Facebook advertising leverages the benefits of social media and the power of advanced targeting to expand your reach, obtain leads, and gain more customers. It uses the same pay-per-click model as paid search ads, with the cost depending upon the reach and engagement the ad receives. Follow these 10 tips to make Facebook advertising work for your business objectives.
Related: Examples of Facebook Ads
Facebook Advertising Tips
1. Use Landing Pages
Using landing pages is one of the Facebook advertising tips that will help you to increase conversions from your ads. If the link in your Facebook ad goes to your business website’s homepage or a product page, users might get confused on what to do next and might not take action.
However, if your link takes them to a good landing page, designed around the action you want the user to take, they are much more likely to follow through and convert.
2. Take Advantage of Targeting
The Facebook advertising platform offers some of the best targeting for online ads, so the next Facebook advertising tip is to take advantage of targeting! Facebook ad targeting allows you to filter who sees your ad based on interests, gender, profession, geographic location, marital status, age, and more. You can also create lookalike audiences of people similar to those who are already interested in your business. When you know who you are speaking to, you can cater your copy to appeal to and resonate with that demographic.
Related: Facebook Marketing for Business Owners
3. Use Audience Insights
The Facebook ad platform enables targeting by requiring you to choose from various filtering options. But how do you know what to choose? Facebook Audience Insights is a tool that allows you to identify the characteristics that make up the people most likely to be interested in your business, and to create an audience of those types of people.
While Google Analytics can be used to collect insights on your existing audience and website visitors, Facebook Audience Insights can help you find not-yet-existing audiences, and people connected to your business through channels other than your website.
With this tool, you can look at everyone on Facebook, people connected to your business page, or a custom audience that you created from something like an email list. It then gathers data from Facebook and third party sources to provide insights on that group of people—from demographics, to lifestyles and interest, to purchasing behavior and household information.
4. Create Unique Ads For Each Audience
Targeting a highly specific audience does not mean reaching less people. Rather than shrinking your audience, you are segmenting it into smaller groups that have different needs and interests. As a result, this next Facebook advertising tip is to create different ads for each audience. Even if you are advertising the same product or service to each of your audiences, the most effective language and design to use will vary for each audience.
5. Use Compelling Images
Compelling ad copy should only be one part of the formula for your Facebook ads. While content is best at conveying the message, images are best at grabbing attention. Using high-quality professional photos for your Facebook ad images can get them to stand out in users’ news feeds and make a greater impact.
Another way to make your images compelling is to use people in them that are similar to your target audience, to make the ad more relatable to them.
6. Be Consistent
Make sure the look and feel of your Facebook advertisements is consistent with your brand. Use the same colors, tone, and language that you use in other marketing and advertising material. Everything you put in front of the public represents your brand, so make sure your Facebook ads are an accurate reflection of it.
Consistency is also a best practice for landing pages. Make sure your landing page displays the same look and language of your Facebook ad. The more your landing page meets your users’ expectations, the more relevant the ad will be.
7. Be Specific with Location
If you are targeting a particular location, recognize that people can be in that location for a number of different reasons. The people who are in a particular city could be there because they live there, commute in for work, are there on a business trip, are vacationing there, or spending a night on the town. People in each of these circumstances all have different wants, needs, and preferences. A person visiting Boston is not likely to be interested in plumbing services in Boston, and a person who works in Boston may not be interested in a place to have a family dinner there.
8. Schedule your Ads
Facebook itself has patterns of high and low activity, and specific audiences have their own patterns as well. Think about who you are targeting, then think about not only when they are most likely to be in need of your product or service, but also when they are most likely to be on Facebook. Then schedule your ads to be displayed at those times.
9. Use Reporting
Reporting through the Facebook Ads Manager allows you to look at metrics that reveal how well your ads are performing, in relation to both your target audiences and your business goals. The metrics are updated in real time, and you are able to customize which metrics you see, which date range they cover, and how they are displayed.
Reporting can help you to gain information such as which placement (desktop versus mobile) works best, which groups are converting, and which regions are most interested in your business. This is one of the most important Facebook advertising tips that will allow you to improve your campaigns both immediately and over time.
10. Test!
With such accurate and up to date reporting, our next (and last) Facebook advertising tip is to test. The Facebook ads platform allows you to easily duplicate ads and make slight tweaks. While reporting allows you to see what’s working and what’s not, testing allows you to see what works best. Testing is an essential tool for campaign success. Test the demographics of the audience you are targeting, the type of ad copy or images you use, and more!
It will take some time to get the hang of Facebook advertising. These ten tips should provide some guidance as you learn what works best for your business.
