Facebook advertising for small businesses can be an incredible return on your investment. It can also can drive you nuts and make you want to bang your head against the wall (spoken from experience). There is so much you CAN do, that having an overarching strategy is key to avoiding sacrificing your money to the Facebook gods without getting anything in return.
Before you get into the nuts and bolts of creating the individual ads (text, videos, titles, images, etc.), take some time to develop a holistic framework of Facebook advertising for your small business.
Below are the three foundational areas that we build our Facebook advertising efforts around. Each of these is a unique campaign strategy with lots of variables that can be adjusted for your business but having a guiding framework will allow you to be more successful more quickly.
1. Awareness Campaign – Meet new people
Start here! Expanding your brand awareness is key for top of funnel marketing. You want people to become aware of your company’s name and services. This is possible by running awareness campaigns within Facebook to direct as many people as possible to the website of your choice…usually it’s your homepage. The goal here is maximum number of views of your ads within Facebook and maximum number of visits to your website.
Tip 1: A 15 second video ad seems to be working the best to grab attention of users in 2022.
Tip 2: It’s imperative that your Facebook pixel is installed correctly on your website and you let your awareness campaign run for a couple of weeks before launching additional ads. A successfully installed Facebook pixel means you will have the information you need for further targeting and retargeting in the future.
2. Engagement Campaign – Grow your relationships
The goal is here is extend an invitation to the browser to take action in regards to something you offer. Most commonly it’s you are directing people to a well designed landing page with an email opt-in. The user can then submit their email and in return gets something of value (pdf checklist, e-book, etc.). This is where you begin to build trust, cultivate a relationship and develop fans of your company.
Tip 1: Develop a high value downloadable resource for your audience. Answer a niche problem they have and then develop a short pdf that they can’t refuse. Use a service like mailchimp or mailerlite to set up your email list and auto-responder automation.
Tip 2: A high converting ad is only as strong as the landing page it directs people toward. Take time to makes sure your landing page design is built to be as effective as possible…and for goodness sakes test your email opt-in automation!
3. Conversion Campaign – Invite the right people to purchase
Finally, it’s time to talk direct with your ideal customer or client and invite them to purchase! Facebook gives you a LOT of options for making this type of campaign a success. Remember these ads are likely not the first time that a browser has seen your brand or interacted with you.
Tip 1: At the start, we recommend building a target audience based on those that have visited your site. This is fairly simple since you have your pixel installed correctly on your site. From there you can branch out and do additional look-alike audiences.
Tip 2: We recommend starting with a lower cost offering and expanding from there.
Of course there are a myriad of decisions to make. Do I use lead-gen ads? Do I create a carousel or a static image? What targeting do I use? All those decisions will be 100% easier if you have a guiding framework to your Facebook advertising and know the purpose behind each ad campaign.
Need some help with your small business Facebook advertising. Center Street Digital takes on a limited number of marketing accounts that involve Facebook ads management. Contact us to see if we’re a good fit for your small business.