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Oct 10, 2021
It's simple to get started with Facebook Ads! All you have to do is touch the eye-catching blue "boost post" button, and you're off! Although, are you really getting the most out of them? That's a lot trickier than it seems.
Ads Manager is a dynamic program that is constantly changing.
Strategies and approaches that worked a few months ago may no longer be applicable. More so, the resources that you had last year may not be available this year.
We've put up eight fantastic Facebook advertising tips to help you manage the ever-changing Facebook ad marketplace and attract your audience.
In addition, we've also highlighted some helpful ideas to help you with your own Facebook marketing initiatives – straight from the top digital marketing agency in Miami!
But first, let's focus on one key question:
Facebook ads offer businesses many opportunities to increase exposure to their local customers, gain new fans, and advertise their services and products.
They are far less expensive and often outperform traditional postcard mailers, printed ads, and radio ads.
Although Facebook hit its largest-ever advertiser boycott in 2020, we cannot deny that it is still “THE” social media platform. Especially given its ownership of Instagram and the ease with which you can promote on both via Ads Manager.
Businesses all across the world use Facebook advertising to promote their products. However, how do you make the most of it?
In this article, we'll look at Facebook advertising at a higher level, where the variety of setup, bidding, optimization, and placement options can make it challenging to get your head around.
Are you ready to discover how to maximize the effectiveness of your Facebook ads? Here are our top eight Facebook advertising tips:
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In 2019, Facebook announced that Campaign Budget Optimization (also known as CBO) would have to be required for all accounts, which means that you must get it as soon as possible.
CBO was a significant, much-hyped addition to Facebook's campaign setting choices. It was released in late 2017 and rolled out globally in 2018.
The feature initially failed to impress those who tested it in terms of outcomes, and many advertisers were concerned about the seeming lack of control they would have over their advertising.
Then, suddenly, advertisers started experiencing great success using CBO. The tool is now a must-have for many businesses' Facebook advertising campaigns.
Essentially, the place where you set your budget moves from the ad set to the campaign level. There have been assumptions that Facebook will distribute the majority of that budget to the best-performing ad sets.
The vast majority of optimization and learning occurs at the ad set level in a standard setup, whereas with a CBO, considerably more happens at the overall campaign level.
CBO has several significant advantages over the conventional campaign setup:
Now, all of this may make CBO appear to be a miraculous fix. However, as with everything else related to Facebook ads, CBO must be tested, carefully monitored, and optimized to achieve the best results.
Advertisers used to gush about how you could laser-target niche demographics on a micro-level.
For small businesses, this may still be the best option. However, this approach has two significant drawbacks for companies with larger audiences: higher CPMs and ad prices due to the limited potential reach and scalability.
At first, earning purchases from an audience of merely 50,000 individuals is fantastic. However, once that audience has worn out, you're back to square one after a week or two. The other concern with micro-targeting is that Facebook updates and developments in 2018 make it redundant to narrow down your audience.
Given enough time, a sufficient budget, and creative products with broad appeal, Facebook's machine learning algorithm can now exceed interests and lookalike audiences.
Using one of the available video view options is a highly successful kind of retargeting (even for businesses without a website or minimal traffic).
These range from users who have watched 10 seconds of your video to various video view percentages ranging from 25% to 95%.
The power of this Facebook advertising technique is that you are employing one of the less expensive, non-conversion objectives. You are also effectively segmenting your audience based on how much of your video they watch.
According to Digital Information World, the average human attention span has decreased from 12 seconds in 2000 to less than eight seconds - poorer than that of a goldfish (nine seconds).
So even if your video is only 15 seconds long, someone watching more than half of it is a significant achievement and a good indicator of more-than-passing interest. Users who watch 95% of your video are a more remarkable indicator of interest.
Suppose your video is longer than 15 seconds. In that case, a view audience of 50% or 75% is your best chance for an optimal combination of audience size and interest level.
If you are on a limited budget, sending your video to many people and then retargeting based on user behavior can be a winning, cost-effective strategy.
With users' attention spans on social media shortening on an annual basis and consumers experiencing bombards of more and more adverts, one thing that you should do is to use "smart targeting" to capture purchases further down the funnel.
Smart targeting is an intent-based and funnel-based retargeting strategy that avoids the typical error of treating everyone the same.
Consider this: which user has a greater intent? Someone who has only browsed your homepage a few weeks ago or someone who has added a product to their cart yesterday?
Don't treat these two users the same by showing them the same advertisements.
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Middle-funnel audiences typically require more of a nudge before purchasing, and presenting them with valuable, non-salesy information or testimonials comes in handy. Those who've added items to their carts, on the other hand, usually need a reminder to buy.
We've all experienced placing items in our shopping carts. Then something else came up that prevented us from completing our purchase. That's why a simple 'Forgot something?' message will do the trick.
