Five Secrets to Facebook Ad Success
Facebook Ads. People seem to either love them or hate them. They really REALLY work for some, and others feel their money went to waste. Could the difference be: do you know what you’re doing? Or maybe you’re too scared to give them a try in the first place? In this blog, I’m going to provide you with 5 tips specifically related to Facebook ads, and how I’ve had success with them. So, let’s go!
1. Choosing the Right Objective
Choosing the right Objective for your Facebook ads campaign is more than just, “do I want clicks to my website” or “do I want video views.” Did you know there are set options within each objective that are not within other objectives? Pay attention carefully and think about what you’re trying to do.
For example, if you run an Engagement campaign, you can’t choose to pay by click (but when you run a Traffic campaign, you can!). OR, if you want to set a frequency cap on how many times your ad is seen, did you know you can do that with the Reach Objective, but not with many of the others?
2. Custom Targeting
There’s a lot of talk about custom lists, look-a-like lists, re-targeting, and more in Facebook. YES, THESE ARE GREAT (and if you don’t know how to use them, contact me!). The fact of the matter is, though, if you don’t have a list of customers or a very active website/social presence, you may not be able to use them to the best of your advantage.
However, what you can do, is be sure to include or exclude some of the people that you already do know about. That’s right, you can include or exclude people who have already “Liked” your page. Say that most of your current Facebook audience is just family and friends. They are in your target market, but they already know about your business, and you don’t want to waste your ad money on them. Just “exclude” those who have Liked your page!
OR, conversely, say you really don’t care about expanding your Reach to new people, and you want to make sure your current audience sees your ad. Just be sure to “include” your page fans in your targeting!
3. Editing Placements
Sure, the easiest thing to do is to simply include all placements in your ad campaign. That means not only Facebook AND Instagram, but also all the “extra” Facebook placements you may not know about. However, are these all really suited to your goal?
For instance, do you have goods that make sense to appear in the Marketplace, or does your product/service not really relate to a Craigslist-like marketplace page? Also, what about Instagram? With all the hubbub about Instagram being more popular than Facebook (not disagreeing here…), should you include it in your ad campaign?
Well, think about what you’re trying to do. Knowing that Instagram is mobile-only, can you see your customer completing the desired action on mobile, or are you linking to a long online form that makes more sense on desktop (and therefore it also makes more sense to run on Facebook only)?
And how about that Audience Network? Yes, this is a network of sites off-Facebook where your ads can also appear. Facebook has been pretty tight-lipped about what these sites are, but they’ve recently released a list that you can download here. (Facebook has also stated that 32% of the top 500 free apps on Google Play in the US monetize with the Audience Network.)
4. Customizing Ads
With so many placement options across Facebook and Instagram, you’re now able to customize ads for each. So, if you want your Instagram ad to be slightly different than the image you’ve uploaded for Facebook (but you want to stay within the same campaign), you can customize it! That means making all sorts of content your own (ie, for video placements, you can make sure you choose the perfect cover/thumbnail photo for your video!).
Why not make each ad perfect for its own particular platform where it will be running?
5. Measuring Results
Facebook is a total BEAST when it comes to measuring the results of your ads. However, you need to take advantage of all that the platform offers so you know how to improve your future campaigns. Within the platform’s reporting, you can not only see impression and click metrics, but also engagement metrics such as Likes and comments.
Beyond this though, you can see what geographies are performing the best, which platforms are succeeding (Instagram vs. Facebook), which placements are doing better than others (News Feed vs. Instant Articles vs. Marketplace), and even which ages and genders are responding to your campaign.
Now, it’s your turn to try.
Of course, if it all sounds too overwhelming, or if you don’t have time to dig in, feel free to give me a call or send me an e-mail. Better yet, if you’re in the Greenville, SC area, let’s meet up – I’d love to help you out!
