Like many things, digital marketing is always changing. Therefore, it’s important to stay on top of the upcoming changes and tailor your marketing strategies to improve your business. This article will specifically address Facebook advertising and performance, ad campaign optimization, and advanced ads.
Table of Contents
What Is Facebook Advertising?
The very definition of Facebook advertising refers to online advertisements that are created and published on Facebook to be targeted to its users. Facebook Ads are a type of display ad.
You can’t advertise on every social media platform out there, so it’s important to choose wisely. Here are some reasons to use Facebook advertising.
- Your audience is on Facebook.
- Facebook Ads are cheap.
- The targeting capabilities of Facebook are exceptional.
- Facebook advertising is effective at pushing on-the-fence leads down the funnel.
- Facebook allows you to find new qualified leads easily.
Your Audience Is on Facebook.
According to Wordstream, Facebook has 1.49 billion members worldwide and 22 billion ad clicks per year. Facebook’s user base is larger than the population of China! Facebook is providing businesses with the largest advertising opportunity since Google’s search. That being said, your audience is out there!
Facebook Ads Are Cheap.
Facebook Ads aren’t free, but they cost a fraction of other online marketing channels. You should be sure to set reasonable daily Facebook budgets so you don’t exceed what you’re able to spend.
The Targeting Capabilities of Facebook Are Exceptional.
Facebook has many types of ads that make options for targeting your audience endless. On Facebook, you can target your audience by behaviors, interests, demographics, connections, location, and age. Local businesses should take advantage of location targeting on Facebook.
Facebook Advertising Is Effective at Pushing On-the-Fence Leads Down the Funnel.
Facebook offers a custom audience feature. This feature allows you to target people who’ve already visited your site or shown interest in your product or service at some level.
Facebook Allows You to Find New Qualified Leads Easily.
After you’ve found an audience that loves your business and converts, you can clone that audience. This results in Facebook reaching new people who have similar interests to your initial audience to bring in others who may be interested in your business.
Facebook Ads Targeting Changes
Facebook will be making changes to four main targeting categories. These include:
- Health causes, for example, breast cancer
- Sexual orientations such as LGBTQ
- Religious practices and groups like the Catholic Church
- Political beliefs and social issues, causes, organizations, or figures. For example, a political party or politician
Campaigns can still keep delivering to impacted target audiences for now. Also, these changes will not spread across Facebook’s parent brand, Meta’s, ecosystem.
For ad sets created prior to January 19th, it is possible for you to make campaign-level edits, such as budget amounts or campaign names. The targeting won’t be impacted until March 17th.
Here are some ideas for ad targeting.
- Create saved audiences for Facebook Ads.
- Build custom audiences for Facebook Ads.
- Make look-alike audiences for Facebook Ads.
- Improve campaign performance.
Because of privacy updates on Apple when iOS 14.5 was released, targeted advertising changed. Apple implemented stricter privacy features. The “Do not track” option allows users to decide whether to allow apps to track their activity. Most iOS users opted out of Facebook and other apps to track their activity, which is why Facebook advertising had to change. To address these new privacy changes, Facebook had to limit some of the platform’s most lucrative targeting options.
Facebook Performance
How do you know if your Facebook Ads and campaigns are performing well and are successful? Here are some ways to analyze and assess your Facebook advertising campaigns.
- Assess awareness.
- Evaluate engagement.
- Monitor the click-through rate (CTR).
- Track the number of referrals from social media.
- Check the bounce rate.
Assess Awareness.
When you’re running social media ads and campaigns, you want to know how they’re performing. There are two key performance indicators (KPIs) you can measure:
Reach: This refers to the number of people who saw your content.
Impressions: The number of people who saw your content, even if it was seen by the same person multiple times.
These metrics vary based on your campaign and goals. Showing the same ad to the same audience multiple times can get annoying. So much so that people will begin to click “Hide Ad.” This can make your campaign more expensive because the algorithm thinks your ad isn’t relevant.
Evaluate Engagement.
Engagement is how many times someone interacts with your post. This includes:
- Likes
- Shares
- Comments
- Clicks
High engagement rates tell social advertising algorithms that your content is relevant and engaging. This gives these platforms a greater reason to display the ad to your audience. For higher engagement, make sure your content is high quality.
Monitor the Click-Through Rate (CTR).
