You’ve read our blog post, Decoding & Improving Your Social Media Metrics, and now you want to start diving into paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram. A good choice as they are essentially the same ad and can be easily created.
But now you’ve logged into Ads Manager for the first time and are thinking, “Where do I even begin?” Ads Manager is not intuitive. There is a lot there. Take it one step at a time.
Just as with any other paid advertising opportunity, Facebook Ads can be daunting; you don’t want to throw money away on ads that don’t perform. However, one of the things we love most about paid social media advertising, is that you can monitor them in real-time and turn them off if they don’t perform.
Ready to take a little risk and dive in? Let’s get started!
Set an objective.
Are you trying to increase the number of page likes? Drive traffic to your website? Spread the word about a new product or service? Get people to give you their email addresses?
Knowing your goal will help you determine your objective and what kind of ad you will want to create.
#TeamStrategyTip: Brand awareness is going to be your least expensive objective, followed by actions like clicking on a website. Conversion, someone giving you their email address or purchasing something, is going to be your most expensive objective.
Establish a budget.
How much are you willing to spend? You don’t need to spend a lot to see great results on social media advertising.
We typically recommend our clients start from $5/day to $20/day depending on your budget and objective. You can set a lifetime budget which will allow you to only spend up to that amount. Or a daily budget that will charge you that amount every day until you stop the ad or add an end date.
#TeamStrategyTip: Be careful with the ongoing daily budgets. You need to be checking them often to make sure they are performing and that you aren’t spending $20 for a like or click!
Choose your audience.
In addition to the ability to stop a poor-performing ad early, we love that social media advertising allows you to customize your audience. From uploading your email lists to drawing circles around particular locations, you can do so much with custom audiences. Your audience can be very specific or very broad. We recommend adjusting based on Facebook recommendations and clearly defining an audience that is specific enough to reach a good amount of people but not so broad that your conversations are not relevant to your ideal client or customer.
#TeamStrategyTip: If you have a robust email list, upload it! This will allow your audience to not only see your content in the emails you are sending out but also on Facebook and Instagram. This is a great way to get very targeted ads in front of your current or soon-to-be clients.
Pick an ad type.
There are many different types of ads to create. You can create a photo ad, a carousel ad that has multiple photos, or a video ad. Video ads that are under 30 seconds perform quite well. Try them all and see which type resonates with your selected audiences.
#TeamStrategyTip: The more your ad doesn’t look like an ad, the better! Make it look like a light post. Say something witty and fun, add a dynamic photo, and throw in a call to action. Keep it simple, bright, and fun.
Measure your results.
How much did it cost for a page like? A click to your website? How about a landing page view? Review your results and make necessary adjustments. Perhaps your next step is to A/B test an image or try some new copy for the headline. Switch out your call to action button or change up your audiences. Whatever you do, only change one thing at a time so you know what change was the change that worked.
#TeamStrategyTip: Before hitting publish you will be able to toggle over and review all formats of your ad. The beautiful part of Facebook ads is they will also show up on Instagram! You just need to connect your accounts. Depending on what type of ad you created, it will show you all the ways it will show up in each feed and on each platform.
Seems easy enough, right? The best thing to do is take $50 to $100 and try it out. If you still have questions after that, give us a call. We would love to help you with an advertising strategy within your budget.