How To Use Facebook Ads To Drive People To Your Latest Blog Post
If you’re reading this article, chances are that you already know how to create Facebook ads. You’ve probably done a few campaigns already, and they’re working pretty well. But there’s one big problem: Your ad isn’t driving people to anything specific.
That’s not a good thing. The point of advertising on Facebook is to drive people to a specific page or website—like your latest blog post. If you’re using an ad that doesn’t drive people anywhere, you’re just wasting your money. So how do you get more people clicking through? Here are some tips to help you create Facebook ads that drive people to your latest blog post.
1. Decide on an Audience for Your Ad
One of the first things you will need to do is decide who you want to advertise to. Facebook’s targeting options are robust and can be used to target a specific demographic from within a specific location, or even just people who have visited your blog before.
Some basics: You can target by age and gender, location, education level, and interests. This can all be done manually or with the help of a tool such as Facebook’s Power Editor (which we’ll talk about later).
2. Decide on Your Campaign Objective
Before you can create your ad, you’ll need to decide which campaign objective you want to use. There are five different campaign objectives available:
- Engagement — The goal of an engagement campaign is simply to get people to interact with your ads. For example, if you own a clothing store, you might want to increase the number of clicks on your products or increase the number of people who like your page.
- App installs — App install campaigns are best suited for apps or games that monetize through in-app purchases or subscriptions. You can also use app install ads to drive downloads when there is a free version of your app available in the App Store or Google Play Store.
- Lead generation — Lead generation ads are used by service businesses and other B2B companies whose customers are likely to be researching their options before choosing one provider over another. You can use lead generation ads to collect leads and then follow up with them later on in the sales funnel with more traditional advertising tactics such as retargeting.
- Sales conversions — Sales conversion campaigns help convert shoppers into buyers by driving them through the checkout process after they’ve added items to their cart but haven’t yet completed their purchase.
3. Choose Your Ad Placement
Once you have selected your target audience, you will have to choose where on Facebook you want your ad to appear. You have four options for placement: Right Column, News Feed, Mobile News Feed and Instagram Feed.
There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to choosing which placement is best for your ad campaign, but here are some things you should consider:
- Right Column Ads – Right Column ads are meant for desktop users only and typically appear in the right-hand side of their desktop browser window. These ads tend to perform well when they contain an image or video because they take up more space than other types of ads do and catch the eye better than text-only ads do.
- News Feed Ads – News Feed ads are meant for desktop and mobile users, but they perform best for desktop users. These ads tend to perform well when they contain an image or video because they take up more space than other types of ads do and catch the eye better than text-only ads do.
- Mobile News Feed Ads – Mobile News Feed ads are meant for mobile users only and typically appear when someone is using their phone or tablet.
4. Write Your Headline, Text and Description
Your headline is the first thing people see when they click on your ad (it’s also how they will find your post in search results). It should be interesting enough to grab people’s attention so that they click through to read more of your text copy (which is what describes your product).
The text copy is what appears under the headline — it should be short and sweet, but still describe what your product or service does in a way that makes people want to know more! Be sure to include any specific features or benefits that might make someone interested enough to convert on your landing page (more on that below).
The description is optional but recommended — it allows you to include extra information about your product or service without cluttering up other parts of the ad with text. The description can be up to 20 words long.
The headline, text copy and description are all important parts of your ad that should work together to create a compelling message that makes people want to click through!
5. Create/Upload Your Images or Videos
Your ad needs to include at least one image or video. Your images can be up to 15MB in size, and your videos can be up to 60 seconds long (and must be less than 20MB). In addition, there are some guidelines for what types of images/videos you should use:
- Your product: If you’re promoting a specific product or service, use an image of that product or service. If possible, show the consumer how they’ll benefit from using it — for example, if they’re buying a pair of shoes online, show them how cute they look in said shoes!
- Your brand: If you're promoting yourself as a business rather than a product or service specifically, use an image of yourself. Show the viewer that you’re approachable and friendly. Try to capture a moment that shows what you do best — this could be something as simple as showing your workspace, or even just having a conversation with someone on camera!
- Your audience: If you're promoting something specific to your target audience, use an image or video of them engaged in their everyday lives. If possible, try asking them questions about what they like about themselves and their day-to-day life.
Takeaway
These tips should give you an idea about how you can run an effective advertising campaign and tap into the vast network of eyeballs that Facebook has to offer. The next step is to get some experience with marketing your own products, which will teach you invaluable lessons about using different types of social media to promote yourself and what you're selling.
