The internet user database is huge, and a major chunk of these internet users Hangout on Facebook daily. In fact, Facebook represents one of the largest user bases on the entire Internet.
Being a marketer or a business owner your biggest challenge lies in letting people know what you offer.
Your target audience or prospect customers hang out at different places on the web. The majority of your target audience is on Facebook, it being the largest social network in the world.
And this very fact makes social media marketing crucial for the success of any business. You can love it, you can hate it, but you cannot ignore it.
In this large sea of internet users, you have to know the way to bring your content, your product, your service in front of your prospect customers. The way to do it is “targeting”. Because, once you’ve found your target audience, it’s just a matter of finding a way to get your content in front of them.
By far the most effective & main way of doing it on Facebook are Facebook Ads.That is the reason companies have started to invest considerably on social media advertising.
Independent market research company, BIA/Kelsey has forecasted U.S. social advertising revenues to grow from $4.7 billion in 2012 to $11 billion in 2017.
Despite the success stories of many small & big businesses that have used or I must say harness the power of Facebook advertisement, some people still claim that it is not effective.
It is obvious that these people were not able to bank on the high potential of Facebook ads to garner eyeballs for their businesses.
The effectiveness of advertising depends on your knowledge, skill, & most importantly your experience.
The more you advertise on platforms like Facebook, the better you become. You learn what’s working or what’s not for you.
If you’ve been considering to start advertising on Facebook, but are held back by apprehensions of getting failed at Facebook. This post will help you overcome your fears & will guide you set up your first successful campaign.
Let’s walk step by step to understand what are the ingredients of a successful Facebook campaign.
No one like boring or usual stuff
The first & the most important thing which you have to understand as an advertiser is that your content has to stand out from the crowd.
When it comes to the typical news feed of a user, there are hundreds of things vying for a click. There is news feed of hundred of post from friends, & brands. On the left-hand side, there are links to messages, events, Groups, Pages, etc. On the right-hand side, there are Trending topics, Games & sponsored Ads.
Summing up all, there is a lot going on.
So in order to garner some eyeballs you ad need to stand out from all these competing elements.
Most important element of an ad which gathers attention.
So which part of the above Facebook ad caught your attention first. Undoubtedly the Image was the first thing which garners your eyeballs.
Most Facebook ads have typically 3 important elements.
- an image – which takes up 50+% of the ad space (which could be anything or everything. Except banned stuff)
- a description – above the image in a newsfeed ad, or to the right in a sidebar ad
- a headline – which let the user have a taste of your offering.
The most important element of an ad is an image, not only it takes up more than 50% of space, but it is the only thing which can make your ad stand out from the crowd.
Creating custom creatives quickly from stock photos might be the easiest & quickest way, but it is surely not the best way.
An Ad with a great image which can stand out from hundred of different things in some one’s Newsfeed vying for clicks is the most important key to the success of any Facebook advertising campaign. While an Ad with a usual or not so great image may hurt your campaign from the start.
This does not mean that your images have to be a work of art, but they should be created by a designer. If you are not a designer than hire one. Believe me, it’s worth it.
If you are investing a significant amount of money in your campaign then you should invest in images too.
What all a great image consists of?
Size matters:
Ads with squished or cut off pictures will look ugly.If you upload an image that doesn’t match the dimensions that Ad pictures are supposed to be, then the ad will have a cutoff picture that is sure to look bad.
So always follow the size guidelines given by Facebook.
Using an image of the correct size will give you a fighting for the success of your campaign.
Play with colours, but with caution.
Colours and contrast are the most important way of attracting attention.
Use colours which can make your ad stand out from the crowd. Clever use of contrast can help you gather some extra attention too.
You can take help of basic colour wheel shown above.
Since Facebook is basically blue & white it is a good idea to have orange in your Ad image.
But there is an exception too, maybe some of your competitors already know about the optimal use of colours & contrast.
You could end up having a similar color scheme to a competing ad, which will reduce your ad’s effectiveness.
Include a message in your image, but ..
Although the main purpose of an image is to attract attention ,but it can even contribute to your message.
When you have a really exciting offer, try to mention it in the picture since the user will see that text before deciding to read your description or not.
But be aware that Facebook has a rule regarding the text in an image. The text in an image cannot exceed 20% of image space.
Include things in your image to get shared:
People are more likely to share images which have something cute in them like kids or pets. So if you can squeeze something cute in your Ad image, then just do it. People like funny & unexpected things, try to make your images shareable by incorporating these things.
Use custom Illustrations instead of Stock Images
Getting the custom illustrations done instead of using stock images is one thing which can help you stand out from the crowd and get the much-wanted attention. So try to create something unique & unexpected.
