With over 1 billion users, it can make good business sense to advertise on Facebook and gain access to masses of potential customers. From creating and setting up your adverts to tracking your campaign performance, Facebook has the tools to help you. There’s also a mobile app so you can manage your campaign from anywhere. However, just as in any form of advertising, you are competing with other businesses, so you have to make your ad count with relevant content.
To maximise your chances of a successful advertising campaign, Facebook recommends you:
1. Place the maximum bid you can afford
2. Create compelling ads
3. Target them to the right audience
First things first – What are your campaign objectives?
Before creating your ad, think about what you hope to achieve with your campaign. What is your objective? Is it to promote your local business? Is it to get more likes, or more visitors to your web, or to increase your brand awareness, or something else? Who is your target audience? Is it to reach people within a particular age bracket? Or, is their location more important? When and where do you want your ad to run and how much do you want to spend on it?
You decide where the placement of your ad will be. For example, you can choose Audience Network which takes your ads beyond Facebook to Instagram, mobile websites and apps. This option is available when you use performance objectives such as the number of clicks to the website, website conversions, mobile app installs, and more.
Once you’ve decided on these ad sets, you’re ready to write your ad copy and create your ad.
Bidding
Facebook uses a bidding process for auctioning ads. You place your maximum bid and compete with other businesses to win and have your ad shown. Don’t think you are at a disadvantage to companies with more advertising spend – you can still win the bid if they don’t provide real positive experience and value to their target audience, and you do. It is the ad that has the highest overall value that wins the auction.
Setting your budget
Whatever size of budget you have, Facebook will keep within your set limit. You can choose to spend a daily amount or an amount for the duration of the campaign. You can also opt to pay via cost-per-click (when people in your target audience click a link to your web) or when you get 1000 impressions (where your ad is shown as many times as possible). You are always in charge, and you can change your budget at any time.
Creating a compelling ad
Since written text is limited, you should aim to capture your audience’s attention with an eye-catching image and use as few words as possible to convey your message. Make sure the name of your business is prominent. Highlight your special offer along with any other benefits and, if choosing to, add a call-to-action to the body of your text. Think creatively and engage your audience using images, slide-share, and video.
Tracking ad performance
Facebook’s Ad Manager and the Ad Manager Mobile App help you to create and manage your ad campaign from anywhere. You can view and edit your ads, change your schedule, tweak your objectives, and alter your budget at any time. Within the Ad Manager, you can access Ad Reporting which allows you to measure your objectives, such as seeing your reach and conversions, while Ads Insights API provides access to your metrics. There are various types of conversion tracking, and you choose which types are best suited to your campaign when you set up your ad.
While advertising on Facebook won’t suit all business owners, it’s certainly worth investigating as a means of extending your reach if you stick to a set budget. A Facebook Ad can help to promote your local business – your ad can entice a larger audience to view your videos, visit your website, download your app and follow other calls to action. Moreover, you can monitor and track your ad’s performance along the way to ensure you’re not wasting your budget.
Like everything you do in business, suss it out first.
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