Crafting a Great Facebook Ad Campaign

Facebook is still the top dog for social media and is a great place for you to be advertising. They have very reasonable click through rates, and better demographics. You can create new audiences based on what your current audience likes. That’s known as a “look-alike” audience.

So today, I thought I’d give six quick tips for a healthy Facebook ad campaign.

#1 Include Images

Always include images with your ads. Studies show it strengthens your Facebook updates. We’re a very visual community. Using good images in your ads will increase the engagement with it.

#2 Use Contests and Giveaways

Contests and giveaways are wonderful for getting people to sign up for what you have, and Facebook ad campaigns are the best way of letting people know about it. Plus it’s helpful for market research.

#3 Tailor Your Facebook Ads

Have one big ad set for the campaign and multiple ads that are laser targeted to a specific audience.  Separate out the different age ranges as well as gender. Try different text and images.

#4 Provide Just Enough Information In Your Ads…But No More

Entice the viewer to click through. Make use of all the space that you have. But beware of clickbait headlines. You don’t want them to report your ad as spam. Plus, you want people genuinely curious about what you’re offering.  Try to get it down to the bare minimum.

#5 Respond to comments on your ad

You want your page to seem like it’s active. So if you’re boosting a post, you want it to look like a regular Facebook post so more people will get engaged.

#6 Regularly schedule content to your Facebook page.

That way there’s fresh stuff there when people click through to the page. You can still boost an older post if you know it’s got a great response.  But when people decide to go to your page, you’ll have a lot more information for them to hang out and review.

So there you have it. What’s your favorite tip?

Today we’re going to hammer out some quick tips on creating a successful Facebook ad campaign. Leave a comment about what’s worked for you and what hasn’t work. Did I miss a good tip?

Setting Up the Ad

Log into Facebook. If you haven’t signed up for Business Manager yet, you can click on the triangle in the upper right hand corner

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It then pops up a menu and you can choose Create Ads

Hopefully you’ve already chosen what to advertise. If not, start with driving traffic to your Facebook page and increase likes. This also allows you to build your tribe and get a better understanding of who they are and what they like.

When targeting your geographic region, keep an eye out for the size. You can use the meter. Start small and build it up when you have a successful Facebook ad campaign.

Always be sure you set a time limit and that you set a daily budget and an overall budget so there’s no surprises.

If you’re sending people to some place other then your Facebook page, make sure the URL that you put into the ad works.

General Ad Tips

Keep your copy short and well targeted. Is it consistent with where you’re sending them? Don’t be provocative to get clicks….that’s called “clickbait” and is being shut down by Facebook when they can find it.

Have different ads for your mobile customers then your desktop customers. It allows you to do better testing and find out what people respond to. For example, if you’re sending them to download a free report, ask yourself if mobile people would be willing to do that, or if they’d be more inclined if they were on their desktop.

Set up the retargeting pixel to allow Facebook to help you get your product, brand, or service in front of people better.  Retargeting is like if someone shows up on your site to look at something, then a pixel gets set. When that person goes back to Facebook, they will see ads for what they were looking at.

Always be testing your images, colors, words, fonts, etc. until you find what people engage with. And then remember to turn it off and try new ads so people don’t suffer from ad blindness. That’s where they just don’t see an ad anymore because they’ve seen it so often.

When you have a good audience, let Facebook help you by creating audiences that are like your current audience. That is to say, it looks at people who like your page and what other interests they have, and then it creates an audience of others who like those interests but don’t already like your page. It’s a great way of pulling in new customers to your sales funnel.

Monitor your ads and review their performance. Don’t start it up and just let it go. Keep an eye on how it’s working and turn off those that are underperforming.

I’ve got a few quick best practice tips for you today. Let me know what you’ve tried and how well it worked.

Track Your Performance

Too many marketers release an ad and then wait until it ends. Don’t be that person. Monitor your ad at least twice a day to see it’s performance, especially if you’re running a split test. Yiou may find that your ad runs better on certain days…so only schedule it for those days and save money. Plus, make sure you’re changing up the ad and continually testing new things. Consumers often get “ad fatigue” and if they see your ad too many times, they won’t “see” it anymore. So take it offline and then reintroduce it in five or six months when it will seem new again.

Clear Call to Action

If you’re sending people to a landing page, tell them exactly what to do next. Don’t give them too many options. Many internet marketers use what’s called a squeeze page. It’s where you can only sign up for the “bait piece.”  A bait piece is something people get like a special report or a webinar in exchange for their email address.

Understand Your ROI

Your return on investment is the basis of your marketing. You’re in the business to make money. However, you need to look at your whole sales cycle and understand how much your spending and how much you’re receiving for the average life of the customer. I’ve mentioned before that a lot of successful marketers intend to get a zero sum out of their Facebook ads that drive people to sign up for a newsletter because they know that they will get money out of the customer in the future as they buy their products or recommended products.

So what should you track?

1. Total number of impressions
2. Total cost of your Facebook ads
3. Click rate or response rate
4. Conversion rate
5. Average profit per sale

Keep Your Landing Page on Facebook

Believe it or not, Facebook is friendlier to those marketers who keep people on Facebook. So drive traffic to your FAcebook page and regularly post content. You can also post links to your blog posts and encourage people to read more there.  You can post videos to increase your engagement. An added bonus is that you’ll pick up more likes on your Facebook page.

While Facebook ads are certainly very affordable, it’s a good idea to put a threshold in your account so you don’t get a big unhappy surprise at the end of the billing cycle. It’s really easy to do and gives you peace of mind.

A threshold is the maximum amount your account will accrue during the billing cycle. I have mine set to $500.

You will find this in the Billing section of your Business account and can make the updates there.

Just your quick tip for today. If you have any questions, please contact me or leave me a comment. Thanks!

Do you fall down the common rathole of spending hours and hours on the ad design and five minutes on the targeting? Most people do and then wonder why they’re not getting an effective return on their investment. I’d suggest you should be spending hours on targeting and fifteen to thirty minutes on making five ads to test.

The more you can niche down, the hungrier the audience will be for your product or service, within reason.

First, use your Page Insights. Specifically People. You should know who is Liking your page. You may think your ideal customer is a young mom wanting to work at home part time so she can take care of her baby, but what if you find out it’s the young father? Wouldn’t that affect your images and language of the ad?

Second, use likes of page likes. Bear with me for a second. It may sound a little confusing at first, but it’s really a great way of having Facebook tell you what your viewers are interested in.

You first want to build up things that your page likes. This allows you to build up your custom audience and build up look-alike audiences. On the left column of your page, click on See Pages Feed:

Then once you’re in there, click on Like Other Pages. I recommend having another window up with Facebook and search on keywords. Then you can like those pages.

Then you can start to look for other pages that your audience Likes. You may be able to find keywords or niches you hadn’t thought of.

Some quick tips for your ads. Keep it simple and test one thing. For example, test text color or image or the headline. Don’t test everything at once because you then won’t know which is working. Create a lot of tests and run a few at a time.

A/B Split Testing is where you compare two things in one test. For example, testing the image of a woman’s face versus testing the image of a man’s face. Then when you get a clear winner, you pick that one and start another change like a word in the headline. You run the ad for a few days to see who is getting the most clicks and conversions.

And don’t delete your ads. Create new ones so Facebook will retain the analytics.

I’ll go into more detail in each of these in future posts. What else would you like to read about?