March 19, 2018 – By Aaron Hockel
Do you know why Facebook is such an important marketing tool?
For starters, it has 1.4 billion daily active users across the globe. That means you have an incredibly large audience to tap into.Marketers recognize the opportunity with Facebook. So much so that 61% of marketers plan to increase their Facebook spend.The caveat about this huge global audience is that bigger is not always better in advertising. However, that should not dissuade you from advertising on Facebook.
Posting ads on Facebook is also fairly intuitive thanks to their ads platform. You can easily target the customers you want based on demographics, interests, actions, and locations. Keep reading to learn more about Facebook advertising and how you can implement it for your business.
Before you can start posting ads on Facebook, you need to have a thorough understanding of who your target audience is. And before you can do that, you need to understand what your campaign objective is.
When you first log onto Facebook’s ad manager, it will prompt you to select your campaign objectives.
Facebook’s campaign objectives fall into three buckets to correspond with the sales funnel: awareness, consideration, and conversion.
Thinking about your campaign’s objective throughout the ad creation process is crucial. It will help you nail down your targeting and ad copy.
When you sell a product or service, you have to have a firm grasp of who your target customers are and what their problems are. That information helps you craft better value propositions and sales messages.
Luckily, a lot of those same characteristics can cross over to Facebook.
One of the first things you’ll notice about Facebook’s targeting system is that it can get really specific. If you’re new to Facebook advertising, try not to get overwhelmed by how granular the targeting can get.
You have a few options when targeting people on Facebook: connections, custom, and lookalike.
Connections targeting gives you access to people who have liked your Facebook page. You can turn this feature on and off.
Custom audiences let you import contacts, web traffic, and engagement lists. These audiences either know what your business does or have interacted with it at some point.
If you’ve been using Facebook ads for a while, lookalike audiences are a great option. They allow you to create new audiences that are similar to your already-established ones.
There are nearly a dozen types of ads you can choose to post on Facebook. Each serves a different purpose based on who your audience is and where they are in the sales funnel.
Basic Facebook ads might include a photo or a video with some text underneath. When creating these ads, you want to ensure both your image (or video) and ad copy are attention-grabbing.
There are also lead generation ads which can help you collect lead information through call-to-action buttons on the ads. They’re popular for businesses that offer quotes for big-ticket products or services.
Once you’ve established your campaign purpose, audience, and type of ad you’ll use, you can set your budget and start posting ads on Facebook. Perhaps the best thing about Facebook’s ad platform is it tracks tons of information about your campaigns that you can use to enhance your Facebook marketing efforts.
For more help on Facebook advertising, get in touch with us.
Aaron Hockel is a Partner and the VP of Digital Marketing at AltaVista Strategic Partners. A University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) alumnus, Aaron expertly crafts digital marketing strategies that drive success for clients, leveraging his deep industry knowledge and innovative approach.