Facebook & Instagram Advertising – How to Win
Setting social media goals is a fantastic way for you to both prove and improve the overall value of your social media pages. If you can write down your goals and report on any progress you make, then this will also significantly improve the chances of you achieving whatever it is you set out to do. Goals are a fantastic way for you to document your improvement and your success. On top of this, they also give you the chance to see how effective the campaign you have is. If you want to make sure that you are setting good goals, then the steps below should help you.
Conduct an Audit to See where you Stand, Right Now
Before you even think about what you want to achieve, you need to make sure that you have a clear idea of where you stand. This means that you need to conduct an audit. A social media audit should be done across all of your accounts, as it will give you a good baseline.
Find out What’s Important to your Goals
When you have done your audit, you will need to look through all of the information that you have managed to gather. When you do this, you will then start to see which channels are doing well and which ones need a different focus. Next up, you need to think about what’s important for you in terms of your goals. Vanity metrics might feel good for you to check, but you still need to make sure that you are tying them to your business goals. Will getting more likes help you with your business value? Probably not. Take a look at your strategy and also make sure that you go through your social media marketing plans too. If you can do this, then you will soon find that you can connect them with one another.
How to Set a Goal-Setting Framework
Anyone can come up with a goal out of thin air, but this will not help you to improve your business results. It also won’t help you to measure progress either. If you want your goals to be useful, then you need to make sure that they are realistic. You also need to tie some clear objectives to them as well, as this will help you to make a good amount of progress. It will also help you to make sure that you are benefiting from whatever strategy you have in place.
Setting Smart Goals and the Importance of Them
The SMART goal framework is all about creating goals that are both relevant and achievable. You also need to be able to support your business objectives overall. If you want to learn more about SMART goals, then simply look below.
See the video here.
Quick Conclusion:
- Conduct an audit
- Know what’s important
- Set solid goals
- Set SMART goals
Google AdWords VS Facebook/Instagram Ads- What’s the Difference?
It’s crucial for you to understand how Google Ads and Facebook Ads are different so that you can cater your strategy accordingly.
Google Ads is Paid Search
Google Ads remains to be one of the most-used platforms when it comes to PPC. AdWords is widely used, and it has quickly become synonymous with the term “paid search”. The two terms are used interchangeably.
Understanding the Google Interface
Paid search tends to focus on the targeting of keywords in general. You also have text-based advertisements too. Advertisers who are using AdWords tend to bid on keywords. These are specific words or phrases that often show up in search queries. Every time a user clicks on the ad, the advertiser will be charged a certain amount of money. PPC is a very complex topic, and it is beyond the scope of what we are talking about here, but at the end of the day, people are essentially paying for the opportunity to find new customers based on the keywords or the search terms that they put into the search engine.
What about Facebook/Instagram Ads?
Facebook ads are also classified as being paid social. It’s the practice of advertising on a social network. Facebook has the highest amount of users every month and it’s become both competitive and lucrative for businesses.
Key Advertisement Types
Even though advertising on Facebook is similar to AdWords, you have to know that advertisers who use both platforms are really just promoting their company on the internet. This is where similarities end. Paid search helps companies to find new customers based on the keywords they are searching. Paid social on the other hand helps users to find businesses based on their personal interests and the way that they behave online in general. When it comes to the differences between both Google and AdWords, you can think of it in a very simple way. AdWords helps you to find new customers, but Facebook helps customers to find you.
See the video here.
Quick Conclusion:
- Facebook/Instagram helps buyers to find you
- Google Ads helps you to find buyers
What Metrics do you Track and Avoid with Facebook/Instagram Ads?
So now you know how important it is for you to set goals, and the difference between Google Adwords and Facebook ads, it’s time to move on to the metrics you should be tracking. After all, as the platforms are different, you have to make sure that you use different ways to measure your performance.
Metrics you Should Ignore
If you want to make sure that you are measuring the right metrics, you also need to make sure that you ignore the wrong ones. They include:
Likes or Theoretical Reach
If you are a smart social media marketer, you need to look at more information than just the number of fans you have. It’s super easy to buy likes from sites such as Fiverr, as this will help you to generate “social proof”. Many people are tempted to buy likes as it helps them to “keep up” with their competition, who may well have thousands of fans. If you add a few hundred fans per day, you’ll mess with your engagement. If a company has 75,000 fans but only gets one or two likes on a post, this doesn’t look good. Facebook have also started to send cease and desist letters to companies that offer these services.
Click-throughs and Views
Another metric that doesn’t matter is your click-through rate. If you are driving traffic to your site, then you should really be relying on link clicks. Video views are also an issue. Facebook classes anything that is more than 3 seconds as being a view, but with the auto-play feature, it’s safe to say that a lot of views are no longer seen as being a good metric.
Your Relevance Score
Improving your score is a fantastic way for you to try and optimise your paid marketing campaign. It has a direct impact on your total advertising cost too. The issue? Relevance only tells you how relevant your ad is to your target audience. It has no bearing on the quality of your ad, your copy or your creativeness.
Metrics you Should be Tracking
Now you know the metrics you shouldn’t be tracking, it’s time to move on to the metrics you should be focusing on. They include:
Total Conversion Rate
Your conversion rate could include how many leads you can generate, how many sales you make or even how much traffic you get to your site.
