There’s a lot to comb through when it comes to Facebook advertising; it can be a bit overwhelming if you’re not a seasoned expert.
From global organisations to momtrepreneurs, and everyone in between, Facebook is being used as a platform for businesses to connect with their audience and grow their brand.
Whatever size you are and whatever your budget is, Facebook can work for your business.
Instead of spreading yourself thin over endless types of advertising, rather focus on a few effective strategies that will deliver the biggest return on investment (ROI).
Here’s an expert guide of the top 7 Facebook PPC advertising tips for small business:
7. Create Relevant Ads
First and foremost is relevancy; it’s key not just in Facebook advertising, but all types of advertising. Simply put, if your ads aren’t relevant then you’re not connecting with your audience, and you’re wasting your time.
A Relevance Score is how Facebook measures the quality and engagement level of your ads. Your Relevance Score is hugely important because it determines both your cost-per-click on Facebook and how frequently Facebook displays your ad.
Facebook scores your ad after it’s been displayed more than 500 times so if you’ve got a small budget or you manually select your placements it could take a little while.
Facebook gives a Relevance score of 1 to 10 to every ad; a score of 1 represents a poor ad and 10 represents a fantastic ad. The lower your relevance score, the less your advert relates to your audience, and the more you’ll have to pay to keep it appearing.
Facebook gauges this metric on the what it predicts will be your engagement based on the campaign objective and audience depth, rather than the actual engagement.
The first step to raising your Relevance Score is creating a killer ad.
Secondly, adding hugely specific targeting to your ad could help. Whittling down your audience so your ad speaks to the exact needs of a given group means that it’ll be relevant. Lastly, testing your ads by rotating different ads in the same Ad Set will allow you to identify trends. Make a note of these trends and use them to influence your next batch of ads.
6. Create Carousel Ads to Showcase Your Offering
Carousel Ads allow you to display multiple products (or multiple parts of the same product) in one single, swipe-able ad. They display up to 10 images or videos, with 10 different call to actions in one advert, and can link to different landing pages from each panel.
They’re available for most Facebook Ad objectives and are effective on both desktop and mobile.
Carousel ads accumulate click-throughs with low prices per acquisition; they can drive conversions at prices up to 50% less and clicks at prices up to 30% less than single-image link ads.
Carousel Ads are relatively cheap, effective and easier to monitor and manage. Facebook’s insight reports allow you to track which links work best within the ads; Facebook can even optimise those links for you so the ads achieve higher engagements, which increases click-through success by an average of 12%.
They can reach the same audiences as other forms of ads but with substantial differences in cost. They’re proven effective in driving clicks and conversions, and are outperforming regular ads so they’re worth focusing on.
5. Create Page Post Engagement Ads To Expand Your Reach
If you have a fair amount of page likes on your business’s Facebook page, but you’re struggling to reach the majority of your followers then this Facebook PPC advertising tip may be for you.
Facebook’s algorithm only allows your organic posts limited exposure; potentially only 5% of your followers will see your organic posts due to the algorithm. Page post Engagement Ads offer a solution to this problem, because they allow you to reach the people who react to or share your content.
Around 10% of your followers account for around 80% of your overall engagement, so by running these ads you’ll reach your super fans who’ll react and comment on your posts. You also have the option of choosing from various targeting options to get your content in front of new segments that might be inclined to like, share and comment on it.
4. Create Video Ads
Video content can and will help you feed your sales funnel. 30% of mobile shoppers say that video is the best medium for discovering new products, and people gaze five times longer at video content than they do at static posts on Facebook.
Over 500 million people watch video on Facebook every day.
Facebook video ads reinforce brand awareness. Video isn’t just trending on Facebook, it’s an advertising strategy that works to engage and convert website visitors and to encourage engagement across multiple channels.
It’s the video creation itself that might dissuade you from using video ads, but once you’ve done the legwork, the set-up process is as simple as setting up an image ad.
Although Facebook video ads can have the ability to be lengthy, you might be better off keeping it short and sweet if that works better for your business.
Keep It Simple With GIFs
If making a 5-minute video seems like too much work, you can still evoke a reaction with a GIF.
GIFs lie in-between images and videos; they’re basically short videos which play on a loop. They require not nearly the amount of time and resources to create and look great on mobile. Your Facebook GIF ads should be subtle, yet create enough interest to catch your prospect’s eye.
3. Create Lead Ads To Generate Leads
One of the great Facebook PPC advertising tips that experts always bring up is utilising the Lead Ads function.
Lead Ads were created by Facebook so advertisers didn’t have to send prospects to cumbersome mobile landing pages; they’re a mobile-only solution.
