How to Use Facebook Advertising to its Maximum Potential
Read this article to understand how you can get the most out of your Facebook advertising campaign. Squeeze the maximum out of your bucks spent on FB advertising by following the right tips.
Whether you're just getting your feet wet as a small business owner or you've been in the game for a while, you're aware of the power of social media marketing. Let's face it - social is everywhere. Social symbols are making their way around the globe as quickly as the universal Wi-Fi sign. Everyone knows them, and love it or hate it, everyone is going to need to get on board. Maybe you have a Facebook account already or are in the first stages of developing your brand and haven't yet carved out the time to set one up. If the latter is the case, then it's time to get going. There's no better time than now.
If you already have a Facebook page, congrats! You've taken the first step. Facebook is like having an engine at your fingertips — it's very powerful and its reach extends extremely far. It's also very flexible and can be adapted to just about any kind of business — whether you're a restaurant or a web design company. It seems like almost everyone who's anyone has a Facebook page these days, but are they using it to its fullest potential?
Here are some tips on how to really make Facebook work for you and your business so that you can experience true ROI. Breaking Down Your Options
If you're new to Facebook, things can seem a bit overwhelming. There are so many tabs, a seemingly endless feed of information, and pop-ups around every corner seeking to make things easier for you. Most of the time, they just get in the way. There are two main facets to pay attention to - pages and adsYour Facebook Page
These will serve as your primary marketing tools, and if you don't want to learn anything else about Facebook, at least learn how to master these. Pages serve as your profile, with an attractive display of your business name, a picture area where you can insert your logo, a cover photo you can design to stand out from the crowd. There's also room for you to insert a short business description, along with your contact information.
It's very important you take time developing your page — this is what the rest of the world will see. Make sure you fill out as much of the page as you can, especially with essential information such as hours of operation, address, directions, and so forth.The Power of Posting
Posting to your page is where you will start developing interactions with your audience. The content you post should be engaging, promotional to an extent, and useful to the reader. Don't spam users — this is the easiest way to lose a following.
It's recommended to post once or twice a day, depending on your business and how much content is in your arsenal. You want to post frequently to stay engaged with your audience, but you don't want to blow through all of your content at once. Examples of useful information to post to your wall:Incorporating Facebook Ads
The Facebook Ads program is where you will reach out to a target audience with your goods or services. Facebook collects a substantial amount of demographic information from its users, which is why its targeted advertising platform is so useful.
In order to start using Facebook Ads, first click on Ads Manager, which will bring you to a new window. This is your drawing board — where you can design, edit, and monitor your advertisements. Whether you have a small budget or thousands to spend, Facebook Ads has the right solution for you.
If you're a large-scale business, you might be interested in Power Editor, which allows you to create ads in bulk, make duplicate campaigns, and edit ad sets with ease. The Power Editor also allows you to upload information from an Excel file.Using Targeted Advertising to Your Advantage
One of Facebook's most valuable assets is its powerful targeting ability. You can target an audience by location (for example, a local business), interests, age, education, and even relationship status (useful if you're marketing a dating app or pitching products to married couples).
Maybe you own an Italian restaurant. You're probably going to want to target an audience interested in Italian food. Perhaps you own a comedy shop. You're going to want to target people with comedic interests.
Ads Manager lets you define your target audience and create ads that will be shown directly to that audience. Audience Insights is a great place to learn more about your audience and their demographics. Facebook will show you what percentage of them are men versus women, what category their job falls under, and even their purchase behavior. You can select any one of your targeted audiences in order to learn more about them, which can serve as a useful feedback loop when adjusting your advertisements.The Importance of Your Business Website
Let's take a step backward for just a moment as we absorb all of that information. A lot of Facebook's tools are based on having a viable business website. Much of Facebook's advertising is designed to drive traffic to your website and earn organic or paid clicks. You should be posting content to your Page wall directly from your website. If you're trying to start marketing on Facebook without a viable website to use as your showcase, you may want to rethink your strategy.Getting Started With Your Website
If you haven't built a website for your brand yet, now is the time to do. Start by creating a domain name. Think about your business and its goals in order to come up with a catchy title. Make sure your domain name is available and then register it.
