For small businesses, expanding your audience means stability and consistent growth. However, getting traffic and attention to your company’s website can be a challenge. Tapping into platforms where your audience is already engaging, like Facebook, is a great way to find new customers.
Social media, review sites, and online publications are always great hubs for tapping into an engaged target market. Most have tools you can utilize to ensure you’re reaching the right kind of people, but few can get you the kind of awareness and exposure that Facebook can.
Facebook advertisements can boost your small business growth and performance in many ways, including:
The good thing with a Facebook ad network is that you’re not tied to a single ad type. The platform puts multiple ad types at your disposal, letting you pick one that suits your placement and marketing goals. Some of the popular ads on Facebook include:
Image Ads: This is the most basic Facebook ad format. As the name suggests, these simple ads contain only a single image showcasing your product or services.
Regardless of the ad type you want to create, Facebook recommends following the ad specs guidelines to create high-converting ads.
When it comes to ad specs, Facebook prefers to keep digital marketers on their toes. The platform constantly updates the specs to make sure each type of ad is delivering the optimal results. To keep up with the changes, be sure to bookmark the Facebook Ad specs page and visit it regularly.
To give your campaigns more power, you should adhere to these best practices:
Ads with spot-on messages and eye-popping visuals catch people’s attention and make them take action. As you create your ads, pay special attention to these four areas:
Let’s say you’ve created a set of five ads on Facebook. Normally, you’d set the campaign budget for each ad, but that comes with one pitfall: you can’t prioritize the budget.
Facebook’s campaign budget optimization is the perfect workaround to that problem. With the tool, you set a budget for the entire ad set. Doing so enables Facebook to prioritize your campaign budget to channel the biggest chunk to the best-performing ads.
Facebook can serve up your ads on News Feeds, Audience Network, Instagram feed and stories, and Messenger.
At first, Facebook will run ads on all platforms but will gather more data from each placement to learn about it. This way, the algorithm will gain insights to pick the least expensive placement with regard to the average cost per optimization. This ensures you make the most of your campaign budget.
Mindlessly shooting an ad into the social media space won’t reap the rewards. Taking the time to define a precise advertising objective will.
What is an advertising objective? It’s what you want your ad to accomplish. Do you want an ad that builds brand awareness, directs traffic to your site or generates sales?
If you’re uncertain, identify where your intended audience is in the buyer’s journey. Are they in the awareness, consideration, or conversion stage?
A clear objective is vital because it serves as a touchpoint throughout the process. It determines the ad copy you’ll use and how “pushy” your ad should be.
For instance, if your audience is still in the awareness stage, they’re not ready for an ad that says, “Buy Now.” They are unfamiliar with your product, so their mental filter will file your ad away as spam as they scroll through their newsfeed.
Instead, an awareness stage ad should focus on providing value over pushing conversions. This also allows Facebook to present you with appropriate ad formats. For instance, if you’re trying to encourage sales by advertising a specific product, you can create a Facebook ad with a CTA that directs people to “Shop Now.”
A poor understanding of your intended target audience can hurt even a brilliant advertising campaign. If your company sells life insurance, marketing to 18-to-24-year-olds won’t win many leads.
But it’s not just about basic demographics, like age. Interests also play an important role. A travel company that specializes in Spring Break tours promising a good time won’t have much luck running commercials during a cable news program.
Facebook lets you filter your intended audience by:
Facebook allows you to target (and even exclude) people who hold specific interests. So that Spring Break tour company we mentioned earlier would be wise to target 18-to-24-year-olds on a college campus who like pages related to travel.
You can also create a customized audience based on existing followers, website visitors, or app users.
Once you’ve carefully considered those first two strategic steps (objectives and audience), creating your ad is as simple as gathering your marketing assets.
We previously mentioned this, but you can choose between automatic placements and specified placements. Facebook recommends automatic placements because they’ll be able to put your ads where your audience is most likely to see them. This saves you time and is likely much more efficient.
Outlining your marketing budget is an important step in your Facebook ad creation process. Provide an estimated daily budget and choose whether you want your ad to run continuously or over a fixed time period. Luckily, your company doesn’t need to be rolling in dough to advertise on Facebook. You can run a lean or robust campaign, depending on your budget.
We have already covered the various Facebook ad formats above. Choose wisely and upload the appropriate graphics, and add your text. Facebook will review and approve your ad after you place your order.
No, but it’s in your best interests to get one.
Without a Facebook page, you can only run sidebar advertisements known as Right Column ads. With a Facebook page, your company’s advertisements can appear in the Newsfeed as Sponsored Posts.
Meta’s Ads Manager dashboard allows advertisers to monitor their campaign performance. The dashboard provides insights on engagement, performance, clicks, conversions, and more. You can also customize your metrics and compare performance across different campaigns and time periods.
Start reaching new customers and converting existing ones with Facebook ads. By embracing best practices, you can use the social media giant to advance your company’s advertising goals.
For more expert advise on Facebook advertising visit our services page or book in for a complimentary 30 minute discovery call to see how we can meet your specific needs. Click here to book your call now!