How To Create Effective Facebook Advertising

One of the main aims of promoting a business page on Facebook is to generate awareness of your products or services.

Ensuring that your advert is effective means promoting it to your relevant target audience. Using web personas you’ve already created makes this task much easier as you already have an idea of what your target audience looks like.

Facebook advertising allows users to filter towards certain user demographics and this is where our web personas can come in handy. An example of this could be a business promoting football at a sports centre. Aimed at males aged between 18-25, living within a certain distance of the sports centre. By filtering the demographics of a particular ad set, this will enable the sports centre’s ad to appear on the Facebook feeds of their target audience. Through an ad set, you can also exclude certain people from viewing your ad. For example, excluding people from a certain location.

How do I target my audience on Facebook?
Once you have created a new campaign under a Facebook page, you can create an ad set. Within this ad set, you can edit the demographics of your target audience. This gives you the flexibility to target the age group, gender, and location that your ad is aimed towards.

Facebook advertising not only allows you to aim your ads at target audiences by demographics, but also by their interests and behaviours.

Aiming your ad towards Facebook users with the same interests as what your business is offering, will increase the likelihood of your page being seen. User behaviour can also be used to reach users. For example, previous purchase behaviours and device usage.

How do I target user interests and behaviours?
When creating your ad, there is a section that allows you to include categories of interests that the ad could be focused around. For example, for an ad that is advertising something sport related, the interest could be categorised as ‘sport’. This ad would be prioritised to be delivered to users who have liked a page that matches that category.

Facebook then gives you the option to make your interest more specific by suggesting some categories under the interest already you have provided. For example, a sub-category under the interest ‘sport’, could be ‘tennis’.

It’s important that you regularly monitor the performance of your ads to make sure it’s performing effectively. It also allows you to see where adjustments and improvements need to be made to an under-performing ad. 

How do I monitor the performance of my ads?
If you click on a particular campaign, you can then view the performance of individual ads that are within it. From this you can make changes to your ads, such as:
– Your audience
– Your budget, and
– The content

Understanding your way around Facebook ads and how it works is very useful. It means that you won’t have to create a completely new campaign to change ads. But can just make appropriate changes to improve already existing ads.

Getting a Facebook ad perfect could be a timely process and you’re unlikely to get it spot on the very first time. Understanding what content you should include, and who you should target the ad towards, can be trial and error. But over time the data will show you what performs best and your business will see positive results.

Facebook ads allow users to choose interesting and different formats for image and video content. Test different kinds of images such as ones featuring just the product, people interacting with the product or the end result that your product gives them. 

For example, a company that sells lawnmowers could have images featuring just the lawnmower on it’s own, someone using the lawnmower or a happy family playing or a neatly cut lawn. Without any testing or customer research it can be hard to tell which of these images will make for the most effective form of Facebook advertising.

How do I choose an ad format?
When creating your ad content, you can choose a particular format. The formats available are:
– carousel ads (which can include two or more images or videos, and allow users to scroll across to see a slideshow)
– a collection, or
– a single image or video

When creating ads, you should make full use of these options as it’s a great way to make your ad more appealing and professional to the audience. Choosing the right format can help enhance the way that users view your advertisement.

Different formats allow businesses to show off their products using different imagery.

In order to keep users engaged with your page, you need to constantly be producing content and be active on Facebook.

Producing content and engaging with your audience regularly through a variety of key communication channels is essential to encourage brand awareness and customer conversion. By keeping your Facebook page updated you’re able to show your customers that you’re an active business that interacts with their customers, not just a faceless business.

How do I keep my Facebook Page updated?
You can do this by creating a detailed communications strategy and plan for your business. This strategy should be informed by the needs and expectations of your target customers, their journey, your competitors and thorough, invaluable insight into your business’s marketplace.

If your budget is limited and a communications and strategy plan is out of reach, start by simply creating a content calendar which shows you what’s being posted, to which channel, on which day. By doing this and sharing this with the whole company, staff members will start to buy in to your social media plan and help to promote your posts to their network.