There are more than 2.8 billion active users on Facebook every single month, and this statistic is only growing over time. More and more people are coming to Facebook so that they can connect with friends and family members. Most recently, Facebook’s group feature has caught the hearts of people at every stage of life.
Since Facebook has been able to maintain its good standing with most users, the social media platform remains one of the best for advertisements. However, you have to know how to build an effective Facebook advertising strategy.
With new rules surrounding Facebook profiles and advertiser conduct, Facebook ad campaigns have changed. In response, your advertising on Facebook has to change, too.
Whether you’re new to Facebook advertising or haven’t revisited your strategy since the privacy rules changed, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to teach you how to advertise on Facebook with today’s rules. Plus, we’re going to share some of our most coveted tips for advertising on Facebook.
1. Start With Pinpointing the Right Audience
When you’re running an advertisement on Facebook, you need to know what kind of audience you’re trying to target. In fact, Facebook is going to ask what kind of users you want your advertisement to reach.
Pinpointing users is more effective when it comes to lead generation and conversion. By putting all of your resources into this target audience, you’re making it easier to find people who want to invest in your product/service.
Rather than trying to guess your audience, Facebook is going to ask you specifically who you’re looking to target. Thus, you need to know your target audience.
Create Your Target Audience
Facebook allows users to define their audiences via several different factors:
- Age
- Location
- Demographics
- Interests
If your business has no existing target audience, your marketing team needs to develop a buyer persona as soon as possible. The more specific you can make your target audience, the better you can target their wants and interests.
Custom Audience
Facebook offers advertisements with custom audiences. Some people call these “remarketing ads,” because they allow you to target people that have already taken an interest in your advertisements.
Facebook with show these advertisements again or “remarket” them. Facebook developed this idea after research studies came about regarding business interactions and generating leads. These studies showed that potential customers need to interact with a business about ten times before they can make a decision about whether or not to take the next step.
Everytime that a customer sees an advertisement from your business, this counts as an interaction. However, Facebook can also sense if these individuals have interacted with your Facebook page, your website, or some other entity that’s tied to your business.
By reaching out to these individuals, you’re giving your business a second, third, and even fourth chance to make a good impression. You’re also helping some customers make up their minds if they’re unsure about the product/service that you’re offering.
Lastly, we want to point out the power of your email list. Facebook allows you to input a set of emails that you may want to target with your ads. Many advertisers use their email list to find people who have used the same email to set up their Facebook accounts. This helps increase the number of interactions that you’re having with the people in your email list.
They’re getting emails and personalized advertisements. Over time, they’ll be more likely to become a customer.
Lookalike Audiences
Like the name suggests, lookalike audiences include those people who are like your existing audience. In other words, this Facebook feature takes a look at your current audience and produces a list of new people based on that audience’s interests, demographic details, and more.
This works similarly to local SEO strategy.
Using Facebook’s advertising platform, you can specify the number of people that you want to reach. And, if you’re in a local area, you can specify a location.
Overall, lookalike audiences will help pull in more leads. Whether you’re having trouble pulling in prospects or you just want to expand your audience, lookalike audiences may be the way to go. By finding people who are similar to the individuals who are already interested in your business, you’re increasing the likelihood that these new audience members will take a liking to your business.
2. Pick the Right Kinds of Advertisements on Facebook
Just like Facebook allows advertisers to target different audiences, it also allows advertisers to chose different kinds of advertisements. Depending on your advertising goals and digital marketing strategy, you’ll want to pick different kinds of ads.
In general, there are three kinds of goals that advertisers focus on:
- Awareness: increasing the number of people who have heard of your business and/or its products/services
- Interaction: increasing the number of interactions that your prospects are having with your business
- Conversion: increasing conversion rate (the number of people that become customers of your company)
Depending on your focus(es), you’re going to have a different level of creativity and detail in your advertisement.
In general, there are three kinds of Facebook advertisements:
- Carousel ads
- Video ads
- Story ads
Most recently, carousel ads have been growing among Facebook advertisers. This kind of advertising allows advertisers to show multiple kinds of products in one advertisement.
Videos ads allow advertisers to show eye-catching videos to potential leads. Video ads tend to be the hardest to create as they need to be attention-grabbing among the rest of the Facebook content. If you’re going to choose to use video ads, you need to bring together a quick, entertaining video.
Lastly, story ads on Facebook are similar to story ads on Instagram. With this kind of advertising, you need to make sure that you’re creating short-form content that lasts a few seconds. Stories are the shortest kind of advertisement.
While you’re choosing the kind of advertisement(s) that you want, you should keep your advertising capabilities in mind. Your team may be better at creating certain kinds of ads.