Next, you'll need to register with a web host. After you've registered with a hosting service, you're ready to build your website. Choose an easy-to-use platform such as Wordpress or Squarespace. Unless you're a web designer, this might be the time when you bring in an expert. A professional can help design your website to its full potential.
Remember, your business website is going to be one of your most important marketing assets. It's what interested users are going to look for to find out more information about your product or service. Facebook marketing operates best alongside a well-developed web platform.Promotion
When advertising with Facebook, you have tons of different options in terms of types of promotions. You can promote your Facebook page, promote your website, promote your business to the local community around you, and also promote events.Promote Your Page
A good reason to promote your page is to get more likes. If Facebook is going to be your key social platform, you're going to want to have a well-developed following, especially if you don't have a good website yet. The key to remember here is quality over quantity. It's better to have a few hundred engaged followers than thousands of people who will likely never become customers. This is where lead generation comes into play. If you can promote your page to the right target audience, these followers can become sales leads.Promote Your Website
If your Facebook marketing goals include increased traffic to your website, then this the tool to use. Facebook will help you develop a campaign targeted to the audience most likely to click on your website. While this tool may not necessarily result in the users engaging your webpage, you're at least creating a higher volume of traffic.Website Conversions
This is probably one of the most powerful tools that Facebook has to offer. Website conversions are not focused on merely driving people to your site, but also encouraging them to take a specific action on your site, such as to buy a product or sign up for your newsletter. All you have to do here is choose the conversion ad that will work best for you, select your ad set and your budget, then let the Facebook algorithm do the rest.Promote Your Event
Facebook allows you to promote special events, such as 'Trivia', 'Ladies Night', or 'Happy Hour'. The first step is to create an event through Facebook, then target an audience, and set a budget to promote your event. Use Facebook event promotion as a compliment to what might be already posted to your website. It's a great way to generate attendees that might not be responding to your website announcement.Ad Placements
This is where things get more specific. Placement determines where your ad is going to appear. There are tons of different options, including desktop news feed, mobile news feed, and right side column. You're going to have to experiment at first and then measure how people respond. It's helpful to use audience insights here to find out where most people are looking at your ads. You can choose multiple placements within a single ad set, but a word of advice is instead to have multiple ad sets with one placement for each.
Different placements have different price points, conversion stats, and potential reach factors. Typically, desktop impressions are more expensive than mobile impressions, so you may want to bid lower on those.Using Desktop Ads
Placing an ad in a desktop news feed position is useful if your audience is primarily viewing content on their desktop or laptop computer. Although they cost more, they tend to have higher conversions and can be an extremely useful marketing tool for your business.Using Right Side Ads
Right side column ads are the oldest tool in Facebook's advertising arsenal. They pop up on the right side of the screen and remain fixed even as a user scrolls down. They definitely get a lot of impressions, but often these could include repeat users. A tip here is to bid for clicks rather than impressions so that you weed out duplicate viewers and see some ROI from your ad.Mobile Ads
Many people use Facebook on their mobile phone and are more likely to see your ad on a mobile device than on a desktop. But the conversions will be lower as people are often more prone to simply scroll past. Place your ads on mobile news feeds when your audience rarely uses their desktop computer. Monitor your results so that you can alter your target audience to make your mobile ads more effective.Conclusion
This overview, breakdown of tools, and helpful tips should be enough to get you started on your first Facebook advertising campaign. Spend time playing around with Facebook's tools in order to become familiar with how the system works. There are many additional tools not covered in this post, but we've gone over all of the basics in-depth. The more you use Facebook marketing, the better you will become at making it work for your specific business.