Facebook Ad Targeting Ideas for 2022 and Beyond
Ad targeting can mean different things such as targeting the audience or targeting the screen area where the ads will be placed. Ad targeting also has to do with the personal behaviors of a potential lead. The ads will be displayed according to the past actions, interests, geographical location, and different other properties of a potential client’s profile.
The best hints and information for ad targeting are given by the users themselves. They provide the necessary data and a data analytics consulting firm can help you target your ads based on the data available for each user.
There are certain subjects to be aware of and to understand for better ad targeting.
- Ad targeting and privacy
Facebook has undergone several privacy updates in the past which made it challenging to create targeted ads and ad targeting. There have been concerns among internet users and app users worldwide about their privacies. Several companies and online platforms have taken it seriously and have changed their privacy policies and the way the user data is processed.
iOS devices have had the most impact as iOS updates have enabled users to choose what they want to share with different apps. To be exact, the users are now able to choose whether to share data between apps or not. It seems that almost all of the users who were given the choice opted to not share data among platforms and apps.
This means the available size and quality of data for ad targeting is very low compared to what it was in the past. The condition where the users opted not to share information across platforms has affected Facebook in collecting customer data. So naturally, there are less data inside Facebook for you to make an informed decision. Don’t worry, there are ways to overcome this challenge and a data analytics consulting firm can help you get over it.
- Creating audience lists
The Facebook ads manager has features for you to create lists of the different audiences that you want to target. Within the Ads Manager, you can select the Audiences and then create a new audience and save. Give the list a good name that you can remember easily with all details you want to see.
When you create a campaign, you can see the option in the ad set level. When you create the audience list, try to be as broad as possible. If your targeting is very strict and includes several parameters, the intersection of all parameters might be very narrow. That means you may not serve your ads to all potential prospects.
Facebook recommends broad targeting. Broad targeting means to have only a few parameters such as age, gender, and location. It is not a requirement by Facebook to have only broad targeting, but it is recommended. Based on your campaign goal and the target audience, Facebook will be able to serve your ads to more potential people who could respond to your ads, given that you give enough flexibility to Facebook by having the parameters low.
The colored interface of the Facebook ads manager gives you a visual clue of how your target audience looks. You can add and remove parameters and change their level to adjust your target audience. The color indicator will change as you change the parameters giving you the opportunity to fine-tune your target audience.
Facebook also has its own algorithms to find similar audiences to your target audience when possible. To allow Facebook to serve ads to a similar audience, you have to have the settings right. You can choose the detailed targeting expansion, and this will enable Facebook to expand the audience when possible. You can turn it on and off during campaign creation at the ad set level and experiment with it for a few ads.
- Building custom audience profiles
There are best practices recommended by Facebook. Building a custom audience is one of those recommendations. Although the retargeting settings are not changed, the changes to privacy-related settings have made it difficult to target the audience as before.
Audience from web apps is one other source where you get more customer profiles. This is still useful, but you will not get most iOS users that have opted not to share their information across platforms. You will have to manually collect information from one application and then create a similar audience on Facebook and make your custom audiences.
A data analytics consulting firm can help you set up the Facebook SDK and Facebook pixel to gather information where conversion events occur. You can then use this information to retarget your audience. It could be someone who clicked on a button or viewed a product page. It gives you more insight to find your target audience and deliver your ads better.
If you are someone who uses a customer relations management system, you might have profiles of your best customers. You can upload that data to the Facebook ads and Facebook will match your customers with Facebook users and serve your ads to a custom audience.
Again, this feature also has its own limits due to the privacy options people want to opt for. iOS users will still be a challenge in targeting through Facebook or any other web app because these users may simply don’t want to provide enough data for you to target them for any particular advertising.
Facebook can match and select the actual user profiles if enough information is provided. If you have more information through your customer relations management system, then try to upload as much information as possible onto Facebook so that it can make better matches. For example, the job title, phone number, website, email address, and any other information that could help Facebook to match profiles would increase the efficiency of the process.
Although the privacy settings on different platforms have changed, any app can collect information within the app. Facebook collects information inside its own app and that is not restricted by any other device settings or operating systems. You can use Facebook’s own data to target people that have done a few activities online.
People might have engaged with your Facebook page, messaged you, or followed your page. Any events that people have attended, purchased a ticket, or have had any other form of engagement will have that data to use. There will also be data from your Facebook shop where people have saved, purchased, or viewed any of your products.
Other data could include people who have watched your videos in full or part. A few people might even have taken an extra step to fill in a form for you. The interaction of people with instant experience can also give you enough data to deal with.
