Many try and fail at Facebook ads as it is never a one trick pony, it needs to be tested and tested. From the ad copy to the target audiences, you need to go though a number of ads to test which perform best. There are ways to optimise the chances of the ads working from the outset. It can get expensive if lots of ads produce no results – really should not be happening – so check these points when preparing your ads for advertising On Facebook.
1. Use A Hybrid Advertising On Facebook Strategy
We live in a time where audiences use multiple devices to spend time online. Customer journeys might start while users are on their desktop researching a new product and end on a mobile device like a tablet or cell phone when they decide to buy.
That’s why advertising On Facebook can’t focus on one type of platform. Even though data shows that more people spend time on their mobile devices than ever before, desktop usage is still very high — so you need to optimize ads for both desktop and mobile in your upcoming ads to maximize your reach.
Focusing on reaching customers through many platforms can raise your customer awareness.According to the famous copywriter, Eugene Schwartz, there are five levels of customer awareness:
- Unaware – your audience is completely unaware of your product and brand and are not looking for a solution because they haven’t identified that they even have a problem yet.
- Problem Aware – your audience is aware that they have a problem and are beginning the search for a solution.
- Solution Aware – your audience has found a solution but not your product.
- Product Aware – your audience has found your product, and they understand how it works to solve their problem.
- Most Aware – your audience has closed the loop — they’ve found a solution to their problem and believe your product is the best one to get the job done.
Each level of awareness indicates a person’s understanding of your product and how it serves to help fix a problem. An omnichannel strategy that incorporates desktop and mobile outreach strategies acts as a guide for customers using each platform based on their level of awareness.
Here we see each of the stages — note how mobile and desktop are incorporated into the strategy. Customers typically start their customer journey on one device and end it using another, which means your ads should be specific to each stage of awareness.
For example, mobile ads should highlight the problem people have and the solutions that are available. By the time people get to most aware, your desktop ads should focus on validating why your product is the best option available.
2. Create A Strong Pay-Per-Click Strategy To Increase Revenue And Site Visits
With Facebook ads, you pay every time someone clicks on your ads — pay-per-click (PPC). A strong Facebook advertising strategy takes this idea and gets more people to click on ads. The more clicks your ad gets, the better your chances of funneling people to your site are, and therefore the higher your revenue potential from that ad.
A strong Facebook advertising strategy uses more than one PPC strategy so that even if one underperforms, there’s another one in place to compensate.
One example of a strong PPC strategy is A/B testing. When you create your ad, use Facebook’s split testing feature to test ad visuals. Visuals are a powerful communication tool. 75%-90% of ad performance can be attributed to visuals.
To measure the performance of your visuals, keep the ad copy the same in both versions swapping only the images. Whichever ad performs the best – gets the most click-throughs and purchases – that’s the one to run with. Also, test variations of the “winning” ad to see if things like image placement or graphics drive up clicks even more.
3. Run A Competitive Analysis
Once you have a good understanding of the types of ads your audience respond to, it’s time to branch out. Run competitive analysis to understand the preferences of your competitors’ customers. Use this as an opportunity to figure out what your competitors’ audiences respond to and customize your ads to stand out.
The resulting data will help you identify opportunities to meet specific customer needs. Your ads should highlight the solution you offer and why it’s the best one for customers.
Whole Foods is a popular grocery store chain, but until recently, their prices were beyond what average shoppers felt comfortable paying. Green Chef’s competitive analysis revealed that while Whole Foods customers enjoyed the product selection and freshness, they were less thrilled about the price. This was Green Chef’s response:
The ad called out Whole Foods and put a spotlight on the premium organic ingredients Green Chef offered and the convenience of having them delivered to customers at home. Free is mentioned twice and capitalized. This effectively draws the audience’s attention to the savings they’ll receive with Green Chef.
For your ad, based on the results of your analysis, call out the problem your audience is trying to solve and one-up the current solution with your product. Green Chef confirmed Whole Foods as the brand of choice for the audience but then took it a step further by explaining that Green Chef customers get the same benefits and get products delivered to them, including four free meals when customers order two.
4. Incorporate Facebook Messenger ads
Since Facebook introduced Messenger, the platform has grown to one of the most powerful ways to reach and interact with audiences. Add to that the fact that customers expect instant answers to their questions — and Facebook Messenger offers customers a direct link to you — and you have an open channel to offer really targeted ads.
The main difference between this type of ad and other ad types is the call-to-action. Instead of guiding customers to a Facebook page or website landing page, Facebook Messenger ads invite customers to start a conversation.
You can set up pre-programmed responses based on popular questions or comments customers you receive. This way your ad works to engage customers and offers them the information they need quickly. Consider this, over 2 billion messages are sent between Facebook Messenger users and businesses every month! With this much communication, it’s no wonder customers expect a quick response.
5. Find The Right Frequency Balance
Nothing’s worse for a customer than seeing an ad over and over and over again. Over time, the ad loses it’s effectiveness because customers either ignore it or get frustrated by it and avoid the brand.
The most effective ads don’t appear more than five times to the same customer. Any more than this means you’re heading towards a higher cost-per-click (CPC) and lower click-through rate (CTR).
