As Facebook has continued to grow, so has its potential for marketing—as evidenced by the recent news that over 4 million advertisers now use the platform in an effort to reach their customers.
Of course, with so many businesses big and small tapping into Facebook advertising to increase their digital footprint, you may be left wondering how you could possibly generate good results for your brand in such a crowded field. Well, fear not! I have three essential tips that will help you separate yourself from the competition and generate a better ROI from your Facebook advertising campaigns.
Get more specific with your targeting
Facebook’s in-depth targeting technology is one of the biggest reasons it has become such a popular advertising platform. After all, the more closely you can tailor your content to reach a specific audience, the more likely you are to get real results from any type of advertisement—and Facebook has really taken that to the next level.
The most impressive aspect of Facebook’s targeting feature is that it allows you to go much deeper than standard demographic data, such as age or location. Thanks to its user data options, Facebook enables you to even target users based on their interests, the device they use, and even the speed of their network connection.
Of course, you need to target your audience the right way to ensure you get the best results. For example, Facebook’s recent addition of “Detailed Targeting”—also sometimes referred to as “must also match”—helps you avoid the common pitfall of targeting too broad an audience by selecting multiple interests.
As Social Media Examiner explains, this “must also match” feature narrows targeting by limiting your target audience to users who likes Topic A, but also must like Topic B—as opposed to targeting all users who like Topic A and all who like Topic B. The more narrowly you can segment your audience with this and other targeting features, the better engagement you’ll see.
Test multiple versions of your ad
No matter how much you hone your ad’s copy and images, you can never really know for sure how effective it will be until you launch it. Thankfully, you don’t have to limit yourself to a single ad for your Facebook campaigns—especially since for all you know, your office’s favorite ad option could turn out to be less effective than the one you originally pegged as second-best.
As Kissmetrics explains, you can actually create multiple versions of your ad to be served out to your targeted customers, and “Facebook will optimize ad serving based on performance and your conversion goal.”
In other words, if you make three versions of your ad, with each ad featuring slightly different copy, Facebook will allow you to use all three as part of the same campaign. As Facebook collects data regarding the performance of the different ads, it will automatically prioritize the ad that gets the best result.
Not only does this help you reach your conversion goal; it will also enable you to better evaluate which copywriting techniques or graphical design elements are the most effective in generating clicks so you can do even better on future campaigns.
Don’t forget about the landing page!
It can be tempting to funnel all your Facebook advertising dollars into creating a great-looking ad that will generate a lot of clicks. And there’s nothing wrong with allocating some of your resources to crafting great-looking images or graphics that will catch your audience’s attention and get them to click on your content.
But as Andy Karuza warned in an interview with Mashable: “An ad might get a good click through, but [if] for whatever reason people don’t buy when they get to the other end; that’s not good. Don’t mistake a good CPC for actionable and affordable business results.”
As good as it is to get high clickthrough rates on your Facebook ads, what your customers do after they arrive at your landing page is even more important. After all, this is where they’ll actually convert into leads and paying customers.
Because of this, you should put just as much effort (if not more) into making sure the images and copy on your landing page do a great job of making a powerful appeal to your potential customers. As with your Facebook ads, it may be worth conducting some A/B testing to see which landing pages get the best results, though you will need to analyze and optimize manually or with another program.
As you fine-tune your landing page, those Facebook clickthroughs will turn into actual customers and provide a true return on investment.
Conclusion
While these aren’t the only elements that go into crafting a successful Facebook ad campaign, these frequently-overlooked steps can make all the difference in your ability to generate a meaningful ROI on your social media efforts.
As you use more efficient targeting, make use of A/B testing, and create a focused, appealing landing page for your Facebook campaigns, you’ll no doubt start to see real results.
