Because of the overwhelming popularity of Facebook, advertising on that platform is a cost-effective, efficient way to spend your advertising dollar. But to be successful, you need to develop a strategy to optimize your campaign. If you’re spending your limited advertising dollars on Facebook ads, 101 Management, Inc., wants to show you the most effective ways to get the greatest yield for your efforts.

  1. Set goals

If you have an unlimited budget, there’s nothing wrong with spending a small fortune on a whole slate of ads, hoping some of them will work. But if you don’t want to throw your scarce advertising money away, you have to know ahead of time what you want your ad campaign—or a particular ad—to achieve, because a single advertisement can’t do it all.

Are you hoping to:

  • increase brand awareness?
  • generate new leads?
  • increase traffic to your website?
  • boost engagement?
  • increase your number of fans?
  • highlight an upcoming sale?
  • increase attendance at an event?

Remember, if you don’t know what you want your ad to accomplish, you won’t be able to judge its success.

 

  1. Define your audience

Once you know what your aim is in producing an ad, you’ll have a better idea of who should see it. What are you selling? If you sell children’s toys online, you’d want a nationwide audience of parents for your product. If you’re a dentist in Miami, FL, you’ll want your ad to reach potential patients in that city and surrounding areas, but you certainly don’t need to pay to reach a national audience. Figure out exactly whom you’re looking to influence with your ad, and target it specifically to that demographic.

 

  1. Find your fans

Thanks to Facebook’s sophisticated analytics, it’s easy to home in on your desired audience. The platform’s Custom Audience tool allows for segmented marketing, offering insight into such demographics as age, gender, location, interests, behaviors, and connections. Concentrating only on fans helps you get the most for your advertising dollar. Studies have shown that targeting ads specifically to your Facebook fans yields not only far more click-throughs but also higher conversion rates, which provides a better return on your investment (ROI).

 

  1. Compose great ads

With Facebook, as with everything else online, you have only a fraction of a second to capture someone’s interest. One common mistake people make is using the same ad across several platforms. You should develop Facebook ads created specifically for that platform. That means it should contain an interesting image that will capture the reader’s attention, and a brief sentence stating what you’re offering, as well as a clear call-to-action (CTA) button.

You’ll also need to consider ad placement. Traditional Facebook ads appeared to the right of the user’s Facebook news feed. This is still an option, but you can also choose to have it appear in the user’s news feed, whether on a desktop computer or mobile device, or on Instagram.

 

  1. Test your ads

Never assume. Just because an ad “feels right” to you, or you’re absolutely certain that it can’t miss, all too often it can. If like most people, you have a limited advertising budget, you’ll want to create the most effective ad possible. You need to perform A/B testing to gauge the effectiveness of such elements as the graphics or images, the CTA button placement, the text you’re using, ad placement, and so on.

 

  1. Evaluate ROI

Because you set a goal at the outset, you have a way to measure the ROI for your advertising budget. If, for example, your goal was to increase sales of your chocolate chip cupcakes, you have to know how many chocolate chip cupcakes you were selling before you ran the ad, versus how many you’ve sold since you began your campaign, against the amount you spent for the ad. This is how you judge the effectiveness of your Facebook ad spend. If your ROI isn’t what you’d hoped, you need to reevaluate your ad, and perhaps redesign it, then perform additional A/B testing.

 

As you can see, there’s more to effective Facebook marketing than just posting an ad and waiting for results. The social advertising and marketing experts at 101 Management, Inc., can help you refine your Facebook ad campaign so that you get the highest return from your advertising budget.