The essential elements of a Facebook ad
With over 2 billion monthly users, Facebook prides itself on being the most popular social media platform on the planet. Your potential reach when using Facebook is huge, but it’s up to you to utilize the platform wisely. Facebook collects huge amounts of data on its audience and allows you to use this to your advantage when creating ads on Facebook.
Here are our six essential elements of Facebook ads and should be kept in mind with every campaign you may run.
Define your objectives
Before you get started with your Facebook ads you need to evaluate what your business wants to achieve with these campaigns. Facebook campaigns offer great customization when setting up your campaigns which begins from the first step the objective. Facebook will optimize your ads depending on what objective you choose here which is why it’s essential to identify your goal beforehand whether that be, more followers, higher engagement, or sales.
By focusing on the goal you set it will allow you to choose the most appropriate objective getting you the results you want.
Target demographic
Your audience is, of course, vital when it comes to any form of advertising but especially with Facebook ads. At the end of the day, you don’t want to waste your time or money getting your message across to uninterested people. Having a clear idea of your audience is an important step when setting up your Facebook campaign, as Facebook will allow you to then segment your audience allowing you to have a separate message and budget for each demographic.
Your ultimate objective is to create an audience that consists of only relevant users instead of trying to randomly find users that are interested in your product or service. This can be done with retargeting, interest targeting, location targeting and many other targeting options Facebook allows you to optimize.
Content that makes you stand out
Now you know what your target audience and what you want to achieve it’s time to start thinking about the message and content you want to put out there. You know who your message is reaching but how do you get them to engage? Like most other advertising platforms online and offline, space on Facebook ads is limited you don’t want to waste an inch, every bit of content on your ad should be eye-catching, relevant and tell a story that resonates with your audience.
Each Facebook ad will be unique in this sense the content that worked best for you achieving higher engagement might not work for you if you are optimizing for sales and visa versa. Although unique here are a few key rules you should keep in mind when creating the content for your Facebook ads:
- Test multiple formats
- No more than 3 sentences of text
- Powerful imagery
- A strong call to action
Timing is key
The same as your organic content it’s essential to publish your Facebook ads at the right time for maximum visibility and reach.
As a general rule of thumb, the biggest difference in results will occur between the weekend and weekdays however the time of day will also have an impact. You’ll have to figure out what times and days work best for you through testing, it may be best to run your ads constantly when you first begin a campaign after you receive enough data you can begin to optimize.
Balance your budget
One of the most important features to utilize when creating your Facebook ads is controlling the budget, Facebook allows the upmost control over your campaign budget. Even allowing you to add a minimum and maximum spend to each separate ad set of your campaign.
It is possible to even set a cost control on your ads, for example, it won’t spend more than €0.05 for a link click if that’s what you choose. Use this feature wisely though as it may not spend the entire budget you allocated resulting in significantly fewer results than you initially anticipated albeit at a lower cost per result.
Test, test, test
Once you get going with your Facebook ads you’ll want to know whether they are working or not. It’s good to have the knowledge and understanding of Facebook reports and Google Analytics to fully quantify how your ads are performing. This may be the most vital part of your Facebook ads, interpreting the data you received and adjusting your ads based it that data, the importance of this step cannot be overstated.
While Facebook ads may seem simple to understand at the beginning diving a little deeper into the intricacies and customizable options it becomes clear it takes experience and education to become an expert. Looking to get started with Facebook ads? Contact the experts today, Let’s Talk!