What Are Facebook Ads?
Facebook ads now come in several varieties. You can promote your Page, posts on your Page, actions users took, or your website itself. Despite Facebook’s increasing focus on native ads and keeping traffic on its site, you can still be successful in sending users to your website.
There are also several ad formats including images, videos, carousels (multiple images), Instant Experiences, and collections.
Facebook ads are targeted to users based on their location, demographic, and profile information. Many of these options are only available on Facebook.
After creating an ad, you set a budget and bid for each click or thousand impressions that your ad will receive.
Users then see your ads in the sidebar on Facebook or in their newsfeed.
As marketers, our main goal is generally to drive traffic to our own websites. Building your Facebook presence is great, but when you bring someone to your website, you control the medium, and this gives you the best chance of converting to your goals.
Facebook’s other ad options are great for driving engagement and brand awareness, but ads driving users off-site are still the best option for direct response advertisers looking to make a sale.
Types Of Facebook Ads
You can choose between different Facebook ad types and formats to suit their campaign goals, including:
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Image
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Video
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Carousel
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Instant Experience
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Collection
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Lead
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Slideshow
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Stories
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Messenger
The wide range of Facebook ad formats means you can choose the best ad type that matches your business goal. Each ad has a different set of CTAs to guide users to the next steps.
Facebook Ads In 2023
Right now, if you advertise on Facebook, your ads can reach 2.17 billion people — in other words, close to 30% of the world’s population. Plus, the platform’s active user base continues to grow.
Sure, these are impressive numbers. But Facebook is all about getting your message in front of the right segment of those people. The users who are most likely to be interested in buying your products or services.
Keep reading to find out everything from how much Facebook ads cost to how to plan your first campaign.
How to Create An Effective Facebook Ad Strategy
First, you need to understand who your customer is.
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Who are they?
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What does their family situation look like?
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How much do they make?
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Where do they live? (Both geographically and whether or not they own or rent).
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Where do they work?
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How do they spend their free time?
Once you understand who they are, you’ll want to take it one step further and understand how they think.
What keeps them up at night? How is their emotional state and what needs are they looking to have fulfilled? How do they identify themselves? The way they see themselves is often more important than how you see them (even if your view is more realistic).
Next, you’ll want to walk through the average customer journey.
For each customer, this journey may be slightly different. However, they generally fall into 3 categories:
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Awareness Phase (top of the funnel)
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Consideration Phase (middle of the funnel)
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Decision Phase (bottom of the funnel)
Why does this matter to you as an advertiser? Because you will tweak your content, offers, verbiage, and Call to Action based on whatever stage of the customer journey your potential buyer is in.
Finally, you’ll want to break your audience up into segments based on where they are situated in the customer journey. This will allow you to make the right offers to the right people at the right time.
Here are a few examples of potential audience segments:
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Any new customers in the “prospects stage” are entering your funnel as warm leads because they are interested in your product.
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Lukewarm leads visited your website but didn’t engage, you may wish to use Retargeting to remind them that you are there, waiting in the wings, with the solution to their problems.
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Engaged blog readers like your blog and keep coming back for more. They’re more likely to share your content on Facebook or make a purchase.
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Landing Page visitors came to a specific landing page and are therefore probably interested in that particular product.
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Shopping cart abandoners were so close to making a purchase… but something stopped them. They may just need a gentle push to finish their purchase.
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Return customers love your brand. They’ve already purchased from you in the past and come back time and time again for more. These customers can serve as brand advocates, singing your praises and recommending your product to their friends.
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As you learn more about your own audience, you may uncover different segments that will require different messaging.
Now, consider how your Facebook strategy will differ based on who you are advertising to and where they are in their journey (and in your funnel). Consider these possibilities.
When you are looking to attract prospects, you may create ads around your brand or content that will help them understand their problem (and position you as an expert).
As your goal shifts and you want to CONVERT the prospects, you will utilize contests and giveaways, free trial offers, and lead ads.
When it’s time to CLOSE the prospects, you’ll incorporate lead nurturing campaigns, discount offers, sales campaigns, and limited-time offers to encourage them to buy.
Once prospects become customers, it’s time to DELIGHT them with premium offers, referral programs, upsell campaigns, and helpful information about their purchases.
There’s one more step before we dive into Facebook Ad Strategy. It’s called a Facebook pixel and if you want to track your conversion (which you definitely do), you need to install it. The Facebook pixel is a string of tracking dots that you take from Facebook and embed in your website. It then tracks what visitors do when they get to your site. This allows you to better hone your advertisements based on actual user behavior.
Not super techy but still trying to handle your own website? Facebook has step-by-step instructions to help you install a Facebook pixel on your website.
Facebook Ad Strategies
Now that you’ve set up the foundation for strong Facebook Ads, we can take a look at different strategies you might employ with your advertising.
Depending on what audience segments you choose to target, these may not all fit the bill. Make sure to keep all of the audience research you did, in mind as you look through these options.
