Facebook Advertising Agency Strategy: Run Ads Like A Pro
Is Facebook Good For Business Advertising?
Learn how to run ads like a Facebook advertising agency. Facebook is one of the most powerful tools any small business can use. They collect so much data about their users (sometimes too much) that advertising your business on Facebook can be incredibly effective… When done correctly.
This allows us to laser target our audiences so we can put our ads in front of people ready to take action. Forget everything you’ve learned about Facebook ads! It’s probably outdated and wrong. As humans, we often learn concepts and hold onto them because they make sense to us. Unfortunately, in a digital world, we move so fast that these concepts become obsolete within weeks. It’s better to start fresh.
Facebook Advertising Explained: Optimization
You need to learn to crawl before you can walk. Where most business owners go wrong is that they set up a bunch of Facebook campaigns using the guided walkthrough and think:
wow facebook advertising is so easy!
(Brick & Mortar)
Before we even get to the campaign creation stage, we need to have a basic understanding of how the Facebook ad platform operates.
Who Does Facebook Show Your Ads To?
Facebook does not show your ad to just anybody. The algorithm is constantly trying to work out who is most likely going to perform the action you’re optimizing for. For example, if you want more engagement, Facebook will show your ad to people who are most likely going to engage with your post.
How The Facebook Algorithm Optimizes Your Audience
Assuming you’re just starting out with no previous campaigns, Facebook will not have any data and will be taking a stab in the dark trying to guess your audience. If your ad is performing well with Women aged 35-44 who live in Victoria, they will continue to show your ad to these people.
This is called optimization.
Optimizing your campaigns will be the difference between a positive ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) and losing money. Data is the key here. If you’re starting fresh (and not sure who your customers are) you’re likely going to have a hard time without the help of an agency.
Which Facebook Campaign Objective Should I Choose?
Now that we kind of know how Facebook works, we need to pick an objective. It’s important to optimize for the objective you need. People try to be smart and optimize for engagement when they really wanted purchases from their store. This rarely works and was probably taught by some Guru so you would buy their course to make them money.
There is however a catch 22. Facebook optimizes on the ad set level. Meaning, that ad set needs to get a certain amount of results on a weekly basis (usually 50) in order to optimize correctly. This means if you’re optimizing for purchases but your ad set only gets 10 sales a week, Facebook won’t have enough data to properly optimize that campaign.
How To Run Profitable Facebook Ads – E-Commerce Online Stores (Like Shopify)
If you’re running Facebook ads for an online shop, your ultimate goal will be the purchase conversion objective. Unfortunately, you probably won’t make a positive return by optimizing for this goal straight away (unless you have a big pile of data already). You have to build up to it. This is how a Facebook advertising agency does it! You’re learning all our secrets here.
We recommend starting with engagement campaigns, for two reasons. Firstly, you can see the breakdown of a campaign and really hone in on who is resonating with that ad. Secondly, we need to build up some data. Engagement is best for building this data because it’s a lot cheaper to acquire than a website visitor or an add to cart.
Take a look at the breakdown to determine which demographics to advertise to for the traffic objective.
After people start to add products to their cart on your store, the next phase is to optimize for Add To Carts. This is an easier objective to get results for as it’s higher in the sales funnel, hence happens more often. Facebook suggests 50 events a week for optimization.
Most tutorials will suggest optimizing for Content Views first… In our experience, we have found these campaigns to be expensive and lacklustre in terms of actual results.
Best Facebook Campaign Strategy For Beginners: Dynamic Retargeting
Dynamic Retargeting will be your best friend. To do this, set up a Facebook catalog which automatically updates the feed to show correct availability. Think of this as syncing your store with the catalog. Navigate to your Facebook Ads Manager:
Now you can choose the catalog objective, and show your products to people who have viewed that exact product.
The combination we tend to use is targeting users who have viewed the product within the last week, or added the product to their cart within the last 30 days.
This will recapture potential customers that might have dropped off the funnel. To enhance your results, consider giving your audience a nudge by offering a 10% discount if they check out now.
Facebook Advertising Agency Secret:
Although Facebook optimizes your campaigns, make sure to do some optimization manually as well. If you view your breakdowns and you clearly see a high performing audience, duplicate the campaign and show your ad to that exact audience. Remember, Facebook charges per 1000 impressions. The more targeted your audience, the less money wasted.
How To Run Profitable Facebook Ads – Local Store (Brick & Mortar)
For a business with a physical location that you would like people to visit, your best objective is going to be the store visits campaign type. This objective is currently still being worked on, but we’ve had excellent results so far.
To use this type of campaign you will need to set up your business locations in your Business Manager. Facebook will then create a radius around your location(s) and show your ad to people who are near your business and are likely to visit.
Lead Generation Using Facebook Ads – For Service-Based Businesses
As a Facebook advertising agency, we often deal with service-based businesses. Got a business that relies on quotes? Your best bet will be lead generation. There are two ways you can go about this.
Option one is using the lead conversion objective. You’ll have to design a landing page to collect details of potential clients and have your event codes installed correctly for tracking results.
Option two is using Facebook’s lead forms. Option two is definitely the easier way to go for a business new to digital advertising.
These forms are highly customizable, so you can ask as many (or as few) questions you like. Keep in mind that the more you require from a lead, the less likely there are to submit the request.
The benefit (and disadvantage) for using a Facebook lead form is that they autocomplete information from the user’s Facebook profile. Filling out your form is now incredibly easy as they don’t have to fill out their email or phone number. This could also affect you negatively as it makes it fairly likely to receive poor quality leads. Plenty of business owners (and marketers) complain that their leads don’t even remember filling out the form. Let’s have a think why? To answer this question, let’s refer back to the ease of use! A drunk person on a Saturday night out can easily submit a lead at 2 am and completely forget the next day due to the lack of effort required.
Our secret to fixing this issue is by asking a custom question increases intent whilst also being a qualifier. That little extra bit of effort will stop poor leads.
For us our question would be: What is your business name?
This forces the user to fill out an extra field to increase lead quality. Also, if they are telling us their business name… They have a business. Which means we can help them.