How to Reach the Right People with Facebook Ads

In the world of digital advertising, Facebook offers one of the best platforms for finding your customers and honing in on your target audience. As the world’s leading social media platform that reaches over 2 billion monthly users, Facebook’s ability to reach your audience cannot be underestimated.

Why You Should Use Facebook For Digital Marketing

Traditional print advertising campaigns have to rely on survey-generated demographics. The data turns stale quickly, whereas on Facebook you are always operating in real-time.

Additionally, Facebook ads are significantly cheaper on a customer acquisition cost basis. The cost to reach 1,000 customers can be as low as $0.25, and the platform provides sophisticated tools to guide you through the advertising design process and keep costs low.

With its unique Lookalike Audience feature, Facebook can help you broaden your demographic reach by moving beyond your target customers to help you find new ones. This and other targeting tools set Facebook apart as the most popular choice for brands advertising online.

How Facebook Advertising Works

The Facebook advertising process can be broken into three main steps:

Pick Your Audience

Facebook offers several methods for targeting your audience. One of these is tailoring by tangible characteristics like location, age, income, and interests. Another is using your existing customer’s information and uploading that onto Facebook to target them based on what those features reveal. Finally, there are the targeting tools that will match Facebook users with your existing customers’ profiles so as to expand your reach.

Decide on Your Ad Format

Facebook ads can take a variety of formats:

1. Carousel ads that allow users to scroll through several images
2. Lead ads that gather customer information for future campaigns
3. Videos and GIFs that yield greater engagement and provide more creative opportunities
4. Engagement ads that revisit users who have interacted with your brand in some manner before
5. Analyze Results

A major advantage of Facebook advertising is the ability to analyze the success of your campaign. Keyword selection in ads can be reviewed for optimization, and conversion tracking reports if your ad has prompted a response such as a purchase or a click-thru.

Split testing is a major advantage that allows you to compare similar ads to determine which is more successful when just one feature is changed. With the introduction of Facebook dynamic creative ads, this process has become even simpler and more effective.

The Facebook Pixel is another tool for tracking and analyzing campaign results. It is a piece of code added to your website for tracking how users are interacting with your website.

Exploring these options will make your Facebook ad campaign highly targeted, which results in better customer acquisition, greater engagement, and higher ROI.

Some Tips To Keep In Mind

First, consider your copy: keywords are often the key to online advertising. The words that trigger a response from users will help you develop better ads. Explore and experiment with keywords until you find optimal results, and remember to split test them to understand which are working best.

Include links in your ad that direct users to specific pages on your website. If you are promoting a sale item, link to the specific item sale page instead of your homepage. If you’re promoting a particular idea, experience, or special offer, link to a page that provides the details. Make it easy for the visitor to become a customer and avoid directing to your homepage or Facebook page.

Remember that split testing can provide valuable information about the success of your ads. Some ways to test your ads include:

• Use the same text in two different ads with different images
• Use the same ad but target slightly different demographics, such as local area only vs. the entire state or hiking vs. biking interests.

Compare the results to determine which ad features perform better.

Facebook makes for a highly effective means of designing and launching your digital advertising strategy. Once you explore the options available and consider enlisting a marketing service as your partner, you can start producing smarter Facebook ads that will increase your number of customers at an affordable cost.