On August 24, for the first time in history, one billion people used Facebook in a single day.
One billion people who logged in to scroll down their news feed, like a few pictures and posts, reply their messages, and maybe even click on a couple Facebook ads.
Yes, you read correctly — people do click on Facebook ads, as long as they find them appealing and interesting to them. And the responsibility to ensure your ads fulfill these requirements is all yours!
How can you create successful Facebook ads?
First of all, you should choose the type of ad that works best with your campaign and your goal as a small business. In order to do that, you need to be aware of what is the purpose of your Facebook ad campaign: do you want to sell a product? Do you want to increase the traffic on your website? Promote an event? There are different Facebook ads for each of these demands.
Go to your page and click on Promote. Click on Ads Manager and then on the green button which says Create Ad. You are now requested to select the goal of your Facebook Ad campaign:
Let’s say I have a music blog and want to promote a new section I created to celebrate Beyoncé’s 34th birthday: I will click on Send people to your website and then enter the URL I want to promote. Since I am not promoting my blog in general, but specifically the new section about Beyoncé, the latter is going to be my landing page.
Once I’ve entered the Campaign Name, it’s time to target my audience. This is a fundamental part of creating my campaign; choosing the right audience is my chance to ensure that only people who are most likely interested in Beyoncé will find the ad in their news feed.
Select the Location. Facebook Ads Tip: from Beyoncé’s album sales I know that the United States, Brazil, France and Poland are some the countries where people love her music the most. I am therefore going to focus on these countries. Then select the Age of your targeted audience, their Gender, and the Languages they speak: make sure your website is available in every language you select (use a tool such as Bablic in order to translate your website)! You can also dig deeper and select their Education Level, their Relationship Status, and so on, deep targeting is the beauty of Facebook ads and especially useful for small businesses who can’t afford to blow their marketing budgets on a broad audience which won’t really convert into sales.
In the Interests field, I will select all interests that have to do with Beyoncé, such as pop music and Billboard. You can also reach to people who already have some sort of existing Connection to your page (e.g. People who like your page).
It’s now time to select the Budget you would like to set for your campaign. Remember that your budget is an estimate — Facebook Ads won’t necessarily spend your entire budget! Minimum budget per day is $1.00. You can choose between a daily budget and a lifetime budget. Select the latter only if you plan on running your ads for a specific length of time.
Design your ad with an image and a short headline and text that will guide your readers to your landing page. You can view the previews of different formats (e.g. Desktop right column) and select an optional Call-to-Action Button, such as Learn more or Shop now.
What happens now?
Some may naively think that once a good Facebook ad is created and people start clicking on it, their job is done. Actually, the most important part starts now: what people are going to find when they click on the ad is the Landing page, a crucial issue in online marketing, a must for small businesses using Facebook ads. Let’s say your Facebook ad is your business card; your landing page, then, is your first meeting with your prospective client, and we all know first impressions are crucial.
As a small business, whether your goal is to sell a product, get new subscribers to your website, or simply expand your audience, landing pages can make your campaign a successful or a disastrous one.
Here are 3 simple tips for an effective landing page:
- Simplicity: simple equals elegant, and less is often more. Keep it simple and classy, look professional and reliable.
- Information: keeping it short and clean doesn’t mean you should avoid giving your audience all the information they deserve. You can use a text or embed a video in which you describe your product, service or offer. Include a link to your privacy policy if necessary.
- Opt-in or Like: include an opt-in form or a Facebook like box to give your audience the opportunity to stay in touch without any further effort.
Most of all, give your audience what they are looking for. Keep your promise. If you offered a page about Beyoncé’s 34th birthday, that’s what they should find when they click on your ad.
There are two types of landing pages: short copy and long copy. The former relies on an opt-in form (e.g. Enter your email address to receive the voucher!); the latter instead provides a more extended explanation of your offer and may include a story, a testimonial, price comparison for small businesses and so on. Short copy may give you more opt-ins, but long copy may be a more effective way to reach the right audience that is truly interested in your service or product.
In order to make your Facebook ad on-point, you might find Conversion Pixels useful to track your campaign’s effectiveness.
If the goal of your ad is to increase conversions (checkouts, registrations, etc.), you will find this optimization tool very useful: create a pixel through Facebook’s Ads Manager and select the type of action you want to measure. Then install the pixel on your web page (you should copy the JavaScript code where you want to track conversions); if the pixel was installed correctly, you will see it in the Conversion tracking tab on your Ads Manager.
Now it’s time to add your pixel to your ad: this will help you with optimization (it will deliver your ad only to people who are likely to be interested in the conversion) and with tracking (you will be able to see whether your ad was directly successful in leading to conversions). When you create or edit an ad, you can click on Conversion Pixels (Optional) and select either Use Existing Pixels or Create Pixel.
While creating and using small business Facebook ads, we easily use different strategies at the same time and often are not able to pinpoint what’s really effective and what is not.
That’s why the last tool we are going to discuss in this blog post is Split Testing, a simple and smart tool that was successfully used by President Obama himself during both his presidential campaigns!
What did President Obama do? He used two different variations of his lading page for donations; in the first, he showed a picture of himself and his family with the line “Change — We can believe in,” (Button: “Learn more”) while in the second he showed a picture of himself surrounded by multiple invisible campaigners with the line “Get Involved.” (Button: Sign up). The split testing showed that the first variation of the campaign performed more than 500% better than the second in terms of donations!
In order to use split testing, create different variations of your ad, using different pictures, catchphrases, and targeting different interests.
Once you’ve found the design and catchphrase that works best according to the split testing, you can take the testing even further and try changing smaller elements of your advert to find the perfect combination.
After a few of these, you should find the perfect ad for your campaign.
It takes a lot of passion, perseverance, and precision. Once you have all the three Ps, your campaign is definitely ready to take your business to the next level!
Ready to grow your small business using Facebook ads? Head to the Facebook Ads Manager to get started, but not before you share this post if you enjoyed it!
For more small business tips, Facebook Ads tutorials and so on, keep visiting!