We hate to say it, but gone are the days where organic Facebook posts reach a high percentage of your followers. With so many companies utilising Facebook for marketing, the competition has become fierce, there’s just TOO MUCH content being published in people’s news feed.
Most recently, you may have noticed a further dip in your organic reach. In January 2018, Facebook began to shift the focus of people’s news feeds on connecting with family and friends rather than consuming media in isolation.
But all is not lost … you can still reach your target audience using Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads is a fantastic platform to deliver the right content to the right audience. Again however, it’s an extremely competitive market, you need to be SMART! Below are 3 ways you can stay ahead of your competition:
1. BUILD CUSTOM AUDIENCES
By being specific with your audiences, you can deliver the right content to the right people. For example, if you’re selling jewellery aimed at women, you’re not going to want to deliver ads to men. While this example is just common sense, its a principle you should apply to all of your ads (and all of your marketing). By being specific you can ensure that your marketing is reaching the right people, which means more engagement, more reach, lower cost per clicks and most importantly, MORE CONVERSIONS!
Here are a few ways you can build specific audiences:
INTERESTS, BEHAVIOURS AND DEMOGRAPHICS
A lot of marketing isn’t sexy, a lot of marketing is hard work and a tonne of market research. By learning who your customers are, you can use their interests to target them on Facebook.
For example, imagine your business sells craft beer and your target audience are males between the age of 25-45. You can use this information to target these individuals based on what their interests are, their behaviour on Facebook and demographic information on Facebook. Facebook is extremely clever and compiles data based on individuals activity on the platform, this information is readily available (anonymously) to advertisers for targeting.
WEBSITE RETARGETING
Have you ever been on a website and then you see ads for that product or service weeks after your visit? That’s Facebook retargeting. Businesses place the Facebook Pixel (tracking code) on every page of their website, this allows them to build audiences based on who visits their website. Let’s use an example … Frank is interested in buying some new trainers, he visits a website that sells trainers, but doesn’t actually purchase any (he’s waiting for payday). The business selling the trainers makes the assumption that because Frank has been on their website and looked at specific trainers, he’s interested in those products, which makes him much more likely to purchase than someone who hasn’t visited their website.
By serving ads of the trainers Frank viewed, Frank is much more likely to purchase trainers from this specific website than a competitors website.
Facebook retargeting is a really great way of re-engaging customers that haven’t purchased and can often have a cheaper cost per conversion rate.
CUSTOMER FILES
Have a GDPR compliant spreadsheet of customer information? Fantastic! Wouldn’t it make sense to use this to your advantage? Well, through Facebook Ads you can, quite easily!
By uploading your customers data to your audience assets, you can use this data to either target these specific customers or build “lookalike audiences”. Facebook can build highly specific audiences that are similar to the ones that have purchase from you in the past.
RECENT ENGAGEMENT
Similar to website retargeting, you can make a fair assumption that if someone has recently engaged with your business of Facebook, they are interested in what you’re selling. By building custom audiences based on engagement, you can deliver ads to people who are interested in your products or services.
2. DON'T BE AFRAID TO USE VIDEO CONTENT
Facebook LOVES video content and so does your target audience! Research has shown that online video now accounts for 50% of all mobile traffic. Here are a few tips to make sure you are creating KILLER Facebook video ads:
- Get to the point - Just because you can upload really long videos, doesn’t mean you should. Keep your videos short and engaging, get to the point within 10 seconds. The longer the video, the less people watch!
- Captions - Does speaking feature heavily in your video? Make sure you use Facebook’s captions! Most people watch videos with their sound off, by using captions you can make sure your point is coming across loud and clear, even without sound. Research has shown that captioned video ads increase video view time by an average of 12%.
- Utilise CPM bidding - Now we wouldn’t normally suggest a CPM bidding strategy (cost per impression) as if you’re not careful it might not yield the traffic you require. However, by setting your video ads to a CPM bidding strategy it ensures your video ad plays automatically, which can mean the difference between a user scrolling past your ad and a user clicking on your ad.
3. ALWAYS BE TESTING
Our last bit of advice is test, test, test! Marketing is all about testing. Continually test your ad copy, continually test your ad media, continually test your ad format. By using the split A/B test function in Facebook ads you can see which ad performs better and understand what works best and what doesn’t, finding a the right formula for your ads moving forward.
While we're sure you are more than capable of managing your own Facebook Ads campaign, we are always available to offer our expertise and help you get the most out of your campaigns. If you're looking at using Smart Chimp Digital for Facebook advertising, please fill out the contact form below and we will be in touch 🙂