In this episode of Actionable Marketing In Minutes we talk about Facebook advertising and how you can get started today!
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Problem:
Many businesses use social media to further their brand and to extend their reach. And in some cases, increase revenues. There are platforms to choose from, so it could be a bit daunting to determine which will work best for you. You will need to do your homework to determine the demographics of users for each platform and begin formulating your thoughts about how you can contribute to the conversation and add value to the community.
Solution:
Truth-be-told, not all businesses can currently advertise successfully on Facebook. Please stay tuned. In an upcoming broadcast we plan to devote more time discussing, in much greater depth, what users look for when shopping on Facebook and how, by industry, you might best advertise on that Facebook.
But, for today, for those who plan to advertise on Facebook, we have a special guest. Erin Haynes, who is Social Media specialist that contributes in her role as Marketing Project Manager, here at Local Directive, who specializes in social media. Let’s ask her a few questions on how to get started advertising with Facebook.
Q&A:
Hi, Erin. Thanks for joining us today.
Hi, Lisa.
Q:Why would someone want to advertise on Facebook?
A:Facebook does a lot to help marketers find their ideal audience online. It allows people to get in front of their perfect audience on a regular basis.
Q:How does Facebook help businesses get in front of their perfect audience? What are some ways to target prospects on Facebook?
A:You can start with targeting the Facebook fans on your page. Once that proves to be successful, expand your reach by targeting fans of other Facebook pages, such as your competitors’ or other people who are aligned with your business. One other thing you can do is to retarget your website’s visitors.
Q: (follow-up)I imagine retargeting website users is pretty much the same as other digital retargeting efforts. Can you briefly remind our audience how that is done?
A: (follow-up)A little pixel can be added to the code on your website. As prospects visit those pages, they are cookied and put into an ‘audience’ bucket. Facebook tracks them. Then, as those people visit Facebook, they are shown your ads.
Q: (follow-up)Retargeting is nothing new in the digital marketing world. It makes sense that Facebook should take this tack, too. As with any form of advertising, ads have a shelf life. How do you know when you should change your Facebook ad?
A:Pay close attention to cost per lead or cost per sale. If you’re paying $1 to $5 per lead, you’re doing really well and should keep your ad going. There’s no need to change anything if you feel it’s working for you.
If you’re not happy with something, there are things you can do. You want to go step by step. Don’t change everything at once or else you won’t know what the problem is. Start with changing the image. Let it run for three days and see what happens. If that doesn’t make a difference, then change the text.
But, before you change anything about the ad itself, start with your targeting. Do a lot of homework and make sure you are getting in front of the right people. This will lower your cost per lead considerably.
Q:Thanks, Erin
Now that we’ve learned a little about advertising on Facebook, let’s talk about how to create an advertising campaign.
Once you’ve walked through the process of setting up your company’s business page, and have chosen your category, created your profile and uploaded your profile image, you’ll be given the option to start advertising. You can choose to start right away or skip this page. You can always come back later.
If you choose to start now, you have 2 choices – Facebook Ads creator or the Power Editor. The Ads creator is much simpler. Once you become an advertising pro, go ahead and try the Power Editor. It has many more options and greater functionality, such as bulk advertisements and the ability to create custom audiences or lookalike audiences. I want to tell you more about those two options in a minute. They are very exciting.
When you start your advertising campaign, the first thing you’ll do is choose a campaign type. There are many options depending on the objective you’re trying to achieve. You may only want to increase page likes… perhaps you want to increase attendance at an upcoming event… maybe you want to get people to your website. Once you choose your campaign type, all advertising and ad sets must be in agreement, they must match. This, by-the-way, is also where you set your budget. Here, you will find you have lots of choices, too.
Overall, Facebook is one of the best places to advertise because of the phenomenal audience segmentation capability. Just think of all the facts Facebook has about you. They know everything about everyone, which is why they are able to segment to the nth degree. This is a huge boon to your advertising campaign.
Here’s the exciting part! A minute ago, I mentioned the Pro Editor. Within this functionality, you have the ability to target your ads to a specific set of people using your own customer data that you upload to Facebook. This is called ‘Custom Audience.’ And, taking that one step further, you can build Lookalike Audiences, which is a segmentation of people who look similar to your established users based on one of your current demographic variables. In effect, you’re propagating your current list of customers into a larger list. That is some kind of cool, isn’t it?
These 2 options are quite powerful and well worth testing.
Ok. So, once you’ve determined both your target audience and the action you want them to take, the final step is to decide – out of the 3 choices available – where you want to place your ad. The choices are
- Newsfeed Advertisement
- Mobile News Feed Advertisement
- Right-Hand Column Advertisements
That’s it. As you can see, it’s not difficult to get started with Facebook ads.
Benefits:
As we’ve pointed out, Facebook is currently not for everyone. If yours is a company that can benefit from Facebook advertising, we are confident that you will achieve great success because FB gives you the opportunity to really home in on your specific target audience.
We hope you’ve found this information helpful. Please connect with us on Twitter @DirectiveGroup or on LinkedIn and be sure to share it with in your networks using hashtag #actionablemarketing. Join us next time for more actionable marketing in minutes.
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