With two billion monthly users, Facebook is the single most popular social media platform in the world. It’s reach is enormous. The amount of data it collects on users is mind-blowing. And you can use it all to your advantage when advertising your brand. Here are eight essential elements of effective Facebook advertising campaigns:
Clear & Achievable Goals
As your business grows and social media constantly evolves, it can be difficult to clarify exactly what you want to achieve with each campaign you run.
But whether it’s brand awareness, more followers or higher levels of engagement, it’s best to always identify the exact goals you want to reach.
This way, when you do reach a particular goal, you can check it off your list and move confidently on to the next one. By taking it one goal at a time, you’re able to capitalize on the progress you’ve already made and avoid spinning your wheels.
Testing & Tracking
Be sure you identify the metrics you need to track in order to assess the performance of your campaigns. How else would you know what’s working and what’s not, and make changes accordingly?
No matter how well a campaign may have performed, there’s always room for improvement. Even if you set a record for the most leads in a single month while running a particular ad, it’s likely that your data would still reveal at least one area of your advertising that requires some attention.
If you’re unable to go back and evaluate your performance, you can’t learn from your own mistakes. Plus, you can’t repeat results from a successful campaign if you don’t know how you got there in the first place.
With social media advertising, you’re never 100 percent certain about what you’re going to get out of it. However, there is one thing for sure that you can always expect to receive from the money you spend: the data you need to continuously improve your campaigns.
Focus on Your Unique Audience
Facebook lets you target users based on demographics, interests, behaviors and even contacts—with plenty of options to choose from. This means you don’t have to carpet bomb all of Facebook to see results.
With advanced targeting, there’s no need to spray and pray. Instead, you only select targeting options that align with your audience. This should give you confidence knowing that you’re putting your ad spend where it matters most.
Since Facebook does most of the legwork for you by segmenting users, the success of your campaigns will rely heavily upon how well you understand your audience. Once you know them inside and out, Facebook advertising is as easy as plug and play.
High-Quality Images
What would you think of a brand that displayed a poor-quality ad in your newsfeed? The graphic design of your ads should never be taken lightly. It can make all the difference between being viewed as an amateur or as an authority. Depending on the images you choose, your credibility is on the line.
According to Buzzsumo, Facebook posts with high-quality images lead to 2.3 times more engagement. That said, the extra time and effort you put into designing your ads is likely to pay off in the end through engagement.
While choosing images for your ads, it’s important to see the world around you through your audience’s perspective. Study their interests and engagement patterns—because the more you know about how they think, the better you can tailor your ads to their unique personalities.
Powerful Headlines
What would stop users from scrolling through their newsfeeds to check out your ads? That’s a question you need to answer before crafting each of your headlines.
The key is to write quick, catchy lines that appeal to the short attention spans of tech-savvy consumers. Because if it’s is too weak or generic, they’ll simply scroll right past it without giving it a second thought.
Start by discovering an angle that describes to prospects how your services offer a solution to a particular problem they face. Show them how you can make their lives easier. And be sure to condense everything you want to say down the shortest amount of words possible—you can’t put any space to waste.
Calls-to-Action
What actions do you want users to take once they land on your site? Whether it’s to make a purchase, submit a contact form, schedule an appointment or sign up for a webinar, you must tell users what you want them to do—or they simply won’t do it.
The most effective social ads tend to include calls-to-action that create a sense of urgency or make users feel like they’d be missing out if they didn’t take the next step. People usually click an ad out of curiosity when they feel like it can benefit them in some way.
Without strong CTAs, the graphic design of your ads really doesn’t matter. Like a signpost telling users where to go, CTAs guide users down your sales funnel. Consumers want direction. So if you aren’t currently giving it to them, it might be time to pull back the troops and regroup.
Compelling Landing Page
Designing an effective ad is just the start of your advertising journey. Once a user clicks your ad, they should be sent to a landing page designed around the specific goals of your campaign.
From the time a user engages with your ad to the time they land on a web page, it’s crucial to provide a seamless user experience every step of the way. This means an ad must align with the design and content on the landing page it leads to. Any type of deviation will only work against you.
As you create personalized ad campaigns to attract your target audience, it’s important to keep in mind the value of continuity. You want to make it as easy as possible for users to convert. In a world of instant gratification, you want to avoid derailing a user’s interest with a busy landing page or irrelevant content.
When you give prospects what they want when they want it, you’ll get what you want, as well—which we all know is more conversions.
Mobile Friendly
With 57 percent of all web traffic coming from smartphones and tablets, your ads need be optimized for mobile devices. Whether it’s size of the image or the length of the copy in your post, always double-check to see how it would look on mobile before launching a campaign.
Although optimizing for mobile is critical for all advertising channels, it’s especially important for Facebook since 85 percent of smartphone owners use the Facebook app.
Although optimizing for mobile should be a no-brainer for advertisers at this point, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded that mobile users are the ones that your ads will be displayed to most.
The Last Word
In 2017, Hanapin Marketing found that 71 percent of PPC teams plan on increasing their Facebook advertising budgets over the next year. Clearly, businesses are seeing results from running ads on this platform. However, if you don’t put in the work necessary to do it right, it won’t be easy growing your brand.
By considering these eight elements of a successful Facebook ad campaign, you will be able to:
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- Limit your ad spend and increase ROI
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- Offer solutions and quick customer service straight from your page
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- Track, monitor and improve your campaign performance
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- Send more users to your site to explore your products and services
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- Encourage users to learn about and connect with your business
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- Place your offers in front of the right people
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- Increase your sales by generating high-quality leads
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- Connect with an enormous online community
- Build trust and form long-lasting relationships
Offering an incredible reach and hundreds of targeting strategies, there’s no reason for a business to overlook this advertising avenue. If you’d like to learn more about Facebook advertising and how to integrate it into your digital marketing campaign, contact us today to speak with a certified PPC manager.