Since its introduction in 2004, Facebook has become the world’s most popular social media platform. Nearly everyone (and their mother) uses Facebook to share stories, events, pictures and videos with family and friends. When we say “everyone”, we mean it. Facebook reaches 2.17 billion people – that’s nearly 30% of the world’s population.
Facebook’s business model is largely based on advertising, and given its huge membership, it provides ample opportunities for businesses to reach customers. But are you taking full advantage of all of Facebook’s available resources? Is your brand reaching everyone you need to reach?
Here are seven ways to improve your Facebook advertising and reach your marketing objectives.
1. Strategize Your Facebook Advertising
As a marketer, you know the importance of having a solid plan. When it comes to Facebook Advertising, you need to decide who you’re trying to reach, how they use the website, what their interests are, and how much to invest. Facebook gathers information like this through a tool called Audience Insights that lets you choose your audience based on any combination of classifications, such as location and hobbies.
Tip: In addition to placing ads in users’ feeds and stories, you should also consider sending ads through Facebook Messenger in the form of sponsored ads, click to message ads, and home screen messenger ads.
2. Choose a Target
More than 98% of Facebook’s active monthly users access the website via mobile devices. With those kinds of numbers, not only should you be creating ads for mobile viewing, but they should target users who are on their mobile devices the most.
Precision targeting on Facebook lets you go a step further. As previously mentioned, brands have access to information on users who fall into various categories, some of which will be your targets of choice. You can use that information to advertise to potential clients such as parents, locals, people with multiple credit cards, or any number of demographic traits. However, avoid getting too specific or you could limit the scope of your campaign.
After your campaign has launched, it is important to monitor your ROI on a continuous basis. If the numbers appear too low, consider retargeting using a Facebook pixel to resend ads to visitors you didn’t convert.
3. Structure Your Campaign
Facebook allows you to choose between 11 different types of campaign options, all of which fall under three categories: awareness, consideration, and conversion.
Under awareness, you have brand awareness and reach. The goal here is to simply raise awareness of your product or service.
For consideration, your options are traffic, engagement, app installs, video views, lead generation, and messages. Here, the drive is for people to seek out more information about your business.
With conversion, you can choose between conversions, catalog sales, and store traffic. These objectives actually encourage people to buy your products or use your services.
When you first begin your campaign, you’ll need to consider what your business goals are. As your business grows, those goals will likely change, pulling you from building awareness towards making conversions.
4. Design Your Ad
Your ads are going to look different depending on where they’re viewed. However, a well-designed advertisement should deliver continuity in terms of attitude and design philosophy regardless of the screen size.
When designing your ads, keep in mind that Facebook requires ads to be in a specific banner format to fit their news feeds, meaning you can’t take the same design with you across social media platforms.
Another thing to consider is the type of ad you use. Video ads tend to do better on Facebook because of the auto play feature in addition to the creativity and different qualities that go into the video. But don’t worry about putting too much time and effort into a video ad. Provided it is over two seconds long, Facebook will run it.
5. Track Metrics
An important task in any campaign is tracking your advertisements’ metrics. Although ads on Facebook run on their own, the built-in Ads Manager enables you to manage your progress.
When tracking your ads, turn off any campaigns that aren’t generating the results that you expect. However, keep in mind that a new campaign can take at least a week for Facebook’s algorithm to show it to the right people. It can sometimes take over three months to accurately determine if it’s working as intended.
Facebook Pixel is another way to monitor visitors to your site. Simply embed it on your website, and you can use the data it gathers to create custom audiences and adjust your campaign.
6. Leverage Influencers
Another thing to keep in mind when working on your ad campaign is repurposing material created by your influencer network. (If you don’t have an influencer network yet, call us!)
Content created by your brand will always appear promotional to customers because it is. With influencers, you’re paying them to use their creativity and loyal followers to reach an audience your brand might otherwise struggle to engage.
It’s not uncommon for marketers to repurpose content created by influencers and publish it on their own social media channels. Such content benefits your brand by being entertaining and informative, and it benefits the creator by introducing their own brand to your potential clients. However, always get permission from the influencer first.
7. Whitelist Facebook Pages
Another way to utilize your influencers is to post ads to their social media pages, rather than posting their content onto your page. This is done through whitelisting.
The reason you’ll want to take advantage of whitelisting is the same reason you use influencers. They draw much more attention than your brand does and likely have a target audience you’re interested in.
Whitelisting also allows your brand more control over your influencer’s content, such as filtering anything that can harm your reputation. Obviously, this requires significant trust on both your parts, but in the end can help both parties expand and generate new interest.
Improve Your Facebook Advertising Now
Whether you’re an up and coming brand looking to get a footing on social media or a bigger, more established brand seeking to optimize existing social media campaigns, our team of social media experts can help you get the most out of Facebook Ads and other social media platforms. We can also help you develop a network of influencers to help introduce and promote your brand to new audiences. Contact us to get a Free social media strategy consultation.
