Karolina Sykut discusses the various ways you can use Facebook and Instagram advertising to benefit your business and gives advice on the best way to target your consumer.
Have you thought about advertising for your business? Facebook and Instagram are two of the most popular mobile platforms - an average user spends over 17 hours on Facebook and 3 hours and 20 minutes on Instagram per month!1
It’s no surprise that these platforms can really help businesses meet their goals. You may have heard that they’re much more cost-effective than other forms of advertising, but if you don’t have experience in digital advertising, where do you start?
Running campaigns on Facebook is not only affordable but also means that your ads can appear on Instagram automatically; you can start advertising & experimenting with only a few pounds a day.
So, here are the steps you should take before publishing your first campaign!
Consider what your business goals are. It’s essential to pick the right campaign objective because this will determine what actions people take when they see your ads. For example, if you want to get more website visitors and increase awareness of your brand, you can select the ‘Traffic’ objective to encourage them to visit. But if you want to get more appointments booked, you might need to set up the ‘Conversions’ campaign. The objective you choose for your campaign also determines which formats and placements are available for your ads.
Your objectives might fall under one of these 3 Facebook categories:
Here’s a snapshot of what campaign objectives are available for you to consider:
Choose this objective... | If you want to... |
Brand Awareness | Increase awareness of your brand |
Reach | Show your ads to the maximum number of people your budget will allow |
Traffic | Drive people to your website |
Engagement (Post Engagement, Page Likes, Event Responses) | Get more people to see and engage with your posts or Page. Engagements include comments, shares, likes, event responses and offer claims. |
Video Views | Promote your videos |
App Installs | Encourage people to install or purchase your app |
Lead Generation | Collect contact details from people who are interested in your business in a mobile-friendly way |
Messages | Start a conversation with your customers in Messenger |
Conversions | Drive actions on a website. Install the Facebook pixel on your website to track and retarget based on actions people take. |
Catalog Sales | Create ads that automatically show people the items you sell that are most likely to appeal to them |
Store Visits | Promote your business to people who are nearby |
Facebook Blueprint Live 2019
Facebook’s powerful tools can help you reach the right audience. The Facebook pixel can measure actions people take on your website and make your campaigns more effective and efficient.
With Facebook pixel you can easily identify new customers and people who have visited your website. Thanks to that little piece of code, it will be easier for Facebook to deliver ads to the people who are most likely to take actions that matter to you, whether it’s booking an appointment or adding a pair of shoes to their cart.
When you create a Facebook campaign, you can select your target audience based on various criteria:
Let’s say you have your goal and target audience in place, what’s next? Probably the hardest part – you now have to reach your audience with attention-grabbing, thumb-stopping creative.
You may wonder, what is the best creative, or what is the most engaging format that will encourage your target audience to perform desired actions? There’s no straightforward answer – you have to test multiple creatives and various messaging to see what content and which formats resonate with your audience!
When working on the creative, try to:
Ensure you have a single, clear call to action that drives the objective you’re looking to achieve on Facebook and Instagram.
Then, what formats can you choose from? When kicking off your campaigns, try to use multiple ad units to test as much as possible in the early stages of your advertising efforts - it will help you to define your future strategy! Here are the creative formats available on Facebook and Instagram:
The truth is, paid social advertising is a mix of planning, analyzing and most importantly, testing! Both platforms are always changing and what works today, might not be your strategy tomorrow. On the other hand, these platforms are super flexible therefore you’ll definitely get some valuable insights and most likely, new customers!
1Nielsen Digital Landscape Report 2020