Click-through rates are an indicator of a high-quality ad. The more people who click your ad, the more relevant and engaging it is. A high CTR can also be a budget saver.
Track the Number of Referrals From Social Media.
You can use Google Analytics to track the number of referrals. The number of clicks to social media ads or posts is different from the number of people who actually visited your website.
Check the Bounce Rate.
From social media, is your audience clicking on your CTA such as “Visit Website?” If they do, are they spending time on your website and engaging other pages? Or do they quickly click the exit button on your site without spending any time?
If people are just clicking the exit button or only briefly exploring your site from social media, this means you’ll have a high bounce rate. Tracking bounce rate helps you determine what type of content you should be sharing on social media.
High bounce rates don’t just affect your social media. They also affect your overall SEO and marketing efforts.
Ad Campaign Optimization
Most businesses these days invest a lot in digital marketing and a solid online presence. Investing in the best ad campaigns won’t always cut it. You have to put a lot of effort into getting your ads to reach a wide audience and convert them to customers. To accomplish this, you must optimize your ad campaigns.
Ad campaign optimization refers to the steps you can take to improve the performance of your ad campaigns. Your campaigns will be more appealing by staying customer-focused as opposed to just brand and product-focused.
Some reasons to consistently optimize your ad campaigns include:
- Create multi-channel campaigns.
- Track campaigns for insights and make real-time adjustments.
- Create an ad strategy that corresponds to your buyer’s journey.
- Do multi-media planning for your ad campaigns.
- Keep a centralized product catalog for use in your ad campaigns.
Create Multi-Channel Campaigns.
Multi-channel campaigns refer to creating campaigns across many channels, such as a physical store, website, social media, mobile, PPC, and email. Essentially you’re trying to reach your customers everywhere.
Some advantages of multi-channel campaigns are:
- Using media across different channels will save time and money
- Offering customers a seamless experience as they navigate between channels
- Opportunity to reach a wider audience
Also, to optimize your campaign, you must:
- Understand your audience
- Set campaign goals
- Determine key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure your progress
- Create consistent messaging optimized for each platform
- Use Google Analytics to track and measure performance
Track Campaigns for Insights and Make Real-Time Adjustments.
Track your campaigns in real-time using tools such as Salesforce to keep tabs on your ad campaign’s performance. Setting relevant campaign KPIs helps you understand:
- Keyword performance
- Media and content types that resonate with your audience
- Audience behavior
- Channel attribution
Create an Ad Strategy That Corresponds to Your Buyer’s Journey.
As previously mentioned, be sure to stay customer-focused. Your ad campaign strategy should correspond to your buyer’s journey.
The buyer’s journey describes the buyer’s path to purchase. The three stages of this journey are:
- Awareness stage
- Consideration stage
- Decision stage
Do Multi-Media Planning for Your Ad Campaigns.
Media has an important impact on your ad campaigns. You may want to use different types of media for one campaign to ensure an engaging and effective customer journey. For instance, you may design a campaign with a combination of an ad, landing page, and YouTube video. Creating a cohesive flow across these platforms is key to a successful campaign.
Keep a Centralized Product Catalog for Use in Your Ad Campaigns.
Using a centralized product catalog will help with optimizing your ad campaigns. This catalog is an online database of all your product inventory with pricing and descriptions. A centralized catalog allows you to set and display product pricing, which can easily be used in your ad campaigns.
Advanced Ads
Advanced Ads is a free lightweight plugin that lets you set precise ads that you want to show to specific users and on what pages.
The Advanced Ads plugin allows you to assign ads on specific placements and embed them automatically to defined locations in your posts. For example, placing an ad before or after every third paragraph on your page.
Advanced Ads are great for beginners and advanced users. Some pros include:
- Placement flexibility
- Excellent management
- Powerful add-ons
- Great support
This is only a brief overview of Facebook Ads and ad campaigns. How will your ad campaign efforts improve? What results do you hope to see by the time next year rolls around?
SEO Design Chicago is a full-service digital marketing agency. We offer many services, such as digital advertising. Some platforms include Facebook advertising, Bing advertising, Google Ads, Instagram advertising, targeted display advertising, and PPC.
FAQ:
- Why should you use Facebook advertising?
- What are some Facebook Ads targeting changes?
- How do you analyze and assess your Facebook performance?
- Why should you optimize your ad campaigns?
- What are Advanced Ads?
Contact Us Today!