Writing an attention grabber description
At this point, there is no denying of the importance of Image in an Ad. It sure is the first thing which attracts the viewer, but to make your message clear to the viewer you have to craft an intriguing description.It is where you have to write your bulk message. It’s difficult to communicate a message in a picture, which is why your description is so important.
Your Description should be interesting enough for the user to click to your content or offer.
Avoid writing long, boring descriptions. Just make clear the biggest benefit of clicking through your Ad.
How to use targeting to filter all those users for whom you do not matter, neither they matter to you.
Targeting and I must say correct targeting is very crucial for the success of any campaign. There is no sense in showing an Ad of nonveg restaurant to a vegetarian foodie. You need to specify the type of people you want to show your ads to Facebook advertising is all about “audiences” now. Facebook takes care of the rest.
There are basically 3 ways of creating your audience
- Creating A Custom Audience
- Creating Lookalike Audience
- Targeting By Interest
Creating Custom Audience:
Reach people who have a relationship with your business, whether they are existing customers or people who have interacted with your business on Facebook or other platforms.
- Creating Custom Audience from customer list: You can use your own file to upload one or more kinds of customer information or import email addresses directly from MailChimp. This option allows you to upload the email addresses of your subscribers and customers. Facebook matches these to users so that you can advertise to those subscribers and customers as a custom audience.
- Creating Custom Audience from Website Traffic:
Once you choose this option, a new screen with Java code will appear. The code will look something like this-
Copy and paste it in the head section of your website pages, just like you do while installing google analytics code.
Creating Lookalike Audience
Since creating custom audience yield list of a high-quality audience, which has the highest chance of clicking your Ad. But what happens when the traffic to your website isn’t that high or the email subscription list is very small. This can limit how far your Facebook ads can reach. It is here that the option of creating lookalike audience come into the scene.
Facebook analyzes the custom audience, which we have already made. They consider their demographics, the pages they like and the content they post (among other things).
Then, After looking at its billions of other users and finds other people who share similar traits to our custom audience list. This exercise creates a list of the highly targeted audience who are same as our customers or subscriber.
Targeting Audience By Interest
When you create an ad, there are a few different areas that allow you to pick options that filter down Facebook users (that fit into it).
It starts with demographic options, which consists of data like age, gender, location, etc.
The better that you know your target audience, the better you’ll be able to fill out the demographics that you want to target.So know your audience better to target better.
After entering the preferred location under demographic targeting have the option of targeting people based on the interest. This lets you be a bit more specific, by entering the pages of your competitors. Your audience will consist of people who have liked those competing pages.
You can also explore the options of “advanced combinations” from the drop-down menu:
Bids & Budget For Facebook Ads
Don’t Start with a very big budget, 4-5 $ per day is sufficient to start a campaign for a newbie. Start collecting the sample and examine the campaign, if after few thousand impressions the Ad do not start performing end it, it is not worth the try. You can try different targeting options, different ads with different images, description ,etc. Select the one which performs better and gradually increase budget over time.
You have different 3 different option while bidding.
- Cost per click (CPC)
- Cost per mille (CPM: Cost per 1,000 impressions)
- Optimized CPM
It is better to go with CPC bidding.
You can also optimize your campaign for an event.But be very careful while using this option. For Example, If you optimize for clicks, Facebook is going to show your ad to users who click on things the most. These are usually the lowest quality traffic (but not always), because they’re always ready to click on the next thing.
You will get a suggested bidding amount. If your brand is new to advertising start from the lower range of bidding. You can always increase your bid later.
Know your purpose
Never start an advertising campaign without a specific purpose.
Purpose can be anything like You may want to drive traffic to your website.
You may want to get more likes on your Facebook page.
Pick a goal that you think is important.
Know The Value Of Your Goal
If you’re trying to convert that traffic into email subscribers, you need to have a very good idea of what a subscriber is worth.
The same thing goes for a Facebook like; how much is one worth to you?
If you don’t know this, you’ll never know if your advertising has a positive ROI or not. Estimate this value as accurately as possible.
You want to be able to go into your Facebook reporting, see the “cost per action” (click or like) and instantly know if you’re profitable or not.
Amazing ROI from the first campaign is unlikely
Most Ads are losers, at least initially.
Your goal should be to get slightly profitable or even break even results because you can always improve your conversion rates by split testing those ads.
You simply duplicate an ad that you’ve created, keeping everything the same. Then, you change any one of the following parts and check the results.
- The image
- The description
- The heading
- Your targeting options
The biggest change in conversion will be noticed by a change in image, as we have already concluded that image is the most important part of an Ad.
The Moral Of The Story
Facebook advertising is one of the most powerful means of spreading your message to your targeted audience but if you are not smart enough you can lose money.
This blog post will surely help you to minimize mistakes & take care of things important for a success of any campaign.
Write to me with you experience of Facebook Ad campaigns, what all worked for you and what all didn’t work.