Advertising on digital platforms is the new way of telling about your services and products to the customers. People are seldom away from their phones. Even a 60 seconds traffic signal urges people to take out their phone and check it. Browsing the phone for hours and spending lots of time on digital and social media platforms is now the habit of people from all ages.
Businesses have grabbed this opportunity to establish themselves to sell their products on e-commerce platforms. People were trying to learn about the new concept of selling products and services on the internet but then came Facebook.
Facebook changed the total outlook of a social media platform. It emerged as a platform for bringing people closer, connecting old acquaintances and meeting new people. Then it evolved so incredibly well, that people now use Facebook for practically everything. From telling about their businesses to selling products online, Facebook has become a major e-commerce platform.
Facebook also lets you choose your audience to sell or promote your products. Plus, you have so many specific options to choose from, that your products/services are categorized in the best possible way. From the area you serve in, to the objective of your ad, Facebook asks you everything and then decides your audience. The updates that are bought by Facebook improve its ad quality almost every day. The improvements are done for the betterment of the business, people and the customers.
However, advertising on Facebook is not a cup of tea though. You have to put in a lot of thought, and experiment in every way to reach your target audience. You have to be very selective about the budget you are investing in your ad. At the same time, you have to be cent percent sure about the objective of your ad. Strategy, patience, and experimenting is the key to run a successful ad campaign on Facebook.
So, now that everything is set, let’s guide you through some Facebook ad running strategies that might come in handy for your successful campaigning.
Table of Contents
Create your custom audience
This is the basic step of creating an ad campaign and you need to do your research well before starting this. You need to know the exact audience that you are targeting. Facebook provides you with the tools for you to identify your target audience. Creating your custom audience is knowing where your audience is active. These could be
- The people visiting similar types of product/service pages
- The people who spend time searching similar pages
Let us give you an example:
If you want to run an ad campaign for a daycare or preschool, your target audience will be all the moms with toddler kids. For this, you have to create a custom audience who visit pages for
- Clothes, accessories for kids
- Forums discussing problems about toddlers
- Know about vaccinations and growth for toddlers
- Searching pediatricians
- Assignment help
These are a few examples for you to get an understanding of your custom audiences.
Facebook also gives you options such as location, gender, age, detailed targeting, people who match interests, languages, connections to create your custom audience. It also shows the meter, narrow to broad for the audience you have created. The meter should be in the center for good results and on narrow for the best results. But initially, you can keep the meter in the center range, to get an understanding of your audience.
Target Lookalike Audience
Once you have understood creating your custom audience and take a trial of running your ad campaign, you will know what your lookalike audience is. Facebook helps you in bringing your lookalike audience to you.
Facebook understands your audience once you have created your custom audience. Then it creates a lookalike audience option for you. This lookalike audience is sourced from your source audience- meaning the customers are targeted if they have liked or shown interest in similar products/ services like yours.
For example:
If we consider the above preschool example. The lookalike audience may be people who have bought toddler clothes but you have not mentioned those brands in your custom audiences. Like you have set the custom audience to people who visit Zara Kids, so Facebook lookalike will target an audience in H&M kids too.
The lookalike audience is an optional setting, but you can try it to expand your audience. However, the minimum audience required is 100 and the maximum is 500. So, try setting your budget accordingly.
It may take time to understand the concept of running ads in the beginning. But once you understand the settings and the target audience, you will soon get a hold of it.
Promote Ads in All Placements
This is another wonderful strategy to boost up your ad campaigns. Since the evolution of Facebook, it has expanded its reach to various platforms. Thanks to its updates you can post your ads on multiple placements without individually going and creating an ad for them. Once you create a Facebook ad you can go to the placements options and it will help you in placing your ad on multiple placements.
The placement promotion gives you two options of automatic placements and edit your placements. The first option is always recommended by Facebook. It filters and generalizes your ads. It scrutinizes its database and promotes your ads wherein your audience is the most active.
The second option lets you choose the placements wherein you choose your ad displays. These options include:
- Facebook: Feed, instant articles, in-stream videos, stories, right column, marketplace
- Instagram: Feed, Stories
- Audience Network: Native, banner and interstitial, in-stream videos, rewarded videos
- Messenger: Inbox, stories, sponsored messages
These are the places wherein you can choose where your ad appears. If you are a beginner you could choose automatic placements. But if you are not spending much and keeping a limited budget, you could choose your own set of placements.
