Recently, I was involved in a project with a local company. They wanted to market the company with Facebook advertising, but they have no idea how.
Just like many, they used Facebook advertisements in the past but it didn’t help. They had low reach and tons of followers who doesn’t resonate with their brand.
Long story short, they need help and they need it fast.
In this post, you are going to find important tips when it comes to Facebook advertising.
Of course, if you find this post useful, feel free to share on social media using the social sharing buttons.
Facebook Advertising – How To Use It Effectively?
1. Understand your needs, goals or targets
The first step of Facebook advertising is all about understanding your needs.
If you want to use Facebook advertising, you need to ask yourself on the ultimate goal in doing the paid advertisement. Are you planning to:
- Get more traffic
- Generate more leads
- Build a larger following
Regardless of your target, you need to have a great understanding of it.
Once that is done, it is easier for you to incorporate the entire plan into your Facebook advertising strategy.
2. Creating a persona (or personas)
Having the right persona is important for your digital marketing, especially with Facebook marketing.
For starters, you wouldn’t want to target Tom, Dick and Harry which basically isn’t fruitful. Instead, you should have a very specific goal and target on who your potential customers (or social media followers) are.
A persona is basically an ideal customer for your business and a persona can be as following:
- Male or Female
- Age between 18 to 35
- Lives in Texas
- Working adult
- Married but have no children
- Purchase at least one product online within the last 12 months
When it comes to creating a persona, you are free to think out of the box. This means that it is never too much or too less (in stats) when it comes to finding your most ideal customer.
BONUS TIP: You can start creating multiple personas for your business when your business picks up the pace or when you have different types of products targeting different audiences.
3. Different types of Facebook advertisements
As you can see above, there are many different types of advertisements you can run on Facebook based on your needs. Generally, they are divided into three majors parts:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
Each of the above is effective only when it is in line with your marketing goals. For example, you can generate traffic to your blog post if you use ‘Send people to your website’ instead of ‘Get people to claim your offer’.
This is where understanding your goals and targets (point #1) comes into play.
It is also important to understand that each of these advertisements has different costing (especially cost per click) due to the nature of the goals.
4. Getting your demographic correct
Depending on who you ask, each social media manager will tell you different information about this topic. Here’s my version of it.
In Facebook, you should always create different Ad Sets and each Ad Set should focus on a specific demographic.
Take the example of my recent marketing strategy. My target audiences are Philippines and India. Therefore, instead of targeting both the countries with one Ad Set, I use two different Ad Sets to target them separately.
BONUS TIP: You can even create as many as Ad Sets as you want and run them altogether during a specific period of time. In every 24 hours or 48 hours duration, take a moment to check on the Ad Sets and turn off the ones that don’t perform.
Always remember that turning off the ones that are not performing will save you a lot of money in the long run. The money saved can then be used to reinvest into the specific, high-performing audience that you have.
5. How many Ad Sets should you have in order to run a successful Facebook marketing strategy?
The answer is as many as you can. Seriously.
Your ultimate goal is to reach out to as many customers as you possibly can using very specific Ad Sets. Each Ad Set can be configured based on age, work experience, location, language etc.
The more Ad Set you can create, the better understanding you will get especially with the target audience that is engaging with your advertisements.
6. Facebook retargeting feature
I am sure you have heard about the Facebook retargeting feature. As a matter of fact, this is very powerful and could go a long way (in marketing) if it is done right.
For starters, you need to install a pixel in your website (landing pages) which will track the visitors. Once a customer fail to perform an action such as purchasing the product, you will be able to serve them the second advertisement to further boost the chances of closing the deal.
This is very effective if you have run a specific advertisement for a longer period of time. You can still perform retargeting with short advertisement but it will not be as effective as the longer ones.
7. Facebook lookalike audience
I love this feature and here’s why.
For starters, I do not need to reach out to a new audience using cold sales techniques. Instead, I could easily use Facebook lookalike audience to reach to out to friends of my current followers. Logically speaking, each of us will have friends who are within the similar niche.
This is awesome as it can grow your business rather rapidly.
8. How much money should you invest in Facebook ads?
Last but not least, how much should you be spending on Facebook ads?
For this, there isn’t a defined answer to it (pretty sad, right). The truth is it really depends on the type of company and business you are running.
However, a good Ad Set usually costs below $8 for lead and under $0.50 per like.
They are highly affected by the region you are in and of course, the industry you are in as well.
Summary
There are many ways to Facebook advertising and there are also many best practices you can follow. However, the above are the most basic ones that will enable you to start using Facebook advertising (pretty much) immediately.
See also: 6 Useful Facebook Marketing Tips for Local Businesses
