Latest News
Expand Your Reach with Paid Facebook Advertising
Last month we discussed how the recent update to the Facebook Promotional Post Rule will impact businesses wanting to increase reach and engagement through organic posting.
Today, we are going to explain how you can widen the net even further to capture the attention of, and engage with, a greater number of Facebook users who may be interested in the products or service you offer. This can be achieved through paid Facebook advertising.
Pre-Launch Campaign Prep
1. Build your Brand Page – this is the epi-centre of your brand, so ensure you populate your profile with current information, professional cover and profile photos, a detailed About section, customised tabs, and an active timeline of content. This is key as it will ensure your brand is accurately represented and conveying the right persona. Once you have this is in place you need some fans!
2. Build Your Fan Base – If you have had a brand page for sometime, you will likely have accrued some fans and hopefully this has been steadily increasing over time.
If you are new to Facebook, then building your fan base is one of the key activities you will need to do. You can of course do this through paid advertising, but there are also other ways to help expand your fan base.
Ask people to Like your page at every opportunity – email footers, letters, website, apps, webinars, events, shop window, company vehicles – anywhere you can think of!
Posting organic posts regularly and motivating your fans to share and engage will also help to expand your reach and grow your fan base.
Having a brand page that already has a following is recommended prior to launching an ad campaign as it helps to provide reassurance to new fans that others have already connected and embraced your brand.
3. Expand your Reach beyond your Fan Base – Now it’s time to set up your ad campaign to maximise the potential for lead generation on the Facebook platform. With paid advertising you can create campaigns aligned to your business goals, allowing your brand to reach and connect with a larger user base using advanced targeting methods.
Facebook also provides detailed insights on campaign performance so you can measure the success of the campaign and make an informed decision on whether Facebook is a viable advertising platform for your business.
The Facebook Ad Manager platform makes setting up a campaign an easy step by step process, and you can also use Power Editor to edit the campaign and run performance reports. Payment options include Paypal, Credit or Debit Card, Online Banking and Facebook coupons. You can set the budget, but there are minimum spend limits on some campaigns.
58% of Facebook users engage with a Facebook ad at least once before spending money with a small business
Types of Facebook Campaigns
Facebook offers a variety of advertising options through a range of different campaign types, giving you the choice of choosing a campaign type that will help you to achieve your core marketing objective.
Once you have selected your campaign type, you can work through creating the ad sets and selecting your audience by demographics and interests.
There are also options for you to choose your ad placement – Mobile Newsfeed, Desktop Newsfeed, Right Column, Instagram or Audience Network.
Finally you set your budget, the ad schedule and to measure conversions you will want to set up Facebook pixel tracking. The tracking pixel will need to be installed into your website. You can find further information on the benefits of setting up a Facebook pixel and how to install at https://www.facebook.com/business/help/952192354843755
Powerful Targeting Options
Laser-target your message by interests, behaviours, demographics, connections, lookalikes and custom audiences.
Behavioural targeting is an exceptionally good way of reaching an audience who is genuinely interested in the type of product or service you offer. Every user has a profile and within this profile they will have expressed their interests.
Facebook categorises these interests into target groups, such as DIYers, Fashionistas, Gamers – so really, they have already done the hard work for you and have created a highly targeted group of users that are far more likely to connect with your brand.
Another really powerful targeting option is to use Lookalike Audiences. Facebook will match the demographics and interests of your current Facebook fans, or you can upload a customer list of contacts, and Facebook will match up the email addresses to any Facebook profiles and from this segment they will create a Lookalike Audience to match the demographics and interests of your existing customers.
You can also set geographic targeting on Lookalike audience campaigns so you are not putting your ads in front of people who will not be interested to buy from you.
How to Get More Eyes on Your Ad
It is a challenge to stand out from the crowd and break through the noise, so you need to think carefully about the ad content and imagery as you will want it to connect with people who are genuinely interested in your brand.
There are a selection of ad formats to choose from – Image Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads, Collection Ads, Slideshow Ads and Canvas Ads.
Statistics prove that using faces in advertising does evoke an emotional response, and this reaction will make for a stronger connection. Using certain colours can also work to connect with people on an emotional level – reds, oranges and greens show up really well and will make your ad stand out amongst all the other content in a newsfeed.
Adding a value offer, a discount or giveaway will also help increase engagement as will use of video rather than a carousel of images or just one image.
We hope this article has provided you with a good overview of options available for advertising on the Facebook platform.
If you are finding all these options a little daunting and are not confident to manage your own Facebook campaign, you may like to consider outsourcing your ad campaign management to the experts who can get your campaign up and running in no time. Give us a call! Whizz Marketing provides cost-effective online marketing support to SMEs across the UK. For further information, please visit whizzmarketing.co.uk or call 01252 622129.
Telephone No.01252 622129
