The world of advertising on social media can be a confusing one, especially since platforms such as Facebook have so many tools for you to utilise to help boost your business. However, it’s important to understand the basics when you’re putting budget behind your marketing as there needs to be a return on that investment. Here we’ll talk you through how you can elevate your basic boosted posts into meaningful ads that are going to generate measurable results.
A common mistake we see is the use of boosted posts. Now, they may offer a quick fix by boosting your reach - but the likelihood is you’ll hit that boost button without too much thought as to who the audience is. If you’re investing money you need to put some thought behind it to make sure you get the most out of your budget. More often than not, boosting a post also means that although the reach of the post is increased, there is no function behind the post - whereas, creating a Facebook ad will give you the chance to determine a function such as brand awareness, and even add a call to action button. Our general advice is to avoid boosting posts - unless you’re promoting something such as an event and want to increase the reach beyond your business’ following - as Facebook has some really great options when it comes to making the most out of their advertising tool.
Facebook is an incredibly powerful advertising tool and will guide you through the process - and once you’ve done it you can save your audience for future ads. Overall we always just recommend being thoughtful of how you’re spending your budget - and a boosted post isn’t the way to go.
Ad Type
The first step when it comes to creating a Facebook Ad is determining your ad type. One of the really useful things about Facebook Ads is that you can tailor the function of your ad to what you’re looking to achieve, with lots of different ad types to choose from including ‘Get more website visitors’ and ‘Promote your Page’ that include calls to action to encourage users to do something. For example, if you’re looking to increase your social media following, try using the ‘Promote your Page’ ad type, which encourages users to like your Facebook page with a button, or if you’re looking to generate leads or have people get in touch, try using the ‘Get people to contact you’ ad type that includes a ‘Contact Us’ button. Just make sure you choose an ad type that aligns with your business goals and aims to make sure your money is being spent wisely.
Interesting graphics
It’s getting harder and harder to stand out on Facebook anyway, but the graphics on your ads need especially stand out and be more scroll-stopping than ever, as this time you’re paying for the content to be interacted with. It’s important that the content of your ads stand out from the other post on people’s news feed, so try changing it up a little bit to spark the attention of potential customers. Facebook ads are really dynamic in that you can include a single image, create a slideshow with a single image, or put some short clips together to create a video. Despite this, you shouldn’t go totally wacky and off-brand just to stand out, as people still need to be able to recognise your branding - it’s important to stay on-brand but don’t use content or graphics that are the same as those in your usual posts.
Targeting
Advertising has always been a sure-fire way to get your business in front of new and potential customers. The issue with lots of traditional forms of advertising is that you may put money behind the advert to be shown to people who don’t necessarily have an interest in your business or its products/services. Think about flyering or advertising in a local newspaper - it’s unlikely that every person who sees your ad will have an interest in what you offer. That’s where Facebook ads have a one-up on other advertising methods - you can target specific people!
Through Facebook Ads, you can set up targets and parameters to make sure your ads are seen by only the people who are likely to have an interest. Targeting allows you to specify locations, demographics such as age, as well as general interests. When choosing who to target and who Facebook will show your ad to, try to think about who you want to appear in front of and why. Ask yourself the question, who are the main users of your product/service, or who is your target audience? For example, if you were wanting to promote your preschool nursery, you may want to target the local area, people of a typical parent age, and those with an interest in Nursery, Parenting and Childcare.
It can also be useful to use Facebook Insights to find out more about the people who already like your page, including the common ages and locations of users and use this data when setting the targeting for your ads.
Test Ads
Once your ad is up and running, it’s important that you test its success in completing its function and achieving your business goals. What we advise is to test ads by making sure you check in on them throughout their run time to see how effective they’re being. You can always go in and edit either the images or text if they’re not performing quite how you’d like them to so your budget doesn’t get wasted!
Another way to test ads is to compare ad sets. Try creating a few ads each with the same small budget, but with different images or text and then compare their successes to see which performs the best. You can play around with the pictures or text in ads that aren’t performing well and see if they have an improvement in their performance until you’ve created a top-performing ad to base your future ads from. Just remember that people are continuously changing their likes and habits and new social media trends are constantly arising, so it’s important to keep checking in on your target market and create ads to suit them in order to continue your business’ growth!
We know that the realms of social media advertising can be a little bit baffling at times, especially with so many options out there at the moment - but we're on hand to help! If you need a little guidance or support when it comes to Facebook ads, social advertising or digital marketing in general we're more than happy to help, so please feel free to get in touch!