6 Steps to a Facebook Ad Campaign That Delivers

Facebook is the leading social media platform for marketers, and for good reason. It's intuitive, it has a direct line to nearly every consumer you'd want to share your product with, and it's convenient.

The fact is, when you advertise on Facebook, you have the opportunity to reach a huge number of qualified buyers who are already interested in your product or service. It's a pretty attractive outbound marketing method, and it's easily paired with your inbound marketing strategy too. 

So what's the catch?

Well, it does cost money.

There's also the fact that a ton of marketers already use Facebook's platform to advertise, which can drive Facebook advertising costs up.

But what if we told you there was a way to optimize your Facebook ad campaigns that could minimize spending and maximize performance?

It sounds wild, sure, but it's actually something our social media advertising experts do every single day. And we're going to tell you how they do it.

Here are six methods our social media experts use every day to minimize Facebook ad campaign spend, and maximize performance:

#1 Know Your Goals

Facebook offers a massive platform of opportunity. There are more than 5 different types of Facebook ads to choose from, and the Facebook ad manager lets you pick from a variety of campaign goals for each ad you create. It's important to know what your goals are going into any Facebook Ad campaign, so you can optimize everything to fit that specific goal.

For example, if you were hoping to drive traffic to your website, you wouldn't choose Facebook's app install ad or an event promotion ad template. Instead, you'd want to choose a clicks-to-website ad or even a web conversion ad.

If your goal was to boost your brand's awareness or get more likes for your company Facebook page, then a conversion or lead generation ad wouldn't make sense either. You'd run a like campaign or sponsor a few of your favorite, eye-catching posts to reach a greater number of potential followers.

While these examples might seem a little obvious, it's important to remember that every aspect of the ad you create should work towards your campaign goal. With a campaign goal in mind, you can better develop content, creative, and design that work to direct consumers to whatever your goal might be.

You need a solid goal for each Facebook advertising campaign before you start building the ad if you want to see quality results.

#2 Understand Your Facebook Ad's Audience

We've already talked about Facebook having a huge platform on which to advertise your product or company. There are millions of Facebook users, and the fact is, they don't all want your product. So don't market to all of them.

If you're hoping to minimize your budget while still maximizing Facebook ad performance, you might want to look into microtargeting. It's a thing the HA Digital Marketing ad team does really well (if you don't mind our saying so), and it's produced some impressive results for our clients.

Microtargeting is the art of narrowing down your ad campaign's audience to just the very key consumers who are likely to be interested, or who already are interested in the product or service you're offering. Effective microtargeting can take a little bit of practice and market research, but when it's done properly, the results don't lie.

Whether you're up on the microtargeting trend or not, it's good to know at least a few defining factors about your target buyer — their age, their occupation or industry, and maybe even one or two of their interests. These qualifiers make for targeted ad campaigns that can produce better results, for less money.

#3 Don't Forget About Creative

It's easy to get caught up in the goals and targeting aspects of Facebook advertising, but it's important to remember that in the end, your ad is going to real humans. Make sure your creative reflects that.

Consumers respond to images and videos that tell them a story and make them feel something.

Try not to forget that the content — both visual and written — that accompanies your ad is what's really going to sell you. Take the time to get it right, and be sure to keep in mind that audience you're targeting and your goal for the ad campaign as a whole.

#4 Link to Something Good (Like a Landing Page)

If your Facebook advertising campaign's goal is to drive traffic or web conversions to your site, you have to offer something good, and you need to link to a page that will perform well.

It's pretty obvious that you need to offer something attractive to get people to click on your ad. What's not always obvious is how you offer that content or promotion when they get to your site.

Let's say you wrote a killer ebook that will solve your target audience's pain points, like right now. That's life-changing content they need.

Too many advertisers miss out on a quality opportunity by just serving up that content as soon as a Facebook user clicks over to their website. Instead of sending those users to a general page, send them to a landing page.

From here, you can ask for just a little bit of information from them, like an email address and a first name, before they download that awesome ebook. This way, your Facebook ad campaign is proving legitimate, tangible ROI — a qualified lead, with all the contact information you need to keep pulling them through the rest of the sales funnel.

It's important to remember that your ad is bigger than just a little advertisement on Facebook. That ad should be working on every level to deliver you more leads, for as little money as possible. By linking your web conversion and traffic ads to a landing page that can capture key lead information, you're boosting the campaign's overall value to your company.

#5 Keep Optimizing in Real Time

Facebook ads can run for as long as you'd like. Set them to run until you've spent your budget, or choose instead to let them run for a few weeks of your choosing. What's important is to check back and optimize those Facebook ads in real time. Facebook ads offer some incredible insights into your target buyer's ad preferences as well as the effectiveness of the ads you've created. Best of all, Facebook lets you optimize those ads in real time. If one ad set is outperforming the others, you can stop the others and let that one use the majority of the budget. If another ad starts slowing down, consider changing the creative to bump up audience interest.Take a look at your stats while your ads are running, and optimize them based on the data you're receiving in real time. These adjustments will help you minimize your ad budget while optimizing the ad's overall performance.

#6 Think Big-Picture

Our last tip for optimizing your Facebook ad performance is to always keep the big picture in mind. We've already talked about placing a priority on your ad's objective, but it's also important to think about how your Facebook ads fit into the bigger picture of your digital marketing strategy. You might not be able to prove precise ROI from one Facebook campaign or track a campaign's immediate effects on your bottom line. That's okay. If you're able to keep the big picture in mind, it's easier to realize that a Facebook engagement or awareness campaign can help get the word out about your company and generate more traffic for your website in the grand scheme of things. Your Facebook advertising campaigns are just one part of your digital marketing strategy and should function as such.

Facebook Ads: One Part of Your Digital Marketing Strategy

A Facebook campaign can help you get more traffic, more conversions, or raise more awareness for your company, but it can't do everything for you. If your Facebook ad campaigns are returning good metrics, and aren't costing you much money, they're working in your favor. It's the rest of your digital marketing strategy's job to convert those positive results into future leads, contacts, and sales. Facebook advertising is an important part of any digital marketing strategy. Facebook offers one of the most comprehensive targeting platforms, allowing you to develop and deploy ads that are specific and relevant to key audiences. That said, Facebook ads take a bit of time and finesse to get just right. If you're not sure you're there yet, or if you'd like a little help microtargeting Facebook ad campaigns that deliver exceptional results, the Evenbound team can help. Let's chat about how we can optimize your Facebook ads and digital marketing strategy for overall company growth.