Facebook ads offer businesses a powerful tool to connect with their target audience, leveraging precise targeting options and detailed analytics to drive engagement and sales. With over 2.8 billion active users, Facebook provides an unparalleled platform to reach potential customers based on various demographics and interests, allowing for highly personalized and effective ad campaigns.
To maximize the potential of Facebook ads, it’s crucial to implement a strategic approach. This involves understanding your audience, setting clear goals, and continuously refining your tactics based on performance data. When done correctly, Facebook ads can significantly amplify your business’s strengths, help you navigate weaknesses, and guide potential customers through a well-structured sales funnel for long-term success and growth.
How to Leverage Best Ad Strategies for Small Business
Leveraging the best ad strategies for small businesses begins with a deep understanding of your target audience. Start by researching your ideal customer’s demographics, interests, and online behaviors. This information is crucial for crafting ads that resonate and capture attention. Use Facebook Ads Manager to create campaigns that precisely target these audience segments. Instead of relying on the simple “boost” button, develop comprehensive ad sets with clear objectives, whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, or generating leads. Experiment with different ad formats, such as carousel ads, video ads, and story ads, to see which ones perform best with your audience.
Monitor and Optimize Ad Performance:
- Use Facebook’s analytics tools to track metrics.
- Focus on click-through rates, conversion rates, and return on ad spend.
Data-Driven Decisions:
- Scale up successful ads.
- Tweak underperforming ads and discontinue ineffective ones.
Continuous Improvement:
- Regularly review and refine your ad strategies.
- Stay updated with Facebook’s latest ad features and best practices.
Utilizing Facebook Ads Manager to Create Tailored Campaigns
To leverage Facebook ad strategies effectively, start by deeply understanding your target audience and setting clear, achievable goals. Utilize Facebook Ads Manager to create tailored campaigns, carefully segment your audience, and continually monitor and adjust your ads based on performance metrics. Focus on creating engaging content that resonates with your audience, and experiment with different ad formats to see what works best. Remember, consistent analysis and optimization are key to long-term success with Facebook ads.
For more in-depth guidance, check out these YouTube resources:
Amanda Robinson, nationally renowned Facebook Ads expert and Founder and CEO of The Digital Gal. notes Facebook ads can be easily confusing, however, the good news is they don’t have to be if you have the right strategies.
When it comes to Facebook ads, so many people go right to the mechanics and forget about first researching their target audience and setting clear expectations.
Most of the time when someone throws their hands up and say “Facebook ads don’t work for me” it’s probably one of four mis-managed expectations:
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First and foremost, creating ads using ads manager instead of just using the “boost” button even though it’s so easy.
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Moving onto audiences and targeting. Having a clear idea of who your audience is and having your targeting dialed in.
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Your budget and strategy. Making sure that your budget matches your strategy and vice versa.
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Taking time to go back and look at the results and understanding did that work, did it not work? Where can we improve incrementally by making improvements moving forward?
Probably at the “boost” button level and we haven’t had the opportunity to layer on all those different tactics to make this marketing tool successful for you.
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A successful strategy is like the organizational chart for a business. Imagine at the top of an organizational chart you have a CEO at the top, you have department managers that report to the CEO, then you have employees that report to the department managers. If your company is still young, you probably still have one CEO, one department manager and one employee. It’s a very linear structure. If that employee isn’t performing well, you don’t know if they’re performing well or not because you don’t have other employees to compare them to. So, you’re not going to fire that employee. In fact, you’re probably going to keep giving them money and they might not be performing well for you at all.
Whereas with Facebook ads as you start to get more strategic, you get to the point where you hire more employees – or in this case, you try different ads. You have multiple ads running at the same time, you have different department managers that are doing different things such as targeting your email list, targeting your website visitors, targeting a cold audience of people based on a driving radius from your business and other such critera. Those are different departments; they have different responsibilities and different budgets. They can manage, hire, and fire different employees (your ads) depending upon how well they’re performing because you have something to compare them against.
That gives you a chance to incrementally improve your performance over time by having more of a strategic approach rather than just hitting the boost button on your posts.
When to Expect a Return on Your Investment
It’s important to know, from the start, that Facebook ads are a long-term play. It’s not like going fishing and pulling out all your fish for the day in one hour. It takes time.
