AT the recent Northamptonshire Chamber of Commerce Exhibition, I had the honour of presenting one of the hour-long seminar slots.
Predictably, I chose to enlighten the attendees about running successful Facebook Advert Campaigns. The seminar was rather well received and so I thought I would precis this information for this month’s column.
There are 32 million Facebook users in the UK, you can see why Facebook ads are so popular. So why do so many ads fail? In my experience, it is because the advertiser is not specific enough, we have all seen leaflets or other marketing collateral where every single service or product offering has been crammed in, as the marketer is trying to cover all bases. This just isn’t going to work on Facebook.
Who, What and Why
Treat your Facebook Advert Campaigns as you would any other marketing exercise. The key to a successful Facebook Ad campaign is being highly focused on what you want to achieve, who you are targeting and what message will grab the selected audience.
You need to decide: what are you looking to achieve from the exercise? Will you raise your brand profile? Do you want to sell a product or a service? Who do you want to sell that to? What age are they? What sex? What interests do they have? What associations do they belong to? What relationship status are they? Where do they live? The selection criteria in demographics, interest and behaviours is vast. Use it, play with it and test it.
Test, test, test!
A/B Split testing is where you take a similar audience and split the marketing you show that audience to gauge the performance of an aspect of the advert. With regards to Facebook you may want to gauge the responsiveness to different images, calls to action (which is the wording you use) or even just the place the ad appears. To do a true split test your audience should be the same. We always advise that you set a small budget and test the water, before committing your full budget. This will give you the best possible chance of successful outcomes.
Get Creative!
Facebook recommends you aim to generate an emotive response from your ads. Whether you use an impactful image (like the one at the top of this article) and/or use wording that will grab the attention of the reader, creating an emotional response. Whether that is a positive response to a humorous ad or a negative response pandering to the frustrations of the viewer. Emotive responses create empathy, as soon as you have a potential customer feeling ‘that’s just like me’ or ‘that’s exactly what we need’ then you are hitting your mark.
Close All Loops
My final piece of advice, if you go the trouble and expense of creating Facebook Advert Campaigns, then make sure you have all the loops of the chain closed. So, if you are sending them to buy a product from your website, make sure your site is accessible and optimised for mobile use, the majority of Facebook users (especially for consumer brands) are using it on a mobile device. If you are solving a pain point with a service, then make sure any links to your website take them to a summary of the service offering and please, please, please make sure there is a short form to collect their contact information or another type of data capture like registering for a trial or consultation.