For a good percentage of people social media is all the internet exists for. They may occasionally use Google to search for directions, event ideas, or recipes but for the most part it’s all about the social media sites. Facebook is one of the most popular sites to browse through during downtime. Whether you use it to chat with your friends, organize an event, share your memories and photos or browse through the newsfeed, it’s where most people go when they’re relaxed. According to Facebook statistics, the website gets over a billion active users each month, more than half of them visit the site each and every day. Event without knowing the stats, most companies would admit that using Facebook as an outreach channel has enormous potentiality. More than half a billion people every day? That’s a whole lot of potential.
Facebook offers great advertising opportunity to reach your target consumers. It uses activity history, groups and likes to make sure that ads are shown to a specific segment of users that businesses believe are people who would like or want their products or services. Success is dependent on how well these companies know their products and services and how well they know their target market. If the proper research is conducted the potential for incredible success is endless.
When a Facebook campaign is ran correctly it does not only bring improved ROI to the company who is advertising, but it also adds value to the customer’s experience because ads for products or services that may interest them are shown as opposed to irrelevant content that does not. Very often, this is considered a double win for the brands that are shown within a user’s feed because even the customers who don’t click on the ad are potential customers. Having glanced at an ad quickly delivers the brand awareness factor and later on when these individuals see a logo or product they recognize, it will draw them in for further inquiry.
Despite the good points, setting up a Facebook campaign to advertise your products or services is not all smooth sailing. It is true that it’s easy to implement and click start but to really reap the benefits, those who are just starting their campaign experience should follow some straightforward strategies to ensure success. Here are 10 top practices to help you:
1. The tone of your ad is crucial.
Just like any other ad types, Facebooks ads shouldn’t be an extension of your brand, and it shouldn’t be ongoing with your brand tone and message. If you’re demonstrating advertisement to Facebook users that you believe will be potential customers, then you shouldn’t forget just how important it is to properly build your brand. Even if an individual sees your ad five times and never click on it, that doesn’t mean that the ad did not reach them in some way or another. They may know your business name now because they’ve seen it so often and also what you offer which can later on influence a buying decision.
Additionally, if someone clicks on an ad with a specific message/tone and then lands on a Facebook page or website that lacks that same messaging they may very well be displeased with the incoherent customer experience.
2. Working on a small budget.
Working with a small budget doesn’t mean that you cannot have a successful campaign experience on Facebook. It only means that you want to strategize how you use your available budget so that you’re maximizing your results.
If you’re working on a limited budget, it is better to shorten the length of time that your ad runs instead of spreading ads out over time and minimizing their effectiveness. It is very tempting to drag out campaigns with smaller values more that getting better results with short pieces of time.
However, there is an exception to this rule. If you have restricted productivity or availability for service, then you can entertain stretching the ads out. You should just remember that if you stretch your smaller campaigns out, your ads will be seen with less frequency by your target consumer.
3. Make sure you have an excellent bidding strategy to reach your goal.
There is a variety of bidding choices, and each have their own pros and cons so be sure to have your objectives and goals in mind when selecting your strategy for the campaign. You want to know the difference between Cost per Click and Optimized Cost Per Mille. One is useful for reach, and the other has better control. Make sure you’re using the right bidding strategy to reach your target.
4. Testing phases.
In all testing phases, it is imperative to make sure that you have parallel timeframes to compare. If not, you’ll never know if a particular group of results are due to your creative effort or because of any other factor that played a role at the time. One tactic that can be utilized to reduce the impact of uncertainty is to test your ad results in phases and cycles as opposed to individual one-off windows. By the same token, you don’t want to be too hasty and write off a particular campaign. If you test all of them at once, it’s difficult to learn and understand the campaign results, so it’s best to test in phases.
5. Having a broad creative range.
Having multiple creatives is when you are continuously testing what may be working best and what really isn’t working so well. It allows you to use different segments with specific creatives as targets. Sometimes a great quality image with a catchy phrase causes viewers to click, whereas other users engage more when they see a call to action phrase. Something that invites them to participate by commenting or some other sort of action. Although, you should be careful not to overload your efforts if your budget is limited because minimal results across many channels will not provide reliable reporting.
6. Rotating your images.
Having a variety of different creative images is important because of what is called “ad blindness.” Ad blindness is where your target consumers start to recognize imagery and subconsciously bypass them because they’ve seen it several times before. You can avoid overuse of images by exchanging them within the ads groups. Having a few images per ad group and exchanging them periodically can reduce the chance of causing ad blindness amongst your audience.
7. Using naming conventions.
Getting organized and having your campaign sorted from the very beginning is not a point that can be stressed enough. If you select a style right from the very start, it will allow you to differentiate between image, timings, and audience quickly. It will help make all actions after that much simpler. For example, it will become way easier to tell which ads are performing better than others by merely glancing.
8. Keep device targeting in mind.
Facebook ad campaigns allow you to target specific user groups based on the device they are using to browse and with hundreds of millions active monthly mobile users this is an abundance of potential customers. On the other hand, if your website is not designed to be mobile friendly you should probably stray away from making your ad available to mobile users. Otherwise, when they transfer from Facebook, which does have a mobile friendly platform to your website that may not, the experience will be an unfavorable one.
9. Factor in the seasons.
Factoring in the current season is important to Facebook users. Whether it’s summer, Christmas, Halloween or whichever seasonal event or holiday, it is. Each season has days that are directly tied to the lives of your audience and making sure the ads are relatable provides them with a fitting experience. At minimum, you don’t want to run ads that clash with the current season like posting images of sunny beaches during the snowy winter. The last thing you want is to do is make your ad stand out for all the wrong reasons.
10. Tracking your performance.
Ideally, you want to log in daily to check on how your ads are performing. You can pause the ads that are not doing so well and copy anything you can from ads that are doing better.
By monitoring and adjusting the ads you are fine-tuning the ad experience. By doing so, you are catering to the most crucial part of running campaigns on Facebook. Make sure that you have the right resources at your disposal before you begin your campaigns.
So long as it is managed correctly, running Facebook ads can turn out to be a very promising and lucrative form of advertising. No matter what type of product or service you offer, your target consumer is using Facebook on a daily basis. This platform provides you with the ability to engage with your audience in ways you may not have the ability to in person. Following these suggested practices is a great start but there are always other tools that can be used to maximize your Facebook advertising experience.