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To avoid this headache, decide on frequency specifications during ad creation. Set the frequency by telling Facebook how many times an ad should show up for each customer, let’s say five times. Then set the action. This tells Facebook what you want it to do once five views have been reached. Set this to “turn off all ad sets” so that the ad stops showing for each customer once the limit’s been hit.
Your Facebook advertising strategy should guide customers and create an experience that encourages them to complete a desired action, such as buying something or giving you their email address. Experiment with different frequencies to find the balance between a comfortable CPC and CTR for your campaigns.
6. Maximize Conversions By Targeting Brand Aware Audience
Just because your audience finds your brand doesn’t mean they’re aware of what it does or how it solves their problem. In order to maximize conversions, use ads that target a “warm audience.” These are people who are familiar with your brand and what it does. They might have encountered your product in passing when someone mentioned it, but they haven’t tried it for themselves yet.
(Side note: If your audience isn’t warm yet, check out strategies #9 and #12 on this list to find out how to warm them up.)
Maximize the conversion of warm prospects by creating custom audiences based on engagement. For example, target people who’ve liked posts on your Facebook page or left comments on your Instagram pictures.
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From there, all you have to do is use your copy to get these folks to convert and buy. For example, keep it short and sweet, use conversational language and use buzz words like “benefits” or “guarantee” to guide people to convert. Because they’re already familiar with what you do and offer and have shown some interest through engagement, this is the easy part.
7. Create Evergreen Facebook Ads
Depending on your business, you might decide to run ads weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. But even though your ads run frequently, it doesn’t mean that you have to start from scratch every single time. This is time-consuming and not required. A better approach is to take “old” ads and repurpose them to make them more engaging.
To help, there are three evergreen strategies that you can choose from:
- Awareness Campaigns. These campaigns target people who are most likely to engage with your brand. Facebook awareness campaigns are designed to share your brand story with this audience. To get started, include product highlights like new features. Use your awareness campaign ads to increase engagement and sales.
- Lead Generation Campaigns. Once people know who you are, the next step is to get their information, like an email address. To do this, offer value to your audience, so they are engaged with you and receptive to further communication — think e-books, webinars, and free samples.
- Conversion Campaigns. Use conversion campaigns to take these leads you just collected and convert them into sales. Here’s where you close the deal with a super targeted value proposition: exactly what makes you better than the competition.
Once you’ve chosen your evergreen strategy, make any necessary tweaks to already-made ads. You might be surprised to find how much you can get out of an old favorite with just a few minutes of work to set a new campaign and CTA.
8. Use Geo-Targeting For Facebook Ads
Back in the days of early advertising, marketers didn’t have a lot of options for where they’d target customers. There were a few channels on TV, newspapers, and magazines. Marketers had to wait for customers to engage with them before sharing their message.
Fast forward a few decades and things have changed to allow marketers to be more proactive. Geo-targeting is a great advertising strategy for getting your message in front of customers. Geo-targeting works by serving up relevant ads based on where prospects are located. The result istimely, hyper-targeted ads that get customers engaged.
Let’s say you have a fitness app and want to target people who spend time at gyms. When you create the audience for your ad, enter the address of a specific location. For example, if there’s a location with a lot of gyms or studios in the area, enter an address in that neighborhood.
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If you have a physical store, enter your address into the location field so that every time people in your ideal audience enter the area you’ve specified, they see your ads.
You can choose how wide of a radius you want to target — depending on how many people you want to reach. You’ll notice that at the right side of the edit audience screen, “potential audience” will adjust to show how many people your ad can reach. Refine the audience specs further by filtering age and gender. Now, specific people who spend time in the area you’ve highlighted will see your targeted ads.
9. Create Buyer Personas
In order for any Facebook advertising strategy you choose to work, you have to know your audience. We’ve all heard the Meredith Hill saying, “When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one”. It’s true — not everyone in your audience is going to care about what you have to offer. It’s harsh, but it’s the reality.
A better approach is to create a range of personas based on ideal customers. This will help you create targeted ads that resonate with people. Each persona should include details about customer needs, demographics, and psychographic attributes – things like values and opinions. This is the foundation for forming buyer personas.
Pro tip: Don’t create buyer personas based on assumptions. Do the research to make sure that the personas you’re targeting actually care about what you offer.
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Once you analyze the data you’ve captured — by using, for example, an analytics tool like Amplitude to learn how people use your website and products and then compare the findings against each other — segment your audience based on shared characteristics, behaviors, and expectations. When it comes to Facebook ads, use this information to refine your Audience Insights.
On the left, you can create custom audiences by entering the data you’ve already collected — for example, audience location, age, and gender. In this example, age and gender are segmented, and you can compare where your audience falls (in blue) to the rest of users on Facebook (grey area).
Click save at the top of the screen to save the resulting data to Power Editor. This simplifies the ad creation process because your ad — using Power Editor — will pull from these buyer persona audiences to help you create specific ads for specific groups. Bottom line: you get more bang for your buck.
Bear these 9 points in kind through each Facebook ad campaign to make sure you optimise for each buck spent.
For more info on choosing the right PPC channel, have a read of the guide from Bant.io.