Five tips to maximise your Facebook advertising

Social media marketing can be one of the best ways to promote your business, and Facebook remains one of the most popular ways of advertising online. Whether you want to build a new audience, reach customers, or strengthen your brand, the right planning makes it possible.

There are plenty of ways to get social marketing wrong, but as long as your strategy follows some of the basics you should see a healthy return on investment. The digital team at Matrix share their five top tips for getting the most out of your Facebook marketing.

Good targeting

One of the biggest selling points of social media advertising – particularly on Facebook and Instagram – is the incredibly detailed targeting options. Demographic targeting based on location, gender, and age range is fine but by drilling down to interests, life events, and lifestyle, you can build custom audiences that make sure your adverts reach the right people. You can target your adverts to people who’ve engaged with your Facebook page or website. Or people who’ve signed up to your mailing list. Or even lookalike audiences – where Facebook analyses your source audience and finds people like them. Advertising has become such a big part of Facebook that you need to make sure to cut through the noise to reach the right people at the right time. Luckily, Facebook gives you plenty of options to help you do just that.

Split testing

Split testing basically means splitting your advert into groups to see which performs best. Do people respond better to stylised photos of your product or photos of people using it? Does a “Message Us” button generate more clicks than a “More Info” button? Split testing is how you find out. You can also use split testing to find out which sub-group of your audience is generating the best return on investment. Rather than just targeting your whole audience, you can break them down into your buyer profiles and see which one responds best to your adverts.

The main thing to remember with split testing is to only test one element at a time. If you change the image, call-to-action button, and message across each advert, it will be impossible to know which element incited the reaction.

Getting the landing page right

Getting people to click on your advert is only step one of the process. Once they arrive on your website you should make it as easy as possible for them to take the intended next step. If you’re advertising red shoes for women, there’s little point sending customers to a webpage which is selling black shoes for men. Make sure that you send people to the right destination. If the webpage doesn’t exist yet, it should be built as part of the campaign.

Using strong visuals/video

When it comes to social media, engaging visuals win out over text-heavy adverts every time. Remember, you’re competing for premium space so you need to grab your audiences’ attention at first glance. Bright colours, people-focused shots, and value proposition always work best – but split testing can help you if you want to fine-tune your content. However, if you are going to use text in your images or graphic, too much can result in Facebook reducing the visibility of your ad. Once you hit the ratio of 20:80, it becomes harder to get your adverts seen at all. Luckily, Facebook has a handy tool that lets you check your text to image ratio and highlight any issues before you run your advert.

Remarketing

If you’re running Facebook adverts – or have an agency doing it for you – you should already have a Facebook pixel on your website. This little piece of code not only lets you follow traffic from your Facebook ads to your website, but it also lets you target your Facebook adverts to people who’ve been to your site and performed or not performed a certain action. If people have been to your website and bought a blue t-shirt for example, you may want to target them with adverts for a matching jacket. Or, if they’ve been looking at your blue shirts and not made a purchase, perhaps you want to target them with an offer? Once your audience reaches the right size, the possibilities are virtually limitless!

Facebook advertising is an excellent way for businesses, old and new, to boost their profile and generate sales. There’s a lot to think about when you create a Facebook advertising campaign, but getting it right can pay dividends. If you’d like to chat Matrix about how we can help you maximise your Facebook advertising budget and results, get in touch!