If you’re unsure about the kinds of advertisements that you want to choose, you can always test out the different kinds of ads and see which ones work the best.
3. Review Your Current Advertisements
If you’ve already run advertisements in the past, you should take the time to review those ads. Even if they’re a few years old, it’s helpful to create a baseline for your upcoming ads.
As you’re reviewing those older ads, you should look for ways to improve your advertising techniques. At the same time, you should focus on advertising to your company’s current goals rather than sticking to the goals that you used to have.
Here are some things to consider while you’re creating your new ads.
Don’t Forget to Entertain Your Audience
No matter what you’re selling or sharing, you should never forget to entertain your audience. If your ad is boring, it’s not going to pull in leads.
Make entertaining advertisements that are colorful, funny, eye-catching, and/or descriptive.
Avoid making ads that are boring or stuffy. You’re not likely to bring in interest with those kinds of ads.
Branch Out Into Video Advertisements
As we mentioned, video advertisements are one of three kinds of ads that Facebook offers. At the same time, Facebook Stories allow short-form videos.
With that in mind, you should try to make video advertisements. Some people believe that these ads are the most difficult to make, but they’re also the most rewarding.
This is not to mention that video content – in general – is becoming more popular. With the rise of platforms like TikTok, more and more consumers are becoming interested in videos. In congruence with this rise, Facebook has adjusted its algorithm to favor video content.
So, you should try to make entertaining video advertisements whether they be short-form through stories or long-form through regular posts. To make the creation process easier, you should think of these videos as a small commercial for your business.
Include a Call-to-Action
You shouldn’t post any advertisements without thinking about (and including) a call-to-action. There are several kinds of calls-to-action that you can try to use:
- Click to learn more
- Follow our page
- Like this post
- Share this post
- Buy something
- Leave a comment
- Attend an event
These are great ways to interact with your audience.
However, you should keep in mind that each advertisement should only have one call-to-action. If you ask your audience to complete more than one task at a time, no matter the size of the task, they’re more likely not to do any of them.
You should focus on one thing that you want your audience to do. If you want more than one call-to-action, you should launch multiple advertisements. This way, one individual may see multiple advertisements with a single call-to-action for each.
Use Facebook Offers
Facebook Offers is a little bit different from Facebook advertisements. However, they both do a great job at bringing in more potential customers.
Facebook Offers allows businesses to promote coupons, offers, discounts, and more. By giving out these kinds of offers, you’re more likely to pull in more leads.
You can add these offers to your promoted posts on Facebook to ensure that your targeted audience sees them. Sometimes, a small discount is all that customers need to make a purchase that they’re skeptical about.
So, this may be the best way to encourage customers to make a purchase from your business.
4. Track Your Facebook Advertising Strategy
When marketers beginning making advertisements on Facebook, they tend to get overwhelmed. Facebook offers so many different analytics and numbers that many marketers get lost in the noise.
Nevertheless, analytics are still important. So, you need to make sure that you know what you need to pay attention to.
We highly recommend that new advertisers run smaller campaigns before they spend a lot of their money. You need to make sure that your advertising strategy works before you spend a great amount of money.
During this smaller campaign, you should get a few things in order:
- Situate the audience that you want to target
- Figure out what kind of Facebook advertisements that you want to use
- Estimate the amount of money that you want to spend per advertising campaign
- Choose the kinds of calls-to-action that you want to use in your advertisements
Once you figure out what you want to do with your larger advertisements, you can start creating bigger campaigns.
Optimizing Your Budget
Most recently, Facebook has moved to a more optimized budget. Before this change, Facebook advertising budgets were evenly allocated between a company’s campaigns.
This means that a company with a budget of $30 and three advertising campaigns would allocate $10 to each campaign.
Now, with Facebook’s changes, the allocation of the budget depends on the success of the advertisement. If an advertisement is doing really well, it is more likely to get a higher percentage of the budget. On the other hand, an advertisement that is doing poorly will receive a lower percentage of the budget.
This new method of allocation ensures that marketers aren’t going to waste their money on advertisements that aren’t bringing in new leads. At the same time, it increases the favor that advertisers have with Facebook.
Since Facebook is working hard to stretch the advertiser dollar, more advertisers are likely to use their services.
Set Up Your Facebook Advertisements Today
Now, you know everything there is to know about creating, implementing, and evaluating an effective Facebook advertising strategy. You know the ins and outs of the kinds of advertisements, advertising tips, and more.
However, even with all of this information, online marketing can be overwhelming. That’s why we offer online marketing services.
We can help you create, set up, and analyze your advertisements on Facebook as well as those on other platforms. Our experts can help you navigate every step of the advertising process.
Contact us today get started.