Facebook allows you to have geotargeting for lookalike audiences set up. You can use your existing data to create lookalike audiences. This is a useful method because you can have your original audience database and create several lookalike audiences tweaking the parameters a little each time.
- Campaign performance
The performance of your campaign is what matters after all because when you are done with the targeting if the campaign does not perform as you expected, it would not be of any use to you.
A few ways of improving your campaign performance include verifying your domain. You have to confirm the ownership or connection of the Facebook ad with your app or business through a url. Configuring conversion events in your business manager account becomes handy with domain verification.
Prioritized conversion configuration is another way of improving your campaigns. On the events manager, you can configure and prioritize your conversion events. You can prioritize and configure up to 8 events inside your Facebook ads. You can use the events manager by selecting the pixel that you are working with and then configure the aggregated event measurement. The buttons and dropdown lists are self-explanatory, and you can use them to complete your configuration.
Another way is to have a constant comparison of ads and their performance to select the best ads and methods. If you are relying on advertisements a lot on Facebook, then you should consider comparing your ads. You can also use the tools to test your ads. Inside the ads manager, you can use the A/B test button to do this. Select your ads from the campaign's ad then select the target audience. Then define the parameters on which you want to make the decisions and also the period for which you want to run the test. Once you get the test result, you can use that information to improve your campaigns.
Conclusion
Since a lot of privacy settings, ad settings, and targeting have changed on Facebook since 2021, it is best to rethink the way you used to post ads on Facebook. It is also important that in 2022 and beyond, the ad targeting has to be done with caution and with limited data about the audience.
It is not all doom and gloom. If you use the right tools, methods, and tactics, you can make the most out of the ads. If you need help, you can look for some data analysis consulting firm that can do the job for you.
Are Facebook Paid Ads Worth the Money?
Everywhere you look, businesses are advertising. Most recently, Facebook has risen to prominence, and you’ll see statements like ‘your marketing strategy isn’t complete without Facebook advertising’. But are these statements true? Should you pay attention to Facebook Ads this year?
While some will be reading this article because they haven’t tried Facebook ads before, others will question their approach after the introduction of iOS 14 earlier this year. Essentially, the App Tracking Transparency feature in iOS 14 made it harder to advertise on social media platforms due to a loss of conversion data.
Whether you’re the former or the latter, are Facebook paid ads worth the money?
The Statistics
When asking a question like this, one of the best ways of discovering an answer is to look at the numbers. According to Hubspot, Facebook topped the list of paid advertising platforms in terms of return on investment (ROI). That’s right - it’s the best platform if you want a positive ROI (who doesn’t?).
After this, CPC is among the lowest at around $1.85 and it’s possible to reach over two billion people on the platform. Most studies now have around seven in ten Americans on Facebook with over 35% of people choosing the platform to receive their news. Towards the end of 2020, over 5% of people aged over 65 had a Facebook account, and this percentage is growing each year.
With all this in mind, Facebook paid ads are still worth the money. Not only are more people tapping onto the app each day, but more people are using Facebook to discover new brands and products. Of all the advertising platforms, Facebook generates the best ROI, and the average conversion rate sits at around 10%.
The Explanation
If you aren’t persuaded by the numbers, let’s look at some reasons why Facebook advertising is so strong this year!
• Strong and Reliable Analytics
One reason you should choose Facebook Ads is that improvement is possible with robust analytics tools. Rather than creating an ad campaign and forgetting it for six months, you should allow analytics to lead the way. Over time, you’ll learn what works as well as what doesn’t. You keep what works, remove what doesn’t, and your ads will resonate with the target market more effectively.
• Automation
Often, people think that Facebook advertising comes with lots of effort, but this isn’t always the case. If you were reading the previous benefit with nerves, you don’t need to go through the optimization process alone. Nowadays, you’ll find optimization tools that utilize machine learning and artificial intelligence to keep an ad campaign on the right path.
The right tool will automatically optimize targeting, bidding, budgeting, and A/B testing on ad campaigns across Facebook and several other platforms. Therefore, campaign optimization isn’t the huge chore that it once was.
• Micro-Segmentation
If you’ve advertised on Facebook, you’ll also know about the micro-targeting options. These days, you can target people with an upcoming birthday, who work in a certain industry, and those who have had porridge for breakfast. Maybe a slight exaggeration on the last one, but you get the idea.
With deep targeting options comes micro-segmentation - rather than sending a generic ad campaign to a large audience, you’ll break them down into smaller audiences. Now, you’re sending an effective message to everybody.
