Advertising Strategies For Facebook

The power of Facebook’s advertising platform is unquestioned: Despite recent challenges, it is still one of the most important advertising platforms in the world. Using Facebook to market your brand can be critical to your success. According to the latest data from Hootsuite, Facebook still has 2.93 billion monthly active users, making it the country’s most popular social media platform and the 7th most valuable brand in the world.

However, Facebook’s breadth can also create significant challenges for your business: The platform is so robust that you can easily create an ad that wastes precious marketing dollars. So, you have a challenge: How can you maximize the power of Facebook for your business?

Differentiation Is Key

First, remember this: You cannot take an ad that you have run elsewhere — like a local paper or another online platform — and run that ad on Facebook. Just like each customer is different, each advertising platform works differently. Facebook has different demographics, strengths, and weaknesses than other platforms; you must keep these challenges in mind going forward.

As such, you must create new copy using Facebook’s advertising platform. This doesn’t mean that you should avoid branding and use completely new messages. It just means you can’t copy an ad you used in one place and expect identical results on Facebook.

What’s Your Goal?

All Facebook campaigns are not created equal, and there are a few questions you have to ask as you try to determine your specific goal with any advertising campaign:

• What are you seeking to accomplish with your advertising campaign? Are you seeking to build brand awareness? Sell a specific product or service? Give away evergreen content that can serve as a lead magnet.
• What is your budget?
• How does your Facebook advertising campaign fit in with other marketing initiatives?

Answering these questions is critical to properly planning and executing your Facebook advertising campaign. Fortunately, you can execute multiple campaigns tailored to your specific marketing goal or strategy. All that’s required is the right planning.

Who Is Your Target?

With billions of users, you can target virtually any audience profile to see your ad. You’ll need to narrow down your advertisement to whoever is most likely to do business with you or complete the action you need a viewer to take. Here are some important considerations to keep in mind.

Facebook allows you to target users by many demographics, including age, gender, interests, and more. You can also target by online behavior, targeting people who have used your app, visited your website, liked your page, or liked a similar customer page.

Who are you targeting with your ad? Are you targeting people who meet certain demographic criteria? People who have checked out a particular page on your website? Or people who might be interested in your content but just need a bit of a push?

These questions align with a more fundamental concern about your Facebook ad campaign: You must align your target demographic with your objectives. For example, let’s say you were creating a campaign to increase brand awareness among customers who had never heard of you. In that case, you wouldn’t want to target individuals who had your app, liked your page, or viewed your website. Alternatively, let’s say you were further down your sales pipeline than the awareness stage. In that instance, it would make more sense for you to target people who already liked your page and begin to try to move them into paying customers.

What Is in the Ad?

Once you’ve determined your goals and targets, you can begin to work on the content of your ad. This content should flow naturally from your earlier decisions: You already know what you want to say and what products or services you want to push. Now you have to select the right picture and message to work.

A/B testing can be of critical importance here. A/B testing is when you launch two ads that are identical in every respect except one, such as a picture or word choice. You would then use the most successful ad in a broader spend. A/B testing can take the guesswork out of ad creation and ensure you spend your money most efficiently.

Basic principles of branding require that the content of your ad should be at least similar to other ads. This is a core principle of integrated marketing: While the content of your advertisement would be different on Facebook than anywhere else, you at least want to ensure the ad itself aligns with your branding in terms of text, logos, colors, and messaging.

Final Thoughts

When advertising on Facebook, you must ensure your plan aligns with your marketing objectives. This includes completing the necessary prep work, targeting the right customer, creating the right content, and testing to ensure your ad works best for your goals.

At Madison Taylor Marketing, we have the expertise and resources to help you create an ideal Facebook ad campaign. Visit our website, and reach out anytime for more information on how we can help you grow business.