An ad 3PRIME ran for 26 days of January 2020 for Spark Modern Fires that had strong results.
With 69% of adults in the US alone using Facebook, it’s no wonder why advertisements on the platform have become increasingly popular. In fact, Facebook is the most popular advertisement channel for both B2B and B2C companies (1). The wide expansion of this platform for advertising means that it is essential to create campaigns and ads that are optimized towards your business goals and are going to stand out to your audience.
If you are looking for help to optimize your Facebook ads contact 3PRIME!
- Picking a Metric that is Derivative of Business Goals
Understanding your desired goal is essential to beginning any successful campaign, this is where you will start when creating a successful Facebook ad. There are three main categories for goals: awareness, consideration, and conversion. The awareness category is focused on how many people you can get your ad in front of. Consideration is less about the quantity of people you get in front of and more about getting your ad in front of people who are already interested in learning more about your company. The most specified goal category is conversion and this is getting in front of people who know about your company and getting them interested in buying products or services.
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Once you have completed this first step and have a clear understanding of what the intended outcome is, you will turn your attention to getting in front of the audience that is most likely to convert on your goal.
- Creating an Audience to Transcend your Goals
The next step of creating an epic Facebook ad is to create an audience that will help you achieve the goals that you have previously laid out. You have the option to create a custom audience or a lookalike audience.
When creating a custom audience you can use sources from Facebook (Events, your FB page, Instagram business profile) or you can use other sources (website, a customer list, offline activity, app activity). This gives you an opportunity to pick and choose from a variety of different resources in order to create an audience that is tailored towards your company’s goal.
Lookalike audiences allow you to expand on your custom audiences and connect with other individuals that are similar to those in your custom audience. Lookalike audiences are useful for when your custom audience has a solid base, but needs to have a higher influx of people in order to keep the audience from being too ‘narrow.’ Facebook provides you with a tool called “Audience Definition” that will indicate to you whether your audience is ‘too broad’ or ‘too narrow.’ Understanding how to create an effective target audience for your ad campaigns is essential in converting on your goal.
- Choosing Placements that Accurately Target your Audience
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The different placement options for Facebook ads (2).
Choosing the best places to display your ad will contribute to your Facebook ad’s success. Knowing the demographic of your target audience is crucial for deciding where the best placements for your ads are. Factors like age or gender may make your ad better suited for one platform as opposed to another based on what demographics frequent the platform more frequently. Assessing this information will help you determine the most successful placement for your ad campaign.
You also have the option to choose ‘Automatic Placements’ where the Facebook algorithm decides for you the optimal placement for your ad. Automatic placements are beneficial because they do not limit the scope of who will see your ad. It also provides the opportunity to display your ad in a multitude of different ways that Facebook has determined would be most effective in reaching your target audience. Allowing Facebook to automatically place your ad is a great option if you do not have a clear sense of your best placement option.
- A Bidding Strategy to Increase Your Conversions
Money is important to your company, and you want to make sure that you are putting it to good use. This is why picking a proper bidding strategy is essential for ensuring that your money is being used in the most efficient way and more importantly in the way you want/need it to be used.
With Facebook ads you have the ability to choose from four different bidding strategies: lowest cost, cost cap, bid cap, and target cost. Of these options there is only one that provides ‘No Cost Control’ and that is the lowest cost. This option is focused on getting the most results for the budget that you have in place. The other three options provide you with more ‘Cost Control.’ Cost cap allows you to get the most results while staying under your chosen cost per action. Bid cap allows you to reach your most results without exceeding your bid cap, which is different than your cost cap. Lastly, there is the target cost option which will seek only results that are close in cost to the goals that you set (2). Determining which one of these is best suited for your campaign will help to ensure that you are spending your money effectively and the way that works best for your company.
- Visually Appealing & Engaging Creatives
When your audience is scrolling through their feed, the first thing that will draw them to your ad is how it looks. This is why having creative that is visually appealing and engaging is essential in running a successful Facebook ad.
Picking the format for your creative is the first step in achieving this goal. The format options that you have are: images, carousel, collection, instant experience, video & slideshow, catalogs and stories. Picking the format that suits what creatives you are capable of making is important. Video and carousel ads tend to be more engaging for audiences and convert better for ads, so those are good options for your campaign.
For the creative, it is important to not include a lot of text directly on your visuals. Those visuals with too much text are given ‘reduced delivery’ by the platform and will not be shown to as many people as you may want. Additionally, you want your visuals to be clear, the recommended image size is 1200×628 (3). The creative should also correlate with the product/service you are highlighting. Keeping these ideas in mind will help you create a visual that will capture your audience’s attention and help you convert on your goals.
- Hooking the Audience with your Copy
While your visual creative will be what your audience sees first, effective copy will be what engages them to learn more about your product or service. When writing copy for your ad, it is important to keep your brand voice in mind. You want to make sure that you are staying true to your brand image, and that will help you hook in the people who are already familiar with your brand.
While making sure that your brand voice is clear in your ad copy, you also want to keep in mind the length of your copy. It is best practice to try to keep the length of your ad copy short and to the point. Keeping the copy short and simple is most effective as many users will not stop and click on the ‘see more’ tab to drop down additional text.
You should write your ad copy with your call to action in mind. Focusing on the desired goal is important in writing copy that will help lead users to that desired goal. Choosing an effective call to action button and headline to go with it is essential. You need to show through your copy why the user should spend their time learning more about what you want them to.
- Monitoring Campaigns to Assure Success
Now that you have your ad scheduled and it is running properly, it is essential to keep an eye on the metrics of it in order to ensure a successful Facebook ad. You have the ability to create custom reports from your Business Manager that will allow you to see the metrics that are most important to you.
One of the most important metrics that you will want to be monitoring is your CPR (cost per result). This will show you how much money you are spending per conversion for whatever your overall goal is. Other important metrics to look at are impressions, results and frequency. The numbers you are looking for here may depend on your goal. If your goal is an awareness goal you would like these numbers to be higher than if you are looking for a conversions goal. This is because with awareness you want to get in front of as many people as possible but with conversion goals you want to make sure you are getting in front of the people who are most likely to convert.
There are a long list of metrics that you may look to in order to ensure a successful Facebook ad. Regardless of what metrics are most important to your campaign, it is essential that you are checking them regularly in order to adjust if you are not getting optimal results.
Are You Ready to Run Your Own Successful Facebook Ad?
Running a successful Facebook ad can be difficult. There are a lot of steps that go into it and going through each step meticulously is essential.
You need to make sure that you know your end goal from the start, so that the rest of the decisions for your campaign can reflect that. Stop people from scrolling with your engaging creatives and copy and make sure that you are monitoring your ads to ensure success!
If you find yourself having difficulties finding success in your Facebook ads or just don’t have the time, contact a marketing company in order to get the job done for you!
Sources:
1) https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/facebook-advertising-statistics/