Amanda helps clients manage expectations by letting them know no matter what they’re aiming for to expect about three months before they see a consistent return on investment. Why? Let’s break it down…
Month one your benchmarks are just getting a heartbeat on the content and getting it dialed in to reach the right people. Getting eyeballs on the content is step one, so that’s what you should be measuring your initial success on. How many people did you reach? How many people are you engaging?
Month two. Now that you’ve got an audience that you’ve built, it’s time to get some momentum on getting them to take some action. Can you get them to fill out a lead form? Can you get them to click to your website? Can you get them to take an action that has more intention?
Month three you start to focus on how you further engage with the people who are clearly showing interest in your ads? How do you give them an opportunity to have them buy something? That process can be as short as three months but most people who are just starting their digital marketing journey, there are too many moving pieces, you need to have your website set up and functioning and have it operating well in a mobile environment. You need to have your payment system set up. You, as a business owner, need to have processes and strategies in place where you know how to close those sales opportunities. To do that you must have a deep understanding of what your customers’ needs are.
Learning as You Grow
Usually, entrepreneurs are learning how to put those processes in place as they are building their marketing strategy as they grow. These processes can take over a year of consistently working away at building your marketing, controlling your advertising and learning how to build your online funnel to take what you do in real life, which is to help people make sales and translate that into an online space where you can lead people into the same results.
How long exactly? Simply put, it takes time and depends upon what you’re selling. If you’re selling a $5,000 course it’s going to take you more time and a higher amount of ad spend. If you’re selling a $2.00 widget then you can probably hit the platform, throw ads up today, and start making sales immediately.
Over Time Facebook Ads Can Help You Grow Your Business
You don’t expect to go to a networking event and walk out with five new clients. The same is true of the Facebook ad space. Facebook ads are effective at doing one thing, and that’s amplifying. They’re going to amplify what’s working in your business or they’re going to amplify what’s not working. If you have processes in place that aren’t really well thought out or haven’t really been proven in the online space and you start dumping money on it it’s going to amplify all the pieces of your marketing funnel that are broken.
And likewise, Facebook ads are a great way to show up to a new party of people who have never met you before and make that first introduction, make that first impression. On that first impression you don’t walk into an event and just shake hands and say “Hi, I sell _______. Do you want some? Buy right now, today!” You DO walk in and say “Hi, I’m Amanda and I help with Facebook ads. Tell me about your business.”
Facebook ads can work the same way as far as networking, as far as introducing you making that first impression, showcasing how you can help people, providing value whether that’s through entertainment, education, or other opportunities for people to engage and then moving them into your sales funnel based on them showing some level of interest. You’ll get the attention of your target market and reach new markets along the way when you leverage Facebook ads the right way.
About Amanda Robinson
Amanda Robinson is the Founder & CEO of The Digital Gal Inc. She is a Certified Meta Lead Trainer and regularly presents on behalf of Meta at in person and virtual events. She is widely recognized in the digital marketing industry for her knowledge, training, skills and coaching as a Facebook Ads expert with her Swift Kick In the Ads Membership, her Facebook Ads Training Bootcamp, and for her creative chatbot skills.
Amanda is an author, international speaker, consultant, and educator who has taught thousands of business owners and entrepreneurs the foundational skills of Facebook Ads. Amanda brings personality and passion to teaching others how to make Facebook ads work for them.
Learn More About Amanda Robinson at:
www.facebook.com/thedigitalgal
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandarobinson1/
About Mark J. Carter
Mark has always been curious about how successful people got where they are in life. He has been interviewing successful people for 24 years, posting interviews online for 11 of those years. Each interview is a “how to” interview which means as a viewer/reader/listener you get actionable advice about how to grow personally and professionally.
Mark’s other projects include events and marketing initiatives. He has collaborated with TED’s founder Richard Saul Wurman to create a world-class conference and helped with branding for the world’s largest chapter of Meeting Professionals International (MPI). He has launched book tours and events for New York Times best-selling business authors, helping them share their big ideas with the world. Mark still enjoys interviewing people and posts many of the interviews on his YouTube station (https://www.youtube.com/@markjcarter), his Idea Climbing podcast and Idea Climbing internet radio show.
Mark’s interviews culminated in his recent book, “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” (Click here to learn more about the book: www.IdeaClimbingBook.com)
Learn more about Mark at: www.MarkJCarter.com
