“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”
Facebook advertising is one of the quickest shortcuts to the grueling task of naturally drumming up new followers, leads, website page views, conversions and reaching a variety of other goals.
As it stands, 70 percent of Facebook’s 1.7 billion users log in on a daily basis. This extreme level of interaction with the platform makes the social network one of the most powerful advertising destinations online.
Over the past several years, Facebook as developed a variety of ad experiences for business owners to leverage, all equipped with a variety of CTAs like:
- Call now
- Download
- Shop
- Get directions
- And more
Facebook ads are vital to any small business in the digital hive, but many still struggle to achieve significant results.
If you are in need of some tips and tricks to boost your social media advertising prowess, look no further. Here are six methods for increasing the potency of your Facebook ad experiences.
1. Facebook Lead Ads
Lead generation is a must for practically every business owner.
Facebook Lead Ads created quite a stir upon their initial release, but the pandemonium has since died off significantly.
With this relatively new ad type, advertisers can quickly collect lead information without the need of a dedicated landing page. Lead ads appear just like the most common mobile ads but, when clicked, users are presented with a contact info form. Facebook will automatically fill in any fields that it already has access to through an individual’s profile information. Users just need to review the info, fill in any blanks, and submit (or not). This makes the lead gen process remarkably effective as, often times, people elect not to fill out these forms because of the time it requires.
On the business side of things, contact forms are highly customizable to help ensure that a company acquires the most useful information about a person.
According to Facebook, lead ads drove, “…a four times reduction in cost per lead compared to previous social lead generation tactics.”
If your brand has yet to leverage lead ads on Facebook, you are missing out on scores of qualified leads for your business.
2. Custom and Lookalike Audiences
Marketing to new customers is a much more costly endeavor than selling to those who have already bought in. It is for this reason that Custom Audiences on Facebook is an outstanding practice for targeting customers whom you already possess contact info for.
The problem for many small business owners, however, is their lack of an e-mail database. Worry not — Facebook has a solution for the lead-impaired as well.
No matter how small your current consumer base, Lookalike Audiences are capable of generating a list of individuals who share similar traits and interests as your current customers. This tactic helps to maintain the effectiveness of smaller marketing budgets because these folks are more likely to have an interest in your product or service.
Businesses can build lookalike audiences based off of e-mail lists, Facebook Pixel segments, or just the goals they aim to achieve. Be sure to leverage this technology to help target the type of users that are most likely to engage in the manner that you desire.
3. Facebook’s Creative Hub
No matter which niche your company exists in, the old adage holds true; knowledge is power.
Recently, Facebook conceived The Creative Hub. The new service is designed to help advertisers get the absolute most out of their social adverts by allowing for mock-ups to be created and previewed from its various ad offerings. Users can also send pre-published creatives to other collaborators for input and deliberation.
Most importantly, however, is that the hub sets forth a slew of learning materials for advertisers to take advantage of. Everything from best practices to particular case studies can be accessed to boost an individual’s advertising aptitude for more effective promotions.
4. Facebook Pixels
Many businesses leverage Facebook Pixels as a way to track conversions and how effectively their social plugs performed. Where this technology may be even more pragmatic, however, is in the optimization arena.
The data that Facebook Pixels provides allows businesses to target and re-target individuals who have visited your website. This can even be implemented at a more granular level to target users who took certain actions on a webpage, or visited certain sections of the site, such as the shopping cart.
Since cart abandonment rates clock in at about 74 percent, retargeting these potential buyers with social ads can capture a huge percentage of shoppers you would otherwise miss.
5. Experiment with Placement
Facebook offers several different placements for social ads; mobile news feeds, audiences networks, Instagram, desktop news feeds, and desktop right columns. As you might imagine, not all placements are created equal.
It is crucial to experiment with the position of ads to see where each will gain the most clicks. Mobile is likely to be one of the most effective places because more than half of Facebook users access the platform solely through mobile devices.
But mobile ads will not work across the board for all companies. If your business typically caters to older demographics, desktop might be the way to go. The only real way to find out is to experiment with different placements and see what works best.
6. Use Multiple Ads
The level to which your ads are able to enchant and lure viewers is massively important to its overall success. Chances are, you are not going to draft one version of an ad and hit a homerun.
To achieve optimal performance from an ad set, it is vital to generate at least two ads per set. Allow these promos to continually rotate, each time changing the image/video and copy to see which interpretation resonates most with audiences. Continually analyze click-through rates, conversions and other vital metrics to craft the most compelling ad experience.
Choosing where and how to spend your ad budget online is a big deal for those who are working with minimal resources. Leveraging Facebook will allow small businesses to target one of the broadest and most engaged audiences on the Web. More importantly, however, the tools that Facebook provides allows for ads to be hyper-targeted and greatly optimized to produce the most meaningful results possible. Implement these six tips into your ad model, and you will likely reach the benefits you are looking for.