If users are still not convinced, offer them a one-time discount — that could be the final push they need to complete the sale.
Whatever messaging you choose for retargeting, be strategic about it. Consider the audience's intent level at each stage and don't discount unduly.
As with practically everything else with Facebook Ads, experiment and see what works. And always rely on the data rather than your own bias!
The next tip on our list is to use manual bidding.
Because Facebook's machine learning is quite smart, the lowest cost bidding, also known as auto bidding, is usually the best choice for advertisers to use.
However, manual bidding can also yield great results under specific circumstances. It can give you additional cost control if you choose options such as "bid cap," "target cost," and "cost cap." You should also note that your ads enter an auction process every time they are eligible to be shown to a user.
An important thing to remember is: Your bid is a critical component of Facebook's auction computations, which determine whether your ad is visible and to what kind of user.
When you choose this option, Facebook suggests a bid for you. A better, more scientific way to do this is to use your goal cost per acquisition and set bids at multiples. For example, if your CPA is $10, then set bids at $10, $20, $30, etc. or in clusters around it (e.g., $10, $12, $14, etc.).
Aside from hiring a local SEO in Miami to help you in establishing an efficient Facebook ad campaign, investing additional time in Facebook Ad Creative may be just as beneficial.
Forget about CBO, broad targeting, and fancy bidding choices. The single most important change you can make to an ad set is to include creative assets.
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Creative is the ad that users see on a webpage, the app, or another digital domain. Creatives can be anything. They can be images, videos, and other formats that get delivered to users.
Facebook used the example of Stance to demonstrate how developing amazing creative can enhance the performance of your ads while also being cost-effective. Stance used pre-existing high-quality, eye-catching product photos. They then turned them into a slideshow, which assisted the company in achieving a 2.4x greater CTR, 1.4x higher ROI, and a 48 percent lower CPA.
Because great creative content may overcome poor targeting, broad targeting is more practical these days. After all, no clever targeting will persuade people to stop scrolling and click on advertisements with lousy creative that aren't engaging.
Facebook also allows you to use multiple creative assets for different placements at the ad level. We strongly advise you to use this feature whenever possible. A little more effort to offer intriguing creative to placements like Stories, in particular, can pay off big time.
Again, this is something to experiment with. Still, dedicated Stories photos in 1080x1920 format outperform standard-sized images that are more evident as adverts – especially with the slightly unattractive ad copy that may appear.
You may also use the new option to use 1080x1080 photos as link posts for Facebook and Instagram feed advertisements. These take up a lot of space on mobile and outperform the previous 1200x628 images in nearly all testings.
Lookalike audiences have always been the hidden weapon of Facebook advertisements. They used to be a go-to for any advertiser.
However, advertisers worldwide had noticed a drop in the performance of lookalike audiences when Facebook stopped directly allowing the use of third-party data due to privacy concerns and the implementation of GDPR.
As previously stated, interests and even broad audiences frequently exceed lookalikes. Even 1% of lookalikes aren't as successful as they once were.
For these reasons, advertisers should use lookalikes with prudence and not expect fast results. Instead, businesses should experiment with lookalike audiences at various levels (up to 8 percent and even 10 percent lookalikes). To find winning ad sets, they should also experiment with stacking lookalikes on top of one other.
Even if it appears to be a chore, the final tip is to study and note Facebook's advertising policies.
With all of the privacy concerns and increased scrutiny of the platform, Facebook is actively cracking down on anyone attempting to exploit the system or offering a poor ad experience to their users. Understanding these is essential for anyone advertising on the network.
Every advertiser gets advertising disapproved regularly, sometimes for a good reason and sometimes because the AI got it wrong. If this happens to you, appeal to Facebook politely; they generally correct any errors immediately. Remember, on the other side is another human being reviewing your advertising, so being nice can go a long way!
To give yourself the most excellent chance of reducing your time appealing to disapproved advertising or even attempting to reactivate a banned ad account, educate yourself with the guideline above and stay on the right side of Facebook rules.
It's never easy to get Facebook advertising right from the start. However, with a bit of research and testing, anything is possible. If you follow these tips, you'll find that the trial and error period is over much sooner than you think. Soon, you'll become a Facebook ad expert who'll be sharing tips with others advertisers.
However, if you still aren’t sure how to go through all this complex process but still want to push through with your first Facebook ad to boost your page or sales, consider working with a digital marketing agency in Miami.
At Digital Resource, we conduct extensive market research to determine the best plan of action for your Facebook ads. Rest assured that we can create clever ad content that resonates with your target audience so we can generate results-driven campaigns that offer an optimal return on your investment.
Contact us today to know how we've helped other small business owners in Miami achieve success and how we can do the same for you.
Think you've got what it takes to hang with the pros at Digital Resource? Check out our Careers page to browse current job openings!
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