1. Combine Facebook Ads with Content Marketing
Many companies make the mistake of targeting warm leads with ads designed to turn them into paying customers. You know better. You know that a warm lead is not ready to buy from you yet. Instead of turning them off with straight sales offers, provide them with useful content that answers their questions, and solves their pain points. This needs to be short, interesting, and valuable. Be patient. Eventually, you will convert these warm leads into customers.
How do you do this?
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Create content.
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Share content on Facebook.
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Ask your team members (and maybe a handful of friends) to like and share the post.
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Boost your Facebook post so you can reach a wider audience.
2. Use Giveaways and Contests
Facebook contests needn’t focus on sales all the time. You can instead offer a potential high-value prize to create increased brand awareness that will pay off in the long run by bringing new leads into your conversion funnel. Before committing to a contest or giveaway strategy, review Facebook’s policies to ensure you aren’t violating any of their rules.
3. Use Lead Ads to Build Up your Marketing List
A large Facebook following is great, however, Facebook “owns” your contacts. If they decide to change their algorithm or shut down, you will lose access to those people.
Creating a lead magnet such as a free e-book or course and then running a lead ad, will help you build your marketing list. Consumers can enter their email addresses directly into Facebook (no added steps or friction during which you may lose them) in exchange for their free gift. You can then add their email to your marketing list and include them in your email marketing campaigns moving forward.
4. Incorporate Video Ads
If you’ve been running ads for a while and aren’t seeing the returns you’d hoped for, or you’re brand new to Facebook ads and want to try a few different options and see what works best for your situation, video ads may be just what you’re looking for.
Not only do people love videos, but they also have the lowest effective cost per click (eCPC) compared to other ad types. Need to sweeten the deal even more? Adobe found that “shoppers who view video are 1.81 times more likely to purchase than non-video viewers.”
5. Create Facebook and Google Ads
While many marketers see these platforms as one or the other, Facebook and Google can actually complement each other quite nicely.
Once again, your strategy must depend on your campaign goals and the audience segment you’d like to target. For example, someone searching for a specific product, say a new computer, is likely ready to make a purchase and is simply researching their options. Using the right keywords and creating Google ads around them may be better than targeting warm leads on Facebook with increased brand awareness.
6. Utilize Facebook Mobile Ads
Before we go any further, is your website or landing page optimized for mobile viewing? This means that users will have a positive viewing experience no matter what device they use. If your site is not set up for this, you aren’t ready for mobile ads. Despite the fact that 94% of Facebook’s advertising revenues were generated via mobile, you will be throwing money out the proverbial window if you send potential customers to a site that causes them frustration.
Why Is Facebook Advertising Still Relevant?
Facebook’s market share is unmatched. In the US, they are the third most visited website, right behind Google and Youtube. They were the top-visited social media site in 2021, a spot claimed since 2010. Facebook doesn’t just drive a ton of traffic – they also have the most users of any social media site. Facebook has an estimated 2.7 billion monthly active users worldwide. That’s roughly two-thirds of the US population. Compare this to the social app TikTok, which currently has one billion active global users.
Facebook has a massive market share
The huge user base is a major reason businesses are currently advertising on and will continue to advertise on Facebook. We don’t see that changing any time soon. In fact, BIA Advisory Services forecasts that in 2022, ad spending will reach $173 billion with over half (51%) spent in digital media, primarily Google and Facebook. Our point is: Facebook is massive. If you need a social media platform that reaches a wide audience, converts more customers, and generates new leads, Facebook ads are worth it.
Facebook advertising is still relevant in 2022. Leaving Facebook out of a paid social media strategy means losing out on its huge user base, market share, and technological capabilities. Advertising on Facebook will continue to adapt as new ad formats emerge, privacy and data regulations loosen or constrict, its user base fluctuates, and social media trends come and go. The brands that have thrived are the ones that share high-quality, engaging content and advertisements. With the right expertise and strategy, Facebook ads can move the needle and produce the results companies are looking for.
Tips To Increase ROAS On Facebook Ads
ROAS, or return on ads spent, is the most common metric used to measure the success of any Facebook ads campaign. Here are 10 tips to improve your ROAS for Facebook Ads in 2022:
1. Build a Facebook ads funnel
2. Add more unique creative assets
3. Use Facebook’s dynamic features
4. Update your landing page
5. Turn on campaign budget optimization
6. Know the best bid strategy
7. Discover your best top-of-funnel audiences
8. Remarket to engaged audiences
9. Expand your reach with lookalikes
10. Run A/B tests with Ads Manager
With so many options for optimizing Facebook ads, you easily have over a dozen ways to improve your campaigns and get better results. The difference is truly in the small details.
Start testing each one of these tips for incremental changes per idea. Collectively, you’ll see a huge difference (and a lot more return).
Doubting you can implement all these? Learn more on Facebook Ads with Aesperon Academy’s WSQ Facebook Marketing Course and take the guesswork out of digital marketing.
