Are you looking to build your presence on social media using Facebook and Instagram Ads? Perhaps you’ve already established your social media presence by posting regularly, but you would like more likes, comments, and shares of your posts. If you own a website or e-commerce store, you may be looking for ways to drive more traffic their as well. All of this and more can be accomplished with the use of Facebook and Instagram Ads! In this article, we’ll explore different ways you can have success with Facebook and Instagram ads and get the most value from your ad budget.
Understand Facebook and Instagram Ads Campaign Type or Goal
One of the first steps in creating Facebook and Instagram ads is to select the appropriate campaign type or goal. At this stage in the ad creation process, you should consider your business goals carefully.
Ideally you’ll want to create some ads for the purpose of establishing brand awareness for your business. For these types of ads, you will focus on impressions and reaching as many people as possible within your target audience. You may also wish to run ads that win you more likes on your business page or profile so you can build your social media presence. If you have an email list, you may run ads specificaly designed to build your subscriber list.
Other ads you run should focus on consideration of your core value proposition. This could be in the form of visits to your website or calls to your business. This will give your customers the opportunity to learn more about your business, review social proof in the form of testimonials or a portfolio, and gather additional details about your offer leading up to a purchase.
Last but not least, assuming you manage an ecommerce store, you should have product centered ads with an emphasis purely on sales. Don’t forget that remarketing with the Facebook pixel installed on your website can help you reach customers who’ve engaged with your product ads previously but haven’t yet made a purchase.
Select Your Audience Carefully
Selecting your audience is extremely important. You’ll want to think about who specifically you wish to see your ad. Consider what interests they may possess, their place of employment or job title, and demographic information such as age, sex, income level and geographic location. Start with the primary characteristic that defines your audience and then narrow your audience further with secondary characteristics.
Get this part wrong, and you could easily burn through your ad budget. If you’re unsure, it’s best to err on the side of caution, and start with a smaller budget. Once you’re campaign has proven itself to be effective, then you can increase the campaign budget.
Clarify Your Ad Copy
Be very particular about your copy. Don’t write any unnecessary details or specifics. Rather keep it concise. Make sure your value proposition is apparent right away, so that someone casually scrolling won’t miss it and also so that it won’t get cut off with ellipses for being too long in certain ad placements. At the same time, avoid using all caps to avoid having your ad flagged for review.
Leverage Video Ads
Using video is a great way to share more details about your product or service than what can be shared in a simple photo. Well crafted video ads are more likely to be shared than image based ads creating additional exposure. They are also more likely to convert sales. Be sure to select a good cover image for your video and write engaging ad copy that will encourage those who don’t have autoplay enabled to watch your video.
Preview Your Facebook and Instagram Ads
Finally it’s important that you choose your ad placement carefully. Before publishing your ad in Facebook Ads Manager, you can preview what your ad will look like in different placement formats such as in the newsfeed, in stories, the marketplace and in search results. You can also choose the option to have your ads optimized automatically across all different placement formats so that your ads will be shown based on where they are most likely to procure engagement. However you’ll want to be sure that your chosen media and ad copy displays properly and that your value proposition can be quickly understood for each placement.
Optimize Using A/B Split Testing
A/B split testing can be easily done to test out the effectiveness of particular parts of your ad. This can be easily accomplished by creating a duplicate of an existing ad. Then simply change one or two elements such as the media or the copy. You can run both ads simultaneously and compare performance metrics to see which version outperforms the other. This will help you to optimize your ads account to be most efficient with your ad spend.
Final Thoughts
In the digital age with so much business being conducted online, it’s increasingly important to stay on top of the competition by using Facebook and Instagram ads effectively as part of your overall advertising strategy. We hope these tips will help you get started on the right track to effective advertising.
If you would like to learn more, we encourage you to book an appointment with one of our marketing managers for a free consultation and allow us to custom tailor an advertising plan just for you based on your specific business goals.
