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Easy Facebook Posting & Ad Strategy - In: Business

In : Business Comments : 0 Author : Molly Richardson Date : 03 Jun 2020
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You could be reaching two billion people every month. How is this possible without having a million dollar marketing budget, you ask? The answer may surprise you: Facebook advertising.

Here are some stats behind that two billion people claim:

  • 22% of the world’s population is made up of active Facebook users, including 68% of adults in the United States.
  • 76% of users look for interesting content on Facebook and content consumption on Facebook has increased 57% since 2014.
  • 66% of social media users log on to learn about new products and services.
  • Customers who like a business on Facebook are 79% more likely to make a new purchase than non-fans.
  • A 2015 study found that 52% of consumers were influenced by Facebook when making both online and offline purchases—and rising.
  • Facebook’s hyper-targeted Custom Audiences feature lets you advertise so specifically that advertisers have seen their new customer acquisition costs decline by as much as 73%.
  • When it comes to building awareness, the average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) for Facebook ads is around $7.29 versus upwards of $35 for television commercials.
  • Facebook is also useful in the B2B realm—73% of people say they use Facebook for professional purposes. (Source)

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, running ads on Facebook is budget friendly and cost effective. In fact, it is the least expensive form of advertising right now. This allows you to reach a larger audience with more content quickly to build brand awareness, increase website traffic, and generate new leads. These can be directly correlated to increased revenue and sales, but it doesn’t stop there. Facebook ads encourage and drive repeat business.

Facebook ads are one of the best, cost-effective, and quickest ways to build engagement, cultivate leads, and foster business.

But how do you set up ads on Facebook? How do you run effective campaigns?

Facebook’s Ads Manager Platform is a self-service advertising tool that offers detailed analytics reports to track the performance of each of your campaigns. It also provides access to Instagram advertising.

Set Up

Step one is to create a page for your business, after which you can set up a business manager account. The next step is crucial: Install the Facebook Pixel on your website. This allows Facebook to identify who visits your website, allowing you to create custom audiences, and then showing ads directly to those individuals. Create Audiences to target your specific customer avatars and then start creating ads!

Three Ways to Leverage Your Budget and the Facebook Algorithm

  1. Research competitors within your market – Using Facebook’s Pages to Watch and the Facebook Ad Library, you can assess what your competitors are doing, what content is getting engagement, and what typical calls to action look like. Pro Tip: The longer an ad has been running the more likely it is to be working for them, so pay attention to the dates of their posts/ads.
  2. Use the new ad features – New features are being rolled out all the time.. and Facebook rewards those who use them! Investigate how major brands are using new features to see what it does. This includes instant experiences, slideshows and story specific ads.
  3. Share your content with clients and prospects – You can increase your sales conversions and keep your customers longer by engaging with them online. If you have your list of leads and customers set up as a custom audience, you can spend as little as $1/day just keeping related, branded content in front of them.

Best Strategies to Move Forward

  • Provide free content to warm up your audience
  • Retarget website visitors with quality content (through the Facebook Pixel)
  • Create engaging videos that attract new customers and nurture your contacts

Campaign ROI Tips

  • Track using Facebook’s Pixel and Google Analytics
  • Build Ad Campaigns around your goals and key business objectives
  • Get creative with targeting, but don’t over target (the smaller your potential audience typically the more expensive it is to reach them)
  • Test, test, and test again to see which ad types, objectives and messaging works the best

Ad Content Best Practices

  • Use images of people who resemble your target audience
  • Grab attention with the headline
    • Ask a question
    • Command an action
    • List a benefit
    • Inspire curiosity
  • Use clear, to-the-point copy
  • Include a call to action (it doesn’t always have to be a button, you can add a URL in your video as an overlay or place it in the primary text of your post)

Where Should I Put My Ads?

  • Newsfeed ads – These are placed “in stream” with users timeline where they are scrolling. Therefore, they typically have higher click-through rates and lower costs per conversion.
  • Right column ads – These are placed in the sidebar of the users feed and are only visible on desktop. Because they are a little out of the way they typically have a lower conversion rate, but they also have a lower cost per impression so they are a cost-effective method of staying in front of your audience.
  • Audience Network – This type of ad placement puts your ad in front of your target audience across many different channels like games and news platforms. While these ads are typically cheap for impressions, they have the least amount of engagement and conversion rates. You also can’t retarget video views of these placements as Facebook doesn’t own the channels. I would only recommend these if you are doing a Brand Awareness campaign.

Mistakes to Avoid

⛔️ Don’t use poor quality images → First impressions are important, use Canva or outsource graphics to make a good one.

⛔️ Don’t put offers in front of cold audiences → That’s asking for marriage on the first date.

⛔️ Don’t test too many ad variations at once → If your budget doesn’t spread well across all the variations, you won’t get enough data or reach to know if it’s working.

⛔️ Don’t make changes too quickly → Give it at least 3-4 days before you make any significant changes. As ads get engagement and Facebook starts learning more who is engaging, your campaign will be optimizing.

⛔️ Don’t put too much text on the ad image → Facebook will either reject or limit it’s reach.

⛔️ Make sure you are directing to a GREAT, brand-consistent landing page → If the exterior of the house is gorgeous and modern, but the cabinets and bathroom tile are from the 70s, the buyer is more likely to walk away.

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