Facebook has become a critical channel for small businesses looking to stand out and make a name for themselves online. However, not every Facebook ad campaign is made equal.

Luckily, though, there’s a lot you can do to help you get the most out of your Facebook marketing budget.

5 tips for more effective Facebook marketing

#1. Target the right audience

Facebook has 2.6 billion active worldwide users and boasts users from every age group. Furthermore, the average user spends 58 minutes on Facebook every day.

With so many active users who spend so much time on Facebook, it’s become one of the best places to reach a wider audience and connect with new customers.

However, what truly makes Facebook advertising powerful is the ability it gives you to micro-target the perfect audience.

To put it bluntly, not every Facebook user will want or need what you’re offering. There may only be a small subset of users you can actually serve because of geographical proximity.

There’s just no point in trying to market your business to all of them.

When you market on Facebook, you can narrow down your target audience to the people most likely to actually take advantage of what you have to offer.

On Facebook, you can target your ads by:

• Location (city, state or country — people who currently reside in a certain place or will be visiting)
• Age
• Gender
• Relationship status
• Field of study
• Children
• Custom audiences (existing leads and customers)
• Interests
• Homeownership
• Life events (upcoming wedding, anniversary, birth, etc.)
• Political views
• Behaviors (e.g. people who have visited your websites)
• Connections (people who have previously liked your posts)
• And many, many more

When you have a specific audience in mind, you can cater your message more specifically to them. In general, the more targeted your ads and the narrower your audience, the bigger the return on your investment.

#2. Stay on top of your Facebook page (and presence)

In most cases, a lead is not going to convert after the first introduction to your brand. In fact, on average, it can take between six and eight touches to convert a lead into a customer.

The point is that when your ad reaches a new audience on Facebook, most of them are going to want to learn more before they convert. And, the next logical step is to visit your Facebook page.

Make sure that your Facebook page is up to date with your current hours, address, phone number, offering, etc. Optimize your Facebook page by filling out all available fields and by choosing professional, eye-catching profile and cover images.

Another key aspect of ensuring that your Facebook page makes the right first impression is managing and responding to reviews, feedback and comments.

Actively responding to your Facebook users when they mention your business will demonstrate that you’re engaged and that you care about customer feedback.

#3. Carefully consider your objective

Brands don’t spend the money to market on Facebook for no reason. They do so because they want to encourage sales, drive traffic to their site, build awareness, etc.

With any marketing campaign, whether it’s on Facebook, Google, YouTube or anywhere else, you need to have a specific goal in mind from the beginning.

Choosing an objective from the beginning will help you drive better results. When you know what you want to achieve, it will give you more direction when developing your content, choosing verbiage and images, and more.

Here are the three main categories of objectives on Facebook:

• Awareness – Awareness is about spreading the word about your brand and letting the world know what makes you unique and/or what value you bring to the table.
• Consideration – Consideration is about encouraging people to seek out more information about your brand. Consideration objectives include driving traffic to a specific page on your website, encouraging people to download your app, engaging with your brand on social media, collecting information from leads interested in your product or in signing up for a newsletter, and connecting with people on Messenger and other direct channels.
• Conversion – Conversion is about encouraging people to purchase your products or use your services. Conversion-based objectives can also include adding an item to the cart, downloading your app, creating an account on your site and even driving in-person traffic to your brick and mortar location.

Your ad objectives can and should change over time. For instance, a new brand that’s just getting started may focus more on building awareness, while it makes more sense for an established, well-known brand to focus more on conversions.

#4. Make your ads engaging

You’ve chosen the perfect audience, optimized your Facebook page and identified your goal. Now, it’s time to actually start creating your ad. To get the most out of your investment, your ad needs to be engaging.

You’d be surprised at how big of a difference seemingly small things, like how you phrase your title or the timing of your ad launch, can make.

Here are a few tips for creating engaging Facebook ads:

• Add captions – Design video ads with the assumption that people will view them with the sound off. This means adding captions is a must.
• Ask questions – One of the simplest ways to increase your conversion rate is to simply ask questions in your copy.
• Highlight your brand early on – Bring attention to your brand through positive brand association within the first three seconds of video ads.
• Focus on your message right away – Get to the point quickly and deliver your message within the first five seconds.
• Use multiple formats – Mixed-format campaigns perform better overall, capture attention for longer and drive more conversions.

#5. Test your ads

There are a lot of general tips you can follow, like the ones I mentioned above, that can help you create better ads and get better results. However, what works for one brand (or even for most brands) may not necessarily work for you.

The only way to know for sure what works for your specific audience is by testing your ads!

Like I said, even a small thing, like the verbiage you use, the time of day you publish your ad, the colors you use or the image you choose, can have a huge impact on how well the ad performs.

The best way to effectively test your ads is to create two identical campaigns and test each element, one at a time.

If you test too much at once, it will be impossible to tell which elements made the biggest difference.

Facebook offers a number of different options for A/B testing your ads.

---

Facebook marketing is a powerful tool for increasing awareness, driving sales and so much more. However, it’s by no means the only thing a small business should be doing to market itself online.

With SEO, social media, email marketing, ads and more, there’s a lot for a small business to keep track of online, and it can be overwhelming, to say the least. Marketing 360® can help.

Marketing 360 is an all-in-one digital marketing platform that simplifies and streamlines everything you need to manage and grow your small business. Learn more and see our plans and pricing.

Originally published on 11/18/20