When it comes to sheer following and clout, there is no denying Facebook has remained unparalleled over the years.
Taking its massive popularity into account, many brands turn to Facebook advertising to boost their online marketing efforts.
Unfortunately, most advertisers do not have a realistic expectation or a clear insight into how advertising on Facebook really works.
While Facebook advertising is undoubtedly powerful and effective, it will only work given all the right components are in place.
For the uninitiated, below are 4 key components you need to take into consideration to enjoy Facebook advertising success this 2017:
Targeting
Often ranking high (if not first) on top of the key components is targeting.
It is considered by many to be very critical in the success of any Facebook marketing efforts and with good reason.
Even if you are able to successfully come up with the best ad to promote your products or services, it would prove futile if you are targeting the wrong people.
For starters, targeting visitors on your site will allow you to drive conversions that are cheaper, something you couldn’t do with interests or lookalikes.
Bottom line, giving your focus to a cold audience alone should be considered a poor long-term strategy.
While you are likely to experience success every once in a while, you can expect better results by targeting those who people who read your content, engage with you, provide e-mails, and patronize your products or services.
Ad Type
One of the challenges of creating a Facebook advertising strategy that works is coming up with the ad type that will work best with your brand.
How can you effectively determine the best ad type for your campaign?
First and foremost, you need to employ the ad type that will achieve the objectives you have identified and set.
For example, if your primary goal is generating more traffic, using a carousel ad will work best.
If getting more conversions is what you have in mind, using a link is considered better.
If your goal is fueling more engagement, you can use an image or a video, and so on and so forth.
Tracking and Reporting
This is one aspect of your Facebook advertising campaign you should never forego.
To tract conversions, you should use Facebook pixel.
Depending on what you want, you can either use Standard Events or Custom conversions, or both.
The important thing is you need to employ at least one of those options.
While it is tempting to believe using Google analytics is enough, such is not the case.
You have to keep in mind that conversion is not the result of direct traffic alone.
In addition, you should also include offline conversions in your tracking.
If you are not tracking your offline conversions, you are only getting a limited picture of your entire marketing campaign.
Split Testing
For an online marketing campaign to be successful, you need to find out what works.
It would be impractical to run a single campaign utilizing a single ad set and believing Facebook advertising is a failure if things won’t work out.
In line with this, you need to consider doing experiments every now and then crucial.
Determine what works when it comes to optimization, copy, imagery, targeting, and more.
You can either create multiple campaigns to find out what works or you can utilize Facebook’s built in split testing tool.
When you choose to use the latter, Facebook will provide you with a minimum budget because you need sufficient data to get relevant results.
As a general rule of thumb, just ensure you are creating a sample size that actually means something so you can gauge what works and what doesn’t.