Tip: People have run ads on Facebook and Instagram simultaneously leading to successful ad campaigns.
Audience Insights
Audience Insights is a magic tool, as it analyzes everything, from competitors to the target audience. After analyzing it serves all the data to you on a platter. The demographic visuals of the data are then pretty simple to understand. You will get a glimpse of the entire ad market in a few minutes.
The data analysis is about different Facebook users. You can filter your data with the help of many filter options. The initial choice that you have to make is, whether you want data insights of the full audience or the people connected to you.
Once this choice is made, the list of filters appears. This list includes age, gender, interests, pages, language, relationship status, education, work, and the list goes on. You can make your choices accordingly.
Once you have selected your filters, you can count this as one group to get audience insights and then create another one too if you need. This feature allows you to see how your ads are performing and what type of audience is actually responsive.
You can also preset timings for the launch of your ads, selecting your target audience accordingly.
Combine Google and Facebook Ad Strategies
These two giant companies have been ruling the online advertising world for a few years now. Both have their pros and cons. But imagine the boost your ads will get if you combine the pros of both ad campaigns.
Basically, the skeleton is the same, just the platforms are different. You have a target audience to be reached, keywords to be generated and of course, money to be spent.
If a person has to search for something, he googles it. So, you know your target audience on google way better. So, now just create an ad on google and observe the characteristics and objective of your ad. Scrutinize your audience and keep a goal of tracking the live leads.
Now that you have a very good idea of who your customers are; implement the very same filtered data for the ads campaign on Facebook. You don’t have to do the hit and trial run here. You can invest more and have a narrow search to let your ads reach a specific audience. This will easily assure success in your ad campaigns.
Create Dynamic Ads
Dynamic ads too are normal ads but come with less hassle. You don’t have to create ads every time you want to post an ad. You just have to create a template, choose the basic information to be highlighted on your ad, and that’s it!
Facebook automatically takes up images of your products/services and highlights them on the audiences’ pages. These items can be displayed in a carousel, vertical or horizontal alignment. Moreover, these ads are shown to people who have shown interest directly on your page, website or any other source.
These ads cost a bit more than the regular ads, but the constant display of these ads on the customer’s screen tends them to buy or engage more with the product/service.
Research shows that people may not buy the product the very first time they see it, but if it keeps flashing their screen, they are ‘more likely’ to click and buy the product. These psychological behaviors can be put to use to gain the attention of your customers.
You should use dynamic ads only when you have created a custom audience and have a good knowledge of how the ad campaign works. Unnecessary creating of dynamic ads may lead to loss of money.
Your objective, schedule, and keywords should be precise
The objective of the ad is very important, so be 100% sure when you upload it. The objective should be crisp and clear. Also, schedule your ads in convenient timings. You should know when your target audience uses the phone- the night time, lazy afternoon or early mornings.
The timing of the ad is also very important to gain the right audience. You cannot post a yoga ad on a lazy afternoon or late at night. It has to be early morning or daytime. The keywords or the listings should also be narrowed down to the best. The more you know your target audience, the more you are likely to succeed in the ad campaign.
These things may seem little but they are of the utmost importance. The broader the target audience you choose, the less likely your ad is to reach its true customers. When you start an ad campaign, Facebook guides you in the best possible way and it explains every step pretty well. But no matter how specific the instructions are, you need to be well educated to spend your well-earned money.
To conclude,
If you are new to running an ad campaign these things might be confusing for you. But do not worry, with time, learning, and investing a bit of money, you will get used to the ads campaigning in no time. The new advertising world is waiting to be explored, so go ahead and give it your best shot. There may be a few hits and misses but it will all be worth the risk. Once your ads take off and you start getting business through them, there is no looking back.
Facebook is the second-largest ad running the company after Google. Millions of people browse Facebook for their needs and more than half of them actually land up getting what they want.
We hope our tips help you get an insight into targeting strategies to run your ad better. May your ads convert and your business gain momentum. Facebook is a powerful advertising tool, so go ahead and try to use it for the best of your business.
