Did your last Facebook Advertising Campaign earn a passing grade, or did your success sink with your marketing budget?
With the introduction of Facebook Advertising Campaigns nearly a decade ago came plenty of new challenges for digital marketers. This new advertising outlet meant new things to learn – and lots of marketing dollars to spend learning them.
Fast forward to today and marketers still don’t have it all figured out. Truth be told, Facebook can help you expand your business. However, there is no magic formula to make every Facebook Advertising Campaign for every company successful.
That’s because your business, like every other business, is unique. Your target audience, your products, and your company culture are unlike any other, and these things have a lot to do with your advertising’s success.
It isn’t magic, but these five tips for Facebook Advertising Campaigns can help every business put their dollars to better use. Try them for yourself and earn the success you deserve:
Take Advantage of Facebook’s Audience Insights
Before you begin any Facebook Advertising Campaigns, you need to know to whom you’re advertising. Facebook has done much of the hard work for you. Their audience insights can help you choose your target market based on the people who have Liked your business page.
Using this data can help you avoid risking time and valuable marketing dollars on the wrong people. As a result, you have a better idea who is most likely to convert after seeing your ad.
Facebook’s Audience Insights is free to use, so there’s no excuse not to take advantage.
Tailor Your Facebook Advertising Campaigns to Each Segment
There’s never a one-size-fits-all solution in advertising. Your ad will get much better results if you tailor your message to specific individuals.
After determining your target market based on Facebook’s Audience Insights, prepare individual marketing messages for each segment. Choose images that resonate with each group. Language, offer, and visuals should all be unique to the people you’re speaking to.
For example, a home goods store might create two separate ads for their bedding sale: one targeting newlyweds and one for college-bound students or parents of students. Each one promotes the same sale, but each appeals to different groups of buyers. This type of targeting can prove to be more effective than a generic ad for bedding, despite the fact that everyone needs bedding items at some point.
Take it a step further and test multiple designs within the same audience to see which one gives you the best results. This can help you further your insights into each group to help you hit your target more effectively in future campaigns.
Don’t Forget Your Call to Action
Once your intended audience sees your message, help them connect the dots to understand what to do next.
Should they click your ad to download a free coupon or ebook? Are you offering a free trial? Do they get a free gift with sign up?
You might think that your offer speaks for itself. True, stating “Our Hottest Selling Selling Product Takes 10 Years Off Your Appearance!” tells the viewer exactly what your product can do for them, but that might not be enough to move the conversion needle.
If you’re offering your product on a free trial or at a special price, let them know about it.
Be clear about what’s in it for them, and help them make the next move. Ads should be more than informative – they need to be actionable if you want to reap the benefits.
Leverage Landing Pages
You put a lot of work and funds into getting people to click on your ad. When they do, you don’t want to botch the results with a poor experience.
Directing your viewers to a landing page can ensure they know exactly what to do when they get there.
Many companies make the mistake of directing the viewer to their general website, where they can make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, create an account, or a myriad of other activities. When this happens, their original reason for clicking might become overshadowed by something else on your website.
Using a landing page helps to fuse the gap between interest and conversion by helping them make the right connections. They click the ad, they go to the landing page, and they automatically know what to do.
Measure the Correct Metrics
You’ll never know if your Facebook Advertising Campaigns are successful unless you have a way to measure them. But what should you measure to get the most realistic picture of your success?
There are dozens of metrics you can collect from each campaign, but not all of them are worthwhile.
Opt for Sales-Related Metrics
Start with the most obvious: sales. The number of sales and the resulting you revenue you receive directly from your ad campaign are your first indicators of success.
The number of clicks helps you determine how many people were interested enough in your offer to click on your ad. Dividing the number of sales by the number of clicks will give you your conversion rate.
For instance, if 100 people clicked on your ad and 30 people made a purchase afterward, your conversion rate would be 30%.
You’ll also want to pay attention to your total cost per conversion. You can calculate this by dividing the number of conversions by the amount you spent on your campaign.
Subtract your cost per conversion from how much revenue the campaign generated. This will give you your total net revenue. From there, you can subtract any other expenses to reveal your total net profit.
So what do you do with all these numbers?
You can compare them to previous campaigns to see how each one stacks up. If you find one campaign severely underperformed compared to previous campaigns, you may be better positioned to find the root cause.
For example, if you typically earn $20,000 with a particular offer, but notice your last campaign only netted $15,000, that doesn’t necessarily mean your campaign failed. You might find your cost of conversion was lower, which means it costs you less money to get those sales. Your total net profit might even look healthier as a result.
Vanity Metrics Matter, Too
Things like impressions, shares, and likes can give you an idea of viewership, but they aren’t indicative of your advertising prowess.
These vanity metrics don’t mean your ad is working. In fact, if you do get lots of engagement but suffer in real sales, there’s probably something very wrong.
This is why it’s important to compare likes, shares, and clicks with your total sales. You might be able to spot problems early and save yourself some resources.
Facebook’s built-in analytics and your website’s analytics can help you track these things automatically.
There may be additional insights you care about that you can collect. However, focusing on the above metrics are what will help you create better campaigns in the future.
Wrap Up
With a little practice, any business can become a Facebook Advertising Campaign pro.
For more great tips on how to run a better business in the digital world, check out our blog or contact us today!
