Facebook is the largest publisher of ad impressions that are put on display online. The critical mass of more than 901 million active users monthly and 55% penetration is enough to draw the attention of marketers.
Here is how you can run a Facebook advertising campaign successfully
Establish Your Goal and Traffic Destination
While advertising on Facebook, the first step that you must take is establishing your goal and traffic destination. Creating a successful campaign involves devising a strategy for targeting the right audience and crafting the perfect call to action to measure the returns. Before you begin, you need to know where you want to reach and how.
Your goal could be any of these – brand awareness, new product launches, sales, and various direct response activities. The platform enables you to segment users into unbelievably detailed user profiles, which helps you in targeting them precisely.
The social elements on Facebook are effective for promoting activities such as likes, comments, shares, and event RSVPs. These activities would help grow your fan base, multiply your message reach and influence brand sentiment. Facebook campaigns can also effectively drive customer engagement and loyalty.
Create a Successful Facebook Advertising Story
Forty, an AZ-based marketing agency, increased brand awareness among local marketing and design professionals in an effective, low-cost manner. They ran standard ads on a CPC basis featuring information related to team members along with a soft call to action (e.g. “Meet Jim Castling”). The campaign garnered a few clicks. The agency was able to target a demographic at a very low cost. Several people approached the featured team members for various locally organized campaigns.
Select Ad Format
You can choose from an ad format that includes standard ads, page post ads, and sponsored stories.
Standard ads get displayed in the right hand margin of various pages, including Newsfeed/homepages, company Facebook Pages, Group pages, and individuals’ profile pages.
Page Post ads are also displayed in the right hand margin, though the size and the imagery placement differ.
Sponsored Stories are meant to enhance the ‘social sway’ effect.
Choose Target Audience
The key to successful Facebook advertising lies in microtargeting of your marketing message amongst precise segments of users. A massive amount of demographic, psychographic, and sociographic user data makes this possible. The myriad targeting options include geography, demographics, workplace and education, broad interests, precise interests, connections etc.
Go for Scheduling and Bidding
Here are some useful tips for this final stage:
- Run campaigns with multiple ad creatives.
- Interchange ad creatives every 3 to 7 days.
- Set optimal timing of your ad campaigns.
- Select specific start/end run dates and times.
- Pause between campaigns to appear fresh.
You also have to make a choice between cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand (CPM) impressions basis. With CPC, you are charged for the clicks received by the ads, while in the case of CPM, you have to pay each time your ad is displayed.
If you are keen on testing the performance or getting conversions, CPC will be a better choice.
If you are focused on creating brand awareness, consider CPM. Facebook offers a ‘suggested bid’ range, although it is up to you to take the final call regarding the maximum amount for the bid.
Wrapping Up
Facebook requires you to rethink your assumptions about marketing. You get a bevy of tools that you can deploy to attain your marketing objectives with aplomb.
