Executing a winning ad campaign

If you are serious about acquiring customers via social media then investing in paid advertising should be high up your priority list. In this article, we focus on the most popular social media platform

– Facebook; and tips on how to execute a winning Facebook ad campaign.

Social media for business has evolved massively in the last 10 years. A huge percentage of small businesses now have social media accounts and Facebook continues to be the world’s most popular platform. However, whilst these businesses continue to pump out regular posts, the networks continually update their algorithms which decides who sees your posts. Platforms like Facebook make huge revenues from advertising and want businesses like yours to spend more on campaigns. Therefore, organic (not sponsored) posts are experiencing lower reach and falling engagement on their posts.

We find many business owners can often be sceptical about the effectiveness of Facebook ads. Many have tried out small campaigns themselves before and seen little or no return. It’s very easy to waste a lot of money on paid social ads if you don’t know what you’re doing. However, when executed well, you can target your ideal customers and bring them to the offer, product or campaign or your choice. In this article, we will help you do just that!

Target a Specific Audience

The more specific you can be with your audience, the higher your chances of success. Try creating an avatar that represents a typical customer. What is their background? what are their interests? where are they based? Play around with this and see how you can match this to audience filters on Facebook. There are lots of parameters available to help you home in on your ideal prospect.

Use the Facebook Pixel

You can go further than just creating a custom audience if you install the Facebook pixel to your website. The pixel is a little piece of code that tracks customers and shares analytics between your website and Facebook account. This can allow you to target visitors from your website with Facebook adverts. You can also be specific about who to target from this data. For example, it may be visitors that left items in their cart without completing their order or people that visit your site frequently. The pixel will also allow you to create “lookalike audiences”. A lookalike audience consists of other Facebook users that are a close match to your customers or website visitors. The pixel is a powerful tool to help you target the right prospects with your Facebook ad.

Optimise Your Campaign for the Result You Want

Facebook adverts can be optimised for a variety of outcomes, but you need to tell Facebook what you want the campaign to be optimised for. This is a common mistake we see from many customers, whereby they create a post on their business Facebook wall and then “boost” it out to their audience. In many cases, small businesses want to take prospects from Facebook on to a specific page on their website. However, boost campaigns are optimised for engagement rather than traffic. This may mean that your post receives lots of likes, but many of these prospects don’t click through to your website, therefore wasting your advertising budget. If you create your advert in “ad manager” or “business manager” you can specify your goal and get more of the actions (likes, follows, comments, clicks etc.) that you want. Your cost per engagement will now be based on the action you want customers to take.

Speak Directly to Your Audience

If you are being specific about who you are targeting the advert to, you should have a captive audience. Now you need to make sure you speak directly to them so they know this advert is specifically for them. Think about the language you use and style you write with and make sure it’s in tune with your ideal customer. Read your advert back and try to imagine yourself as one of your customers. Does it speak to you?

Identify Your Customer’s Obstacle

If you want to present a solution to your customer, you first need to identify the problem it’s going to solve. By conducting market research, speaking to existing customers and keeping up to date with your industry, you can find out the issues which your product or service can fix. People are far more likely to respond to an advert if it identifies something that they are struggling with.

Provide a Solution to the Problem

You need to make the Facebook user stop scrolling down their news feed, read your advert, and act on it. So think about the issues you have identified and how you can provide a solution. Don’t concentrate on the features of your product or service, focus on the benefit to the customer. How will responding to your advert help them? Adding prices to adverts can also make them feel more authentic and less spammy. Remember, social media users are bombarded by adverts so keep it punchy and make it worthwhile.

Use an Eye-Catching Image to Promote Your Advert

The image is often the first thing that will grab a prospect’s attention. So many adverts use stock images and its very easy for Facebook users to quickly scroll past these rather forgettable images. If you can, use original photos of your product, your team or examples of your work. Whatever image you decide on, make sure it is bright and eye-catching. You are spending your money on the advert, so you want the image to be memorable. You may wish to use a custom graphic or text on your image, but be careful not to overdo this as it can reduce the reach of your advert. As a rule, no more than 20% of the image space should contain text. Videos tend to perform better than still images on social media so try creating short promotional videos that you can use for your ads.

Create a Reason to Respond Now

For your advert to work, there needs to be a reason to respond straight away. Customers are likely to spend seconds rather than minutes looking at your advert and if they carry on scrolling it will soon be forgotten. Can you provide a special offer or other reason to make them respond to this advert now? Make sure the offer has a limited time period or limited spaces. By creating the feeling of scarcity or urgency, you will leave customers feeling like they may miss out unless they act now.

Facebook allows you to add a call to action button to your adverts to encourage them to respond. Think about what you want to be written on this button. For example, if you are selling a high-value product and there is more information available on your website, using a “learn more” may be more effective than a “buy now” button as they may need more convincing before committing. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer and think about the logical next step that should appear on the call to action.

Creating a Winning Facebook Ad Campaign

So in conclusion, Facebook ads are a great way to target new customers, but you need to execute these well to reap the maximum benefit against your advertising budget. Create a targeted audience based on your perfect customer and if possible utilise the Facebook pixel. Create an ad with an original and eye-catching image (or video). Identify your customer’s pain and then solve the problem for them in the ad – talking directly to them as you do. Make sure there is a reason for prospects to respond now and give them a clear call to action to allow them to convert. If you follow these steps, your Facebook Ad campaign is bound to deliver better results.

A Fresh Approach to Facebook Ads

At FreshOnline we have years of experience running social media advertising campaigns for our customers. We have helped all kinds of businesses varying from training companies, recruiters and physiotherapists to win new customers through targeted ads. If you need help running your next paid social campaign, get in touch. Our social media marketing team would love to find out more and see how we can help.