They’re an effective way of accumulating personal information like names, job titles, phone numbers, addresses, demographics etc. The lead form opens up within the Facebook app, so your prospects don’t need to leave the platform to provide you with their information.
The contact info that you collect through Lead Ads can be used to create new custom and lookalike audiences, allowing you to adjust your Facebook PPC advertising efforts based on where a prospect sits within your sales funnel or to find new, similar prospects.
They’re a cheap, effective way to maximise your ROI.
2. Audience Targeting
Facebook Remarketing
Remarketing works by following around your prospect with related offers. It’s so effective because it allows you to target users based on an action they’ve already taken.
Remarketing within Facebook means that someone interacts with your brand and they’re tagged with a code to track them. While they’re scrolling through their Facebook feed, your ad pops up to remind them what they’re missing out on.
You have the advantage of knowing how they’ve already interacted with your brand, and in what part of the sales funnel they lie.
Custom Audiences are the most common type of Remarketing. They allow you to target five different user segments which are:
- Customer File: You can match email addresses, phone numbers and Facebook user IDs to existing accounts and target them.
- Website Traffic: You can target people who have visited your website or specific pages.
- App Activity: You can target people who have launched or interacted with your app.
- Offline Activity: You can target people who have interacted with your business in-store, by phone or other offline channels.
- Engagement: You can create a list of people who engage with your content on Facebook or Instagram.
With each of these segments you have the option of adding layered behavioural, demographic and interest targeting to further refine your audience, which is recommended to get the most out of it.
Getting your ads in front of prospects and customers who have previously interacted with your brand is one thing, but layering traditional Facebook targeting on top of those lists can help you reach the most relevant prospects.
Experiment with Lookalike Audiences
Creating Lookalike Audiences allows you to leverage the information you’d use to create Custom Audiences, but instead you’re creating audiences who have similar characteristics, but represent a new group of prospects.
These audiences lie between layered (behaviour, interest and demographic) targeting and remarketing (utilising Custom Audiences).
These prospects haven’t yet interacted with your brand, but they have similar characteristics to those who already have.
You can create new audiences based on your initial audience. They’re best utilised in conjunction with layered targeting; it’s an effective way to control audience size, which you can do manually on a sliding scale from 1 to 10.
Lookalike Audiences give you the opportunity to reach new prospects that are similar enough to your existing audience, but also different enough.
Create saved audiences
If you plan to target similar audiences each time you create specific ads or boost posts from your page, then creating a saved audience will save you time and money.
Saved Audiences are created through the standard Facebook Ads targeting options; you can create saved audiences that you can use each time you start a new ad campaign.
Audience Insights
Audience Insights is a tool that allows you to pull from self-reported Facebook data which is information given by users when they fill in their profiles. As well as third-party data pulled from external partners like household income, purchasing behaviour etc. in order to create new audiences.
You have the option to choose where this data comes from i.e. from every Facebook user, from people connected to your page or from an existing Custom Audience.
Layer interests and behaviours on top of your audience in order to fully refine your insights.
1. Dive Into Facebook Analytics
Facebook Analytics includes an endless number of useful features that allow you to see how prospects and customers are interacting with your Facebook app. You can review metrics from your paid social campaigns on your smart device, add events within Facebook Analytics to generate custom insights and everything in-between.
Knowing what’s working well and what’s failing to get a reaction is paramount to having a successful Facebook PPC advertising strategy going forward. You need to spend time on analysing your campaign’s performance in order to maximise your ROI going forward.
Dive into Facebook Analytics to get real-time data over your entire campaign.
Conclusion
Facebook PPC advertising can be complex and time consuming if you focus on too many elements.
If you’re not a Facebook PPC advertising guru, align your efforts with your available resources, skill level and budget to ensure that you’re doing less well, rather than more miserably.
It can be frustrating if you’re not seeing the results that you hoped for, but don’t give up. These expert tips will give you the insights you need in order to get the most out of your Facebook PPC advertising.
Facebook PPC advertising does work if done right, even for small businesses. You may not have the same advertising budget as large corporations, but you do have the creative ideas that are needed to stand out in a crowd.
Your business is unlike any other; it’s totally unique. Draw from that uniqueness and use it to create engaging content that will attract your audience.
Don’t forget who your customers and potential customers are, make sure your messaging is completely relevant to them to ensure that you get the best results.
If this guide seems too advanced for your knowledge and skill level, consider reaching out to a Facebook advertising agency. They’ll have the know-how to give you the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to implementing a Facebook PPC advertising campaign.