Facebook marketing presents a vast area of opportunity anyway, but particularly in the current climate. Bearing in mind everything that’s going on, more and more people are turning to digital marketing. With people at home spending a lot more time on social media than usual, Facebook advertising is a perfect starting point for testing out digital marketing for your business. In part 1 of this 2-part blog, we’ll talk through the fundamentals of Facebook advertising and how to make it work for you.
Of course, Facebook advertising is not for everyone; there are some sectors it won’t work for. Most of the time it’s evident as to which type of businesses will be successful with Facebook ads; however, if you are unsure and need some proof, taking some time to test out the platform will give you an indication. This will provide you with some validation of whether a Facebook advertising campaign is going to work for you and whether there’s an audience for your product or service on the platform before making more of an investment.
Before you even think about embarking upon a Facebook advertising campaign, there’s some significant prep to be done. Start by identifying your target persona and understanding that your messaging needs to be explicitly created for them.
Although an understanding of Ads Manager, Business Manager and how to set up Facebook campaigns is advantageous, there are lots of helpful courses, some free, and some paid for – available online. Facebook Blueprint courses are a great place to start. Completely free to use, they will teach you step-by-step how to get set up with different ad campaigns and the objectives that you should be optimising those campaigns for, based on what it is you hope to achieve. It’s a fantastic way to gain a solid basic understanding of the Facebook ecosystem and how things work.
You want your Facebook advertising campaign to succeed. So let’s look at how you can maximise your chances of that happening. Facebook bases its algorithm on the BEAR acronym, which takes into account the three main factors Facebook considers when deciding who it will show your ads to and how much it will cost:
B is for Bid – your Facebook ads are in an auction in which you’re bidding for real estate against other advertisers within your space, and the number of people your ads are shown to will be determined by your budget. The recommended daily budget to use for a Facebook campaign is between £20 and £50 a day, so be prepared to spend that much each day at the least.
E and A are for Expected Action – what is the likelihood of the people seeing your ad performing the action that you want them to? Say you are setting up a conversion campaign, Facebook will determine who your ad is shown to based on this objective and serve your ad to those that are more likely to convert.
R is for Relevance – how relevant is your ad to the user you’re showing it to? For example, you wouldn’t show a product aimed at 20-year-olds to an audience of 50 years and over; you need to make sure your audience is appropriate. If you get your targeting wrong, you could be penalised with super-high CTR’s (click-through-rates) or CPM’s (cost-per-1000-impressions), and your ads won’t get shown to the right people. This is Facebook’s way of telling you that your ads aren’t hitting the mark and your creative or audience needs to be changed.
In part 2, we’ll be walking you through how to create compelling messaging, building audiences and of course, how to launch effectively! In the meantime, if you’d like help with Facebook advertising, 3twelve is offering a free 30-minute strategy call to discuss your needs, please do contact us today to get your session booked and find out how Facebook advertising can make a difference to your business!