Other Benefits:
- You can meet specific goals (whether you’re trying to boost sales, awareness, or website traffic)
- You find people looking for products of your nature
- You can retarget those who have already interacted with the brand
- You easily generate new leads (with little manual effort)
Yes, Facebook ads are worth the money!
Bonus tips and Information
If you are still confused about what you should do for your business. Feel free to contact our Phoenix SEO Expert team to know more about PPC (Social Media Marketing, Google Ads, Paid Ads), Search Engine Optimization.
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The most comprehensive guide to optimizing Facebook Ad Relevance in 2021
This guide helps you optimize and improve your Facebook ad relevance while enhancing your overall ad value and return on investment.
Overall, Facebook is really great at telling you what to improve in regards to your ads. Just see the picture below.
As you can see, the 3 overall parameters for optimizing Facebook Ads are:
- Quality Ranking
- Engagement Rate Ranking
- Conversion Rate Ranking
And that’s great. But a crucial thing is missing, and that is actionable advice on how to improve it. The answer to this question is what this blogpost is all about.
Let’s dig in.
How to improve Quality Ranking
The Quality Ranking parameter is an estimate of your ad’s quality compared to ads by your competitors.
Keep in mind that the goal here is to create ads that are better than your competitors.
You can easily achieve this by following this simple advice:
Create high quality creative assets
Quality Ranking is all about quality. As a result, you should focus your energy into creating compelling, creative and stylistic designs that resonate with your target audience.
This, of course, includes proper design theory and well-thought-out storytelling.
Take a look at the example below. The first image is a great creative asset, while the second is very bad.
As you can see, the image to the left has very little text. This creates an elegant and sleek design, catching the eye of many potential buyers out there.
In opposition is the yellow, almost “toxic” image to the right. This image will surely create associations to “low quality products” and might even come across as a scam attempt.
In other words: Don’t do the right thing. Do the left thing.
How to improve Engagement Rate Ranking
Engagement Rate Ranking is a parameter checking for customers' engagement with your ads. In other words; Do customers read your copy, watch your video, click your ad, like, comment, or share?
Or do they simply scroll past your ad?
To improve engagement you must grab the customers’ attention. And that is a tall order, especially since the average attention span of modern consumers is drastically decreasing.
However, by following this simple advice you can effectively secure the attention your target audience:
Make ads interesting by putting the consumer first
The best way to grab a person’s attention is surely by talking directly to their interests and needs. Generic ads and content never really do this.
As a result, you must be creative and put yourself in your consumer’s shoes. Take a look at the example below.
The ad to the left effectively makes you stop and reflect. The ad is humorous, creative and colorfully superior. It actually makes you think about your own grooming, thus effectively grabbing the person’s attention and hopefully sending them further down the purchase funnel.
In contrast, the ad to the right is merely a boring stock photo eliciting nothing but consumerism. The colors are awfully dull, reminiscent of marketing from a former millennium.
In other words: Don’t do the right thing. Do the left thing.
How to improve Conversion Rate Ranking
Conversion Rate Ranking is a parameter calculating the probability of customers completing your optimization goal.
Conversion Rate Ranking is an estimate of what’s to come, and not a true result of what’s been achieved.
At any rate, the single best way to increase the performance of your conversion rate and customer engagement is better call to actions (CTAs).
Follow this advice to create better CTAs:
Create compelling and easily understood CTAs
A CTA prompts the customer to do something. If your CTA is ambiguous, it will be very difficult for your customer to actually do anything but scroll past your ad/copy/video etc.
Consequently, you must deliver a clear and concise CTA. This way your customer is more likely to do the thing you want them to do (e.g. sign up for a newsletter, download a whitepaper, buy a product, etc.).
Take a look at the image below for a good CTA and a bad CTA:
A person seeing the ad on the left will surely understand the premise of the CTA. It’s clear and concise, and it directly speaks to the interests of the reader. That is, calculate the amount of money you could earn by partnering up with Airbnb.
Thus resulting in a successful conversion.
In contrast, the ad on the right will confuse the reader. What is the next step here?
The ad is pretty and all, but as a reader you are left bewildered as to what action should be taken. The consequence is, of course, that the target audience will see the ad, and not know what to do next — thus resulting in zero conversion.
You know the drill about now; In other words: Don’t do the right thing. Do the left thing.
Want more tips to improve your Facebook Ads?
Did you find these tips relevant and useful for your Facebook Ads?
You can find a lot more actionable tips on how to improve the overall performance of your Facebook Ads by heading over to Confect.io and downloading the eBook — free of charge.
Head over and download your own copy of the eBook here.