There are brands who have embraced Facebook advertising in light of the algorithm changes, and there are brands who haven’t. We recently spoke to marketers and SMB owners who have had very different experiences with Facebook ads, and the wide range of experiences with Facebook ads suggests that brands might be diving into the ads platform without a plan in place. If you’re seeing poor ROI with your Facebook ads campaigns, pay attention to the following tips.
Choose your module carefully
What is it that you’re trying to accomplish? Boost your page likes? Boost your post engagement? Get visitors to your site? Determine your goal and then choose an ad module that allows you to best accomplish that goal. If you choose the wrong module for your purposes, your ROI is bound to be disappointing.
Ensure you’re targeting properly
Facebook has refined its targeting abilities, making it easier for advertisers to select their desired audience attributes from a dropdown menu. Use that menu. Take some time to explore the categories and select attributes that will help your ads reach the right Facebook users. If your product is aimed at soccer moms, make sure you’re targeting soccer moms. Failing to target strategically will cause your ad to be seen by users who don’t care about and aren’t interested in your brand, costing you money.
Don’t just boost, target
The boost post option makes it extremely easy to get a promoted post up and running, but it can also cause you to target poorly. The default for this feature is often set to reach people who like your page and their friends. That may not be the best option for your needs. Instead, expand the advanced targeting options and begin refining your audience from there. Once you’ve got that audience defined, it should automatically apply to future boosted posts, but make sure you review your targeting options before going live with any of your ads or boosted posts.
Start small with budgets
If you’ve never used Facebook advertising before, go in cautiously, but make sure that you’re willing to use a budget that will actually give you measurable results. A $5 boosted post can up your post views pretty dramatically, but it might not give you the results you’re looking for. Go in cautiously and give yourself enough of a test period to determine the ROI of a campaign before moving on to the next.
Bring in a specialist
If your promoted posts aren’t seeing great engagement (and you’ve defined your audience well through targeting) then it could be time to bring in a social or content specialist. Your posts might not be optimized for the new Newsfeed layout, might be too lengthy, or might even be boring to look at. Bringing in an unbiased third party can help you improve your post appearance and help you getter better results.
Give yourself time to work it out
You’re probably not going to see astounding results immediately, so don’t use that as an excuse to completely write off Facebook’s advertising platform. Instead, give yourself a defined period of time to experiment with and refine your advertising campaigns. Give yourself enough time to get the hang of the platform and to learn what budget works best for your brand’s needs. If, after the trial period, you still find that the platform isn’t worth your while, you might want to seek out alternatives, but make sure to give it a fair shot first. What works for other brands might not work for you, but there’s probably a strategy that will. Give yourself the time to discover it.
Wondering what’s been working for other brands? Find out here.
