As of the second quarter of 2016, Facebook had hit a total of 1.71 billion monthly active users. This figure clearly indicates that Facebook is a repository of potential leads for businesses if they know how to leverage it adequately using an effective social advertising strategy. With ads, Facebook advertising has really been made simple, allowing businesses to reach the specific target audience they want. Here are some relevant tips that you can start using today to create effective ad campaigns to reach new customers through your digital marketing strategies.
1. Take Advantage of Audience Insights
In the Ads Manager, there is an Audience Insights feature that allows you to access useful data about your ads. These helpful insights can be used to refine and target your ads so they reach the right customers. Typically, you are able to identify the right audience using the interests and characteristics of people who have liked your page. This data provides you useful metrics such as age, gender, education level, lifestyle, relationship status, and job title. Based on this data, you can use what you know about your audience to create targeted ads.
2. Align Your Facebook Ads with Your Landing Page
Facebook advertising and other social media marketing are competitive, and this is making it quite expensive. Making sure the message you’re conveying in your Facebook Advertising is consistent with the page you direct your audience to on your website is key to getting your customers to respond. An inconsistent landing page can make your potential customers feel as though they have been misguided, or worse, spammed by an online ad.
3. The Ad Elements
A typical Facebook ad features several elements including title, image, and description for online advertising. For a successful and click-worthy campaign, these elements must be knitted together to work seamlessly. The best approach is to first test each element at a time to weigh the performance of each ad. Then, combine the elements based on the responses each ad got to create more powerful ads for your social media marketing.
4. Identify the Ideal Ad Placement
Facebook offers two ad placement areas: the feeds (desktop and mobile) and right column. You would want to experiment with both areas to see what works best for your campaign and audience. Implement three Facebook advertising campaigns: one for the right column, one for the mobile news feed, and the other for the desktop news feed. This gives you control over your budget while you monitor the performance of each ad unit.
5. Don’t Ignore Geographic Targeting
The cost per click varies depending on the geographic location of your audience. So, if you’re targeting audiences in multiple areas it is useful to create separate ad units for each geographic location. Not only does this save you money on bidding, it will also give you more comparison points to determine the effectiveness of your ads. Remember, some areas may differ in terms of how the audience will receive the messaging, so it may be helpful to create separate ad designs and messaging for each region to reach the ideal audiences in each.
A successful social media marketing strategy requires continuous monitoring to identify the areas that give you quick wins. With Facebook advertising, you also have the option to exclude the audience that has already Liked your page to narrow the reach of your ads to new customers only. You also have the option to add layers to your targeting options including age range, and preferences of your audience such as favorite sports, those that have Liked pages with similar products as yours, and more.