform and then try something else to see how that performs. You should only change one thing at a time when you run a test. You can change the target audience, or you can change the copy or change the image, but only change one thing at a time so that you can compare to the original and start to gain knowledge as to what is the best ad approach.
7. Keep Testing Your Facebook Ads
When you find a winning ad run it for awhile. Make sure to watch it and see how it does. Over time it may continue to do well or it may start to perform with results that are sub-optimal. You will most likely want to create new ads to test against the old ongoing ad.
That’s right, testing never ends. People sometimes oversimplify social media marketing and digital marketing. They think anyone can do it, you just set an ad that’s it. While it’s true anyone can set an ad and forget it, but doing it well and really maximizing your investment to get results means you invest in the process. It is an ongoing process and will require you to stay present. For many it is much less expensive to hire an expert social media marketing company like SocialNicole to run their ads program, allowing a company to focus on what they do best while we do what we do best. For many it is much less expensive to hire an expert social media marketing company like
For many it is much less expensive to hire an expert social media marketing company like SocialNicole to run their ads program, allowing a company to focus on what they do best while we do what we do best.
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