This third part of our Facebook Success Summit Series addresses best practices for Facebook Advertising. We participated in a session led by social media expert Chris Treadaway, author of the book Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day. Here we discuss some learnings from Chris as well as some best practices we’ve learned through our own Facebook advertising campaigns.
If you aren’t already advertising on Facebook, we think you should be! Facebook advertising can help obtain new fans as well as market and promote products and services. If you’re new to advertising on this platform, here are 4 tips to help launch a successful campaign:
1. Be Original
Facebook is crowded with content. Aside from other ads, when advertising on Facebook you’ll be competing with status updates, photo albums, break-ups and make-ups. As a business, your advertisements need to stand out amidst this other content. No one is going to click on a boring advertisement; keep it simple and be imaginative. With Facebook, we’ve found success in being relevant, targeted and engaging.
2. Images are Important
When selecting an image for your advertisement, keep in mind that you’ll need to stand out amongst the clutter. In our experience, a simple logo or graphic doesn’t resonate as well as colorful photographs that catch the eye. Making the switch from using logos to bright, compelling images increased our CTR immediately with one client.
3. Target Creatively
The luxury of Facebook advertising over any other advertising platform is the ability to target not only on demographics, but also on interests specified by users. Try targeting your fans’ friends, your competitors and any other group or interest you can think your target audience might be interested in. This is where you can get creative. If your target market is college women, for example, you can target by college, age, gender and any other demographic you typically consider. Then think about what your target typically likes—this could be certain stores, musical artists, even a particular magazine. The options are endless when it comes to targeting, so experiment and optimize with each ad you create.
4. Utilize Your Options & Stay Current
Though there are multiple advertising formats available on Facebook, be sure to utilize the ones that help you achieve your campaign goals. This is another area where testing comes into play; while some of our clients have seen success with “sponsored stories,” others have experienced better results with traditional Facebook format advertisements. As Facebook’s advertising platform becomes more robust and available formats continue to evolve, be sure to stay updated on platform changes.
The opportunities with Facebook advertising are seemingly endless and, if you follow the above best practices, you’ll be well on your way to reaping the benefits they offer. However, as with any social media strategy, remember to always operate with your business goals in mind. If you’re not getting the right results for your firm’s underlying objectives, your social results won’t have a measureable impact in the long run.
Stay tuned for more topics in our Facebook Success Summit Series!
