Facebook Ad Campaign Strategy

Facebook is still the preferred place for 97% of marketers to run paid ads for a reason. After all, Facebook boasts the largest user-base of any social network and one of the most engaged.

In other words, if you have an audience of any kind there’s a non-zero chance they’re active on Facebook already. Combine that with the fact that Facebook’s ad targeting is insanely in-depth and it’s crystal clear why your business should still be on board.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Facebook ads are foolproof on their own. In this Facebook advertising guide, we’ll break down the Facebook ads best practices and what you need to know to get started.

Define your Audience

Long before you ever even think about logging onto Facebook, you need to have a strong understanding of who your audience is. How old are they? What level of education do they have? What’s their income, their location, and their family life like? What are their pain points, their motivations, and their biggest needs? Create fleshed-out buyer personas, using audience segmentation to develop accurate customer profiles.

Once you do this, take a look at each audience segment and consider how you’ll reach them. Demographic targeting? Behavior or interest targeting? Re-targeting or lookalike audiences?

Let’s say, for example, that I’ve developed a mobile app featuring a game that has all the appeal of sitting in a casino and pulling the lever on the slot machine. You pay in a few dollars, you pull the digital lever, and you can gain or lose points that you can use to play other casino-styled games. If you win, you get more points to keep playing, if you don’t, you need to shell out a little more to keep going. It’s like gambling, but not!

When reaching a cold audience, I’ll likely want to target users who like “Casino games.” Research may also find that people who enjoy this particular app skew heavily female, so I’ll add that in, and my app is only for iOS running on the latest operating system, so we throw that in the mix, too.

Remember that you can always test your targeting options, helping you find the balance between “narrow enough to be relevant and drive results” and “too niche to get real visibility

Choose the Right type of Ad Objective

Just as businesses have endless options for ad targeting, they’re likewise spoiled for choice when it comes to choosing the types of ads they produce.

Consider first the three different types of goals related to your Facebook advertising strategy:

Awareness: increasing your reach and introducing your business to potential customers via Facebook ads

Consideration: encouraging interactions between prospects and your marketing messages

Conversions: taking those “would-be” buyers and convincing them to become full-fledged customers

These goals will ultimately determine the direction you take with your ads, including the creatives and ad types that you choose. Although some brands may have soured on Facebook as of late, there’s no denying the new ad features they’ve rolled out recently.

It’s also important to note that Facebook will automatically optimize your campaigns based on the objective you choose. If you want video views, they’ll show your video to users who have historically been more likely to stay put and watch the video. If you want lead generation, they’ll show the ad to users who have submitted forms in the past.

Don’t Miss Your Ad Creativity:

You want to always remember the end goal here: to convince users that they need to take the action you want them to. That means understanding what each audience niche’s individual pain points are and how you can appeal to them.

here are some key creative tips for your Facebook advertising strategy.

-Entertainment value

Being boring is a kiss of death for any ad campaign and Facebook is no different. The more entertaining you make your ads, the less they feel like, well, ads. Whether it’s humor or imagery that catches people’s eyes, strive to avoid static, stuffy campaigns.

– Use video for engage.

We’ve heard it a thousand times but it bears repeating: video content is totally crushing it right now. Videos are capable of showing off your ads in action, perfect for both raising awareness and grabbing users’ attention. Oh, and don’t forget that Facebook has explicitly encouraged brands to get on board with video in the wake of their algorithm shift.

Think of a video ad as a sort of mini commercial for your brand. Stopping scrollers in their tracks, video is fair game for just about any business.

-A compelling call-to-action

Any sort of engagement is a plus with your Facebook ads, but ultimately you’re on the hunt for clicks. To make those clicks happen, you need a strong call-to-action.

Create Ad Funnels

You need ad funnels. Ad funnels are a key part of establishing an effective Facebook Ad strategy, and they’re a central part of driving real results.

Funnels are designed to engage users at different stages of the sales funnel with ads relevant to them, and then get them to the next stage. Videos introducing your brand are great for cold audiences who have never met you before, for example, but won’t do much for long-term customers who already know your brand story.

This does mean that you’ll need multiple ad campaigns in most cases to achieve significant results and maximize your Return on Ads. You’ll use re-targeting to keep engaging users until they’re ready to purchase, leading to higher conversion rates in the long run

Test Everything, Always

Split testing should be a core part of your Facebook Ad strategy from the beginning. You want to go in with multiple creatives to test (including images and ad copy that can be mixed and matched), and you’ll want to split test different audiences, places, and delivery optimizations on their own campaigns, too.

Note that you’re only going to want to split test one in each campaign so that you can actually assess what’s effective and what isn’t.

Fortunately, Facebook’s native split testing feature is exceptional for this purpose. On the first screen, you can choose to enable native split tests, which allows you to easily enter in multiple audience criteria, creatives, placement options, OR delivery optimization choices so Facebook can test your theories and see what works.

Final Thoughts

There’s so much that goes into a single ad campaign, which means that you need an effective Facebook Ad strategy to even get started. While it’s an involved process, it’s one that you don’t want to scrimp out on. If you do, you’re more likely to be hit with disappointing results that don’t live up to the campaign’s full potential.

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