REACH MORE CUSTOMERS ON FACEBOOK WITH THESE TECHNIQUES

• Fill out your Facebook page with the right information
• Set reasonable goals and determine your audience
• Develop a plan of action to grow your brand on Facebook
• Benefit from some of Facebook’s built-in marketing features, like call-to-action buttons and custom audiences

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO LAUNCH AN EFFECTIVE FACEBOOK PAGE

If you haven’t launched your brand’s Facebook page yet, consider these tips as you create. If your brand already has a Facebook page, don’t worry – it’s never too late to freshen up your page by implementing these strategies.

HAVE A GOAL IN MIND

Facebook can help you achieve your business goals, but it can’t decide upon your goals for you. Only you can determine where you want to take your business. By deciding on a specific goal, you’ll be able to use Facebook’s marketing tools purposefully.

Fortunately, Facebook allows you to assign one of eleven built-in objectives to each ad you launch. The objective you choose depends on what you want people to do after interacting with your ad. Objectives are divided in three categories:

• Awareness – This category includes two objectives: ‘Brand Awareness’ and ‘Reach.’ Awareness objectives are geared towards generating interest in your brand.
• Consideration – This category includes six objectives: ‘Traffic,’ ‘Engagement,’ ‘App Installs,’ ‘Video Views,’ ‘Lead Generation,’ and ‘Messages.’ Consideration objectives are geared towards getting Facebook users to take a specific course of action in efforts to bring them closer to your brand.
• Conversion – This category includes three objectives: ‘Conversions,’ ‘Catalog Sales,’ and ‘Traffic.’ Conversion objectives are geared towards getting Facebook users to buy your product or use your service.

CHOOSE AN AD FORMAT

Before you launch an ad, you should consider how you want it to look. This doesn’t just include its overall visual experience, but where it is seen and how Facebook users can interact with it.

Facebook offers plenty of dynamic advertising formats. Here’s what you can expect from each one:

• Image ads are simple and easy to make, and are great for bringing awareness to a specific product.
• Video ads are simple and offer an effective way to achieve any marketing goal.
• Slideshow ads act similarly to videos but are made with a set of images. These easy-to-assemble ads can effectively show off multiple products or showcase your brand in action.
• Carousel ads allow you to display up to ten images or videos which the user can slide through. These are great for showcasing a catalog of products, telling an engaging story, or giving a step-by-step explanation of your brand.
• Stories are photos or videos that are viewable for 24 hours after being published, and may be displayed on Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger alongside user-created stories. Their temporary nature inspires quick action from viewers, making them great for product sales.
• Messenger ads go in users’ Messenger feeds. These ads can help you reach new people, retarget customers, and start conversations with users.
• Collections allow your ad to function as an instant digital storefront, allowing users to browse a grid of products and click on one to learn more about it.
• Playables are specifically recommended for digital game retailers. This format allows users to test out your game in-browser before downloading or purchasing it.

ENHANCE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

You may already know your target audience, or you may want to use Facebook to help you learn about your customers. In either case, you should familiarize yourself with two of Facebook’s useful audience-developing tools: Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences.

Custom Audiences allow you to use Facebook to advertise to your existing customer base. To do this, you must enter a customer list, which includes information about your customers, such as their email address or phone number. Facebook will then search through its database of Facebook accounts to find which ones match the information you provided, and advertise to them.

Once you have created at least one Custom Audience, you can nearly double your success by creating a Lookalike Audience. This strategy will enable you to find new customers who share traits with the existing users from your Custom Audience list. Facebook will automatically find these users.

MATCH YOUR ADS WITH STRONG CTAS

A CTA, or a “call to action,” is a button that users can click on to interact further with your brand. This can signal one of many things, from signing up for a newsletter to buying a product or speaking directly to a brand representative.

Facebook offers a few ways to benefit from CTAs. You can add a CTA to an advertisement through Ads Manager. You can also add a CTA to a Facebook page by clicking “Add a Button” underneath your page’s cover photo. Facebook also offers a list of more than 20 CTAs and indicates the objectives they align with.

Want to learn more about making meaningful buttons that get results? Read about the psychology behind CTAs.

SET YOUR BUDGET

It’s no secret that budgeting is an important step to ensure that your ad campaign is successful. Fortunately, Facebook makes it easy to take control of the budget for your ad campaign.

When you create an ad, Facebook walks you through the entire budgeting process. Specifically, it allows you to indicate the maximum amount of money you wish to spend and how many days the ad will run for. You will also be given an indication of how many people the ad will reach.

Depending on the ad objective you select, you might be able to choose between two budget types: Total Budget and Daily Budget. Total Budget allows you to set the maximum amount of money you wish to spend for the entire length of the ad’s run. Alternatively, Daily Budget allows you to set the average amount you wish to spend per day. Facebook will not charge you more than your cumulative average – for example, if you indicate you wish to spend an average of $10 per day over five days, you will be charged up to $50.

THE TAKEAWAY

In this guide, you’ve learned how to:

• Assign objectives to your Facebook ads
• Select a dynamic ad format that matches your objectives
• Use tools that allow you to advertise to specific audiences
• Set a budget for your Facebook ads

As you become more comfortable with the basics of advertising on Facebook, you may wish to learn about more of the techniques and tools that you can use to amplify the success of your brand’s Facebook page. From ad tracking to metric reports, Facebook offers plenty