Let’s start by asking the question on everyone’s mind – why is Facebook important to my business?
Ask yourself this, do you use Facebook personally? Do you use Facebook daily? The majority of you will have answered yes to both of those questions and that’s why. You are someone’s audience, and if you’re on there then you must assume that your own audience is too, and so is your competition.
Social Media is a growing source for information regarding new and upcoming brands, it has increasing influence on customers and is home to a new generation of advertising. Perfect for businesses whose ultimate aim is to interact and engage with their consumer. So how can you use Facebook to your advantage and is it really worth investing into online advertising?
Our answer is yes, if you’re willing to spend money on paper flyers and billboards, then why wouldn’t you want to target people closer to home? But there are a few things you need to know in order to ensure a strong return on investment.
‘Lazy Boost Equals Lazy Results’
This is our vital advice when it comes to Facebook advertising. Don’t use the boost button! This is a quick way for Facebook to take control, start placing your ad in less desirable locations, and it’s simply an ineffective waste of your money.
Instead, head over to the top right-hand corner of Facebook and, using the downwards arrow, you can choose to manage or create an advert. Creating your advert this way gives you complete control. Here are a few tips of which options would be most effective for your business:
- Initially, page likes are what you’re aiming for. This allows your page to grow and later encourages organic likes to start appearing, as you look like a brand that’s worth following. However, if you already have a large consumer base then it’s important to aim for post engagement, as it’s common for page likes to go dormant. This means that you may have 1,000 likes on your page but only 2 likes on your post, as the majority of your followers are no longer active. Engagement is much more effective for promoting your business/product.
- Use lifetime budget rather than daily budget. By providing a daily budget this means you will be charged daily for an advert to go out continuously until you stop it, raking up a giant bill if you forget about it. Set a lifetime budget and place your ad in a more concentrated time frame, this will be most effective in terms of targeting multiple people at once, getting them talking about it, and raising awareness for your business.
Understand the Facebook Algorithm
Understanding how Facebook prioritises your posts amongst the posts of others, how quickly your posts start to reach your audience, and how your business ranks in the great scheme of things is the first step to mastering Facebook Ads.
Generally, Facebook prioritises people over pages, so you need to keep this in mind when creating your ad. If it is shareable content then your engagement will go up and will increase your reach. Also, be aware of your demographic and post at a time that is niche to your own consumers, this will avoid the most popular times and make sure that your post is seen specifically by your customers.
It’s better to post 15-30 minutes before your peak time, this allows the algorithm to kick in and ensures that it will be up front and centre by the time your audience comes online.
Take Advantage of Facebook Audience Insights
Facebook audience insights allows you to have a look directly into who’s interested in your business, gender-wise, age-wise and even relationship status-wise. You can see what time these people are active and which other pages they like. Enabling you to see and examine your competition’s pages, highlighting which of their posts are successful and which aren’t, and then replicate the most successful ones for yourself. (You didn’t hear that from me.) Ultimately, this means you can create ads that are specifically designed to engage your audience, attracting people who have a genuine interest in what you’re selling.
Compatible Content
The most crucial element to Facebook advertising would be the content you post, designing it so it gets the most reach and engagement. There are a few tricks that will boost your ad’s content to the next level:
- Avoid using links in every post. Understandably we are businesses and we want to send people to our product/website but Facebook doesn’t like it. Facebook wants to keep people on their own site so links aren’t fully supported. Use a variety of different content styles in between using links, make the most of the online polls and Facebook Live options to really keep people interested in your business.
- Videos & Images are more engaging to your audience, so Facebook prioritises these above anything else, as long as they are posted directly onto Facebook and won’t take people to a separate video streaming service outside of the social network platform. A quick tip for getting around this would be to post a 30 second trailer clip for your video and then putting a link in the comments that will take your audience to the full video.
These are just a few of the things that will really enhance the overall effectiveness of your Ads.
Pause before you hit post and ask yourself if you’ve thought about the algorithm, audience insights and compatibility of your content. Do this and you should be posting an ad that really works for your demographic.
If you want to learn more on this subject, and trust me there’s so much more to learn, then don’t hesitate to contact our Chief Social Media Trainer & Director, Jo Booth at jo@smms.guru.
