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When done correctly, advertising on Facebook can be highly lucrative. Facebook’s user base which globally numbers in the billions, provides you with access to almost any audience imaginable.
Advertisers can use this to their advantage whether they are looking to market to cold or warm audiences.
I am regularly approached by people who are either looking for help with Facebook Ads for existing campaigns or looking for Facebook Ads tips to get started. In this article, I am going to share 10 Facebook Ads tips to help get you started.
1) Will Facebook Ads or Google Ads Better Suit Your Needs?
Before I delve into help with Facebook Ads, it is important that you decide whether Facebook Ads or Google Ads are likely to be the better advertising vehicle for your business.
You need to know which suits your needs better before investing time and money.
Google is intent based, so people type in what they are looking for, such as ‘buy mobile phone’ or ‘cheap hotel in Sydney’.
On the other hand, I am sure that you do not visit Facebook with the aim to buy something. It just doesn’t work that way and there is no specific intent. I talked about the psychology around keywords and visitor intent in an earlier article on effective keyword research.
You are using Facebook to connect with your friends, view pictures and videos and content from your friend’s walls.
Facebook is a better advertising medium for those looking to reach a broad audience or a whole category segment such as beauty, automotive or business owners.
So for example, if you are offering beauty products then Facebook Ads would be a great avenue.
2) Offer Something Appealing To Your Target Market
As good as the Facebook Ads platform is, it is not going to overcome issues such as trying to sell something that nobody is interested in. To be successful you need to think outside of the box and here are some tips to help with Facebook Ads and help your offer stand out from your competition.
- Think very carefully and consider how can you differentiate your product/service from your competitors.
- Is there something new or innovative about your product/service that you can highlight in your Facebook Ads?
- Can you provide a discount, or an irresistable introductory offer of some sort? For example 50% off window cleaning.
- For services that are portfolio based, what is unique and how do you stand out from your competitors?
- Do you provide something free, such as free delivery/installation or a free consultation?
Many people are reluctant to offer something for free or at a discount as an introductory offer. They often cite issues such as profit margins as being insufficient to be able to do so.
It is important to remember that any introductory offers are only offered once to each customer.
So for example if you are a tennis coach, you could offer a free introductory tennis lesson. This gives you the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise to someone who probably wouldn’t give it a go paying your usual fee when they don’t know or trust you.
Thrill and impress them and you’ve got a customer paying your full rate per lesson! An initial loss leader but a great way to get customers.
3) Use Educational Content to Entice Your Visitors
To help with Facebook Ads, avoid directing your visitors to a landing page that is trying to sell them something. It needs to be content which is education focused instead.
This could be:-
- A blog post which explains why your product or service is great and what they will learn.
- A video demonstrating expertise and providing value.
- A lead magnet which is delivered when they subscribe to your email list. I provided a number of lead magnet ideas in this earlier article.
- Encouraging them to attend a webinar which is aimed at converting them to a customer.
4) Select An Appropriate Campaign Objective
Setting the right campaign objective will help with Facebook Ads and is more likely to get the results you are seeking.
I see too many advertisers choosing ‘Traffic’ as their objective.
As it suggests, traffic will bring you lots of visitors. However, you’re far more likely to get time wasters. It’s unlikely to result in many buyers because many will spend a split second on your landing page and leave!
If you’re looking to promote something then you want people clicking on your ad, that Facebook deem more likely to do something. An objective such as Conversions is more likely to get results.
Don’t forget that Facebook has an enormous pool of data on its user base so it knows who is likely to click on an ad which could result in a conversion.
5) Avoid Using Awareness as a Campaign Objective
Unless you’re a Fortune 500 then to help with Facebook Ads, I suggest avoiding ‘Brand Awareness’ as an objective for your campaign. How many likes your Facebook business page has is not going to make the slightest difference to your advertising efforts.
6) Use the Facebook Pixel Effectively
If you are advertising on Facebook and not using their re-targeting opportunities, then you are missing out on a good opportunity. Focusing all your advertising at cold audiences makes it harder to get conversions.
To further help with Facebook Ads it is extremely important to set up the Facebook Pixel and also target:-
- Your website visitors.
- Your email list members if you have them.
- Any previous customers.
If you are operating an online store then you can also target customers who have started the process to buy something but for various reasons have abandoned their purchase.
7) Select Quality Ad Images
The images you select are also essential to help with Facebook Ads. To make the most of your Facebook Ads, your images need to achieve the following:-
- Get your prospects attention by being colourful.
- They need to look professional and not amateurish.
- They need to be eye catching. Images with beautiful backgrounds tend to do well on Facebook Ads.
- Give your prospects a clear feel of what they get when they purchase your product or service.
Until recently Facebook had a 20% text limit that could be included on your image. This requirement was removed during October, 2020, so you can now add text to your images to your heart’s content.
Just ensure that you follow Facebook’s ad policies at all times.
8) Refresh Your Ads Regularly
Your target audience are likely to get bored when they see the same ads over and over again. This is known as ad fatigue and to help with Facebook Ads, it’s important to refresh/alter them from time to time.
The timeframe will depend on the size of your audience and ad budget. To find out how often your ads are being shown to the same people look at the Facebook Ads Frequency metric.
If this number gets to around 2 – 2.5 then you are likely to start the symptoms of ad fatigue.
9) Be Patient and Give It Time
It is important to ensure that you give Facebook a sufficient chance when first launching your ads. When your ads first launch they go into a learning phase to help with Facebook Ads, providing Facebook the opportunity to work out what will work better with your ad. This learning could reveal such things as days and/or times of day where results are more likely and where it is best to show your ads.
This often means that the first few days results are poor due to Facebook’s experimentation process. It is too early during this time to draw any conclusions.
A very small ad budget can also complicate the learning phase, particularly when a Conversion campaign objective is in use. Facebook needs to see a sufficient number of these conversions to be able to draw any firm conclusions on what works and what doesn’t for your campaign.
To help with Facebook Ads, I recommend reviewing your ads weekly before making any decisions or changes. Making changes too soon will make it difficult to determine the effectiveness of your ads.
10) Ensure Your Audience Size is Sufficient
For national campaigns, I recommend finding an audience size that is somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000. An audience that is too small is likely to suffer ad fatigue issues as indicated earlier.
Audiences that are large make it challenging to draw firm conclusions and make revisions to your ad targeting.
There’s a lot to learn when getting started and I do hope the Facebook Ads tips presented in this article provide you help with Facebook Ads.
Have you used Facebook Ads with your marketing and if so, what challenges have you faced? Please let me know in the comments below.
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