Am I Being ‘Ad? Do I really Need To Be Using Facebook Ads?

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Facebook advertising is standard fare for most websites and ecommerce brands looking to drive traffic. PPC advertising is a somewhat more manageable ‘beast’ to tame, as you are relying on keywords and people finding your site based on their needs. Social media advertising, on the other hand, works in almost the opposite way.

With Facebook, you are tempting people away from everyday conversations to get them to check out your website and make an inquiry. This article will offer you expert tips on making the most out of Facebook advertising, to ensure that as a marketer, you’re not being had.

Make Sure You’re Checking The Results

If you haven’t done already, make sure you’ve set up Facebook Pixel on your business account. This is a piece of script that allows you to track the performance of your ads. You can use this code to track events and attribute the specific actions that brought visitors through to your website. You can find Pixel in the Asset screen of your Facebook Ads account. Check out this in-depth guide to setting up Pixel.

Once you are up and running, you can follow any of the following techniques to bring in excellent results.

Use Video Ad Campaigns To Attract Qualified Leads

Video and the rise of YouTube and Vimeo have changed the creative landscape for marketers across all industries. Engagement rates on video are through the roof. Use clips in your Facebook ad campaigns at the start of your sales funnel to draw in qualified clicks and enquires.

A simple one-minute tutorial or product demonstration can be a great way to explain your product’s key features and benefits, as well as build up an emotional response in the viewer. Concentrate on bringing great visuals, rather than sound. Many mobile browsers will have their phone set to ‘silent’ as they scroll through their feeds on-the-go.

Once you have your campaign up and running, boost the post in your campaigns until your ad reaches over 1000 views.

Hot tip: 1000 views is the minimum count Facebook will allow for ad retargeting. Once you’ve garnered a big enough audience, you can retarget advertising to different segments. For instance, those who have watched more than 10 seconds of your video, or viewers who have watched the entire clip.

To set up video retargeting campaigns on Facebook, go to the ‘Audiences’ tab and create a new custom audience.

Select ‘Engagement on Facebook’ on your video advert and retarget ads to people who have watched more than 10 seconds of your post.

Use A Mix Of Customer Touch Points

Think about mobile, desktop, and tablet device usage when planning your sales funnels on Facebook advertising campaigns. Bear in mind that in all likelihood, your customer may first encounter your advertising in mobile format. Or they may interact with your content on a mix of devices, resulting in a purchasing decision made on a tablet or desktop device.

Facebook offers some different places on-site to advertise. This can be the news feed, right-hand column, Messenger, and so on. If you want to make the best of your marketing budgets, consider your ad placement carefully.

Hot tip: for retargeting ads to qualified leads, right-hand post placement can be a good option for those who are close to buying. Seeing your products on the right-hand side of their news feed subtly ‘jogs’ their memory. This placement is also thought to be less invasive.

By contrast, mobile news feed placement for ads have consistently tested at a higher conversion rate. It is vitally important to ensure that your mobile ads are kept fresh and up-to-date. If you do a lot of news feed advertising, keep a close eye on your post frequency scores. Ensure that you are not targeting the same segments with the same content multiple times. The last thing you want to do is annoy your audience with repetitive posts.

Create Segments WIth The Utmost Care and Attention

Your Facebook Insights tab is a fantastic training ground for audience research. Choose the correct number of qualified leads to target and you will be flying. The optimal number of people you want to aim for is between 100,000-300,000 people.

These should be the kinds of people who would be interested in what you’re selling. The Insights features are incredibly beneficial in offering you suggestions for targeting criteria. Say you’re selling sci-fi merchandise, you would open Audience Insights, check the location, gender, age group, etc. and type in a relevant interest – ‘Star Wars’, for example.

Large household names, like Star Wars, have monthly engagement figures in the tens of millions on Facebook. This criteria alone will make your ad targeting too broad. So, you need to ‘stack up’ interests until your graphs show you are targeting that magic 100-300K audience.

 audience demographics

The Insights tool will also bring up a list of related subjects you may wish to target. This can be very helpful in finding niche subjects. Open up a new tab and get researching if you don’t know your subject well.

Make a list of around 30 interests to target for each campaign. You can use this to guide your future advertising budgets more effectively.

Plan Your Budgets Carefully

Facebook will allow you to set a daily and lifetime budget for bidding on ads. Each of these options have pros and cons based on your investment and timeframe needs.

Daily budgets are useful if you wish to bid low (under $10) each day. Under this option, you can also choose to alter the times of day your posts run. You may, for instance, need to make sure they turn them off at night, as it’s unlikely you will make a sale if you are targeting just one-time zone.

Lifetime budget is where you set your total investment in the campaign, and you let Facebook, do its thing. It will optimize your advertising funds over your chosen timeframe. This may mean it spends $20 on the first day, $50 on the second day, etc. These ads may also run overnight.

However, with lifetime budgeting, you will be giving Facebook the time to work out the best method for you – without stopping and starting. Lifetime budget setting may be suitable for those testing an entirely new niche. Give both ways a go if you are new to this and test which methods work best.

Scaling Up Your Campaign To Invest Your Money Well

Not all Facebook ads are created equal. The most critical kind of ads, the ones that will bring in the most dollar for an e-commerce brand, will be Conversion Ads.

Take your Pixel code and, depending on the ecommerce host you use, add the system directly to your online storefront. This will sync your visitors’ store actions with your Facebook advertising, allowing you to assess the profitability of your campaign over time.

To maximize your potential for getting conversions through Facebook ads, scale up the levels of engagement until you find an ad method that brings in good money.

 create conversion pixel

For instance, if this a brand new Conversion Ad campaign, set the targeting for post engagements at first. Once you have started to see around 20 engagements with your ad per day, set the level one stage higher, budgeting for ‘Add to Cart’ actions.

Again, once you are starting to see data that shows you are getting around 20-30 ‘add to cart’ conversions a week, step up the campaign to the final level. By the third stage, Facebook is optimising your conversion ad campaign to bring in 20+ conversions per week. Play with your audience targeting segments if this is taking over two weeks to achieve.

You may also need to think about your products’ appeal, your ad copy, and how profitable your niche is overall if you see this method isn’t working well.

Facebook represents the largest and most diverse social media audience. So, it’s a good option for those looking to target their products to as many potential customers as possible.

Much of the reason why advertisers may give up on Facebook advertising is because they cannot get their targeting right. Facebook also changes its algorithms regularly. Keep looking at their new developments periodically and be prepared to change tact if you want to make sure you aren’t being ‘ad.

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