Frequency
If you have a small advertising budget, then this metric won’t be of much use to you. If you are spending hundreds every month, then you need to closely monitor the total frequency of your ads. This will tell you how many times your ad is being shown to a user. This is an important metric because if you keep on showing them the same ad, they’ll get bored. If you annoy your user through repeated exposure, then you’ll make them hate your brand. Your relevancy score will suffer too.
Return on Ad Spend
Generating likes and traffic from your ads won’t give you much revenue at all. Therefore, if you’re playing the long game, you may find it challenging to make your business and marketing sustainable. You are paying to get your brand out there in front of prospects, so you need to make sure that you are making enough. If the revenue is less than the advertisement money spent on acquiring them then this means that you need to change your system.
Quick Conclusion:
Ignore
- Likes and theoretical reach
- Click-throughs and views
- Relevance scoring
Pay Attention To:
- Conversion rate
- Frequency
- Return on ad spend
How to Find Your Target Audience on Facebook/Instagram
If you have your goals set, and you know the metrics you are going to use to track those goals then your next step would be for you to identify your target audience. Not a lot of people know how to do this, and those that do, don’t tend to do it very well. If you want to find your ideal target audience, then this next part is for you.
Build Your Persona
A well-defined buyer persona is very important. First of all, it helps you to personalise your ads. When your ads are personalised, this will help you to generate more business. If you have a business, then by now you should have a good idea of who you sell to. If you want to find commonalities, then you need to try and identify any similarities between your audience. Are they male? Female? Do they respond to a certain topic? Are you selling to professionals? Where do they live?
Carry out a Survey
Another thing that you can do is carry out a survey. Ask for feedback from your welcome emails, make them a part of a giveaway campaign and also learn from your competition too. Find out what is working for them, what they are up to and even the problems that they solve.
Audience Insights
Believe it or not, audience insights are a goldmine. They are great because it gives you quantitative data regarding your Facebook users in general. It also helps you to find out about people who may not be connected to your page. Audience insights do not show you absolutely everything, but you can find a lot of data there about your audience.
Find your Email List
Emailing your subscribers on your email list may sound like a good strategy, but sometimes it’s not enough. People tend to register their email address to Facebook, and when they do this, Facebook can match your current list with the users you have. This is great if you want to find your audience as it helps to reinforce your message and it also means that you are more likely to convert too.
Quick Conclusion:
- Build a persona
- Conduct surveys
- Ask for feedback
- Utilise your email list
The Importance of Split Testing
See the video here.
If you want to utilise split testing, here’s why that’s so important:
It’s Free
If you are advertising on Facebook, then using a split test won’t cost you any more than what you are spending right now. Split testing will help you to find out which ads perform better when compared to others. It will also help you to find out which ad has the lowest result. Increasing your budget means each ad will be shown more, giving you a bigger testing process.
Optimising your Audience
Facebook tests give you the chance to find out who your audience is. You can test how effective the ads are but at the end of the day, Facebook Pixel also gives you the chance to find out how specific audiences are responding to them. Even if you have a pleasing advertisement and a very compelling call to action, targeting the wrong audience could result in you getting little to no sales.
Knowledge is Power
Split testing will not improve your results, but it will help you to validate the decisions you are making. It also helps you to create the best advertising strategy so you can supplement every part with more testing.
Quick Conclusion
- Split testing won’t cost you more than your ads
- It’s a great way for you to test how effective your ads are
- It gives you the chance to validate the marketing decisions you’re making
What Is the Facebook Pixel?
See the video here.
The Pixel is essentially embedded into a website and it links your visitor’s behaviour on the site to their Facebook profile. This sync helps the social media platform to essentially retarget those same people with ads that are relevant to them. It can also be used to track the actions that they take when they return to the site. It also uses the data to assign people to various groups and this will be engaged with even more ads at a later date. It doesn’t matter where the Pixel ends and where advertising takes over, because the Pixel is able to give you numerous benefits, some of which can be found below:
- Lives within the website
- Tracks the actions of people
- Gives advertisers the opportunity to retarget
- Allows companies to track how effective their campaigns are
Conclusion
So, Facebook & Instagram advertising is essential to your marketing campaign. The main reason for this is because your customers will spend a lot of their time on Facebook. 80% of people who use the internet, have Facebook. Studies have also shown that 65% of adults who are over the age of 65 have Facebook too, so it’s no longer a “young person’s” social media site. Another thing that you should know is that Facebook has billions of users. Most of them will check their Facebook several times a day. This is a huge thing for you to be missing out on. All in all, it doesn’t matter who your customers are, because they are most likely using Facebook.
Another thing that you need to know is that Facebook advertising is actually the most targeted form of advertising. It helps you to reach your extended audience and it also helps you to target between your audience interest, location and behaviour too. If you know your customers, you can use Facebook to target them with ease and this is a great and powerful tool, so make sure that you are not missing out on that.
All in all, there’s no limit to how great Facebook advertising can be for your company. If you want to make sure that you are making the most out of your budget, then you need to make sure that you are utilising this guide to target your users and to also track the right metrics. If you can do this, then there’s no reason at all why you can’t come out more successful as a result.
If you have an accountant, they should be your first stop for business advice. If you don’t have an accountant or they can’t help, BuBul has a wide range of experts available. For more advice on using Facebook and Instagram to grow your business, contact our expert* Jonny on LinkedIn.
*We’ve picked experts we know and trust who are good at what they do. All of them will give you at least an extra 30 minutes free advice if you contact them and would then charge their normal prices. They don’t pay to be on BuBul and don’t give us any money from anything they earn as an expert.
