Facebook advertising is one of the most powerful additions to your digital marketing repertoire—as long as you are using it to its full capabilities. The platform’s goal is to pair companies with consumers by making relevancy a priority. While your organic reach on Facebook can help you stay in touch with your current fans, Facebook advertising puts you in front of a whole new audience of qualified leads.
Before we get into the best way to maximize your Facebook advertising dollars, you need to understand the basics of how Facebook displays their ads. Essentially, they give each potential advertisement a value and puts them in an auction with each other. Whichever ad has the highest value for the placement of the ad gets shown. They base the total value off of three factors:
So even if your per-click price is the lowest, you still might get shown if your ad is the most applicable. On the contrary, if your relevancy score is equivalent to someone else, the ad placement will go to the person bidding higher. Got it? Good. Now that that’s out of the way, you can see how these tips can help you make the most of your Facebook advertising budget.
One of the greatest things about Facebook advertising is that they let you choose your outcome. It’s up to you whether you want clicks, conversions, or video views, and then Facebook uses this information to show your ad to the people most likely to meet that goal. So when you are setting your bid amount, remember your objective. How much is a conversion really worth to you? If a new customer is priceless, Facebook’s automatic bidding is your best bet, but if not, remember, you are paying for a customer. Don’t be too frugal or you won’t get the results you want.
Now that you have a price in mind that you are willing to pay, trust Facebook’s ingenious algorithm and let your money get to work. If your daily budget doesn’t even cover a couple of bids, you certainly won’t be getting the face time you desire on the newsfeed. Bonus tip: If your daily budget is limited, stick to one or two ads—if you disperse your daily budget between several ads, you won’t be nearly as effective.
This is perhaps the most important aspect of Facebook advertising, and it is the reason our clients get such great results. Take the time to get down to the nitty gritty when selecting your audience. The more specific you can be, the higher your odds are of getting your ad shown to someone who cares. But there is a fine line you don’t want to cross: If you get too picky, there will be such a small pool of people for Facebook to choose from that you won’t have success. It usually takes some trial and error to find your sweet spot.
Most companies have several ads running at the same time, but if you aren’t careful, this can be limiting your reach without you realizing it. Facebook wants to keep its users just as happy as its advertisers, so they don’t show one person too many ads from the same company, even if the ads are different. If your Facebook advertising strategy involves multiple ad sets, use the targeting to make sure you are reaching different people with each one. If your ideal customer type is very specific and this isn’t possible, you are better off reducing the number of ads and increasing your bid price.
As mentioned, one of the three factors that Facebook considers when evaluating your ad during an auction is its relevancy to the user. What does this mean? It means your ad has received ample positive feedback (likes, clicks, shares) and limited negative feedback (reporting or hiding your ad). Check your relevancy metrics often to make sure your ad is rated well, and if it isn’t, make changes immediately—just a tweak or two in your targeting, ad copy, or imagery can make a world of difference.
Now that you have more insight into how Facebook advertising works behind the scenes, you are well on your way to making your ads more competitive. To get started on your Facebook advertising campaign, or to make changes to an existing one, contact Zero Gravity Marketing today—or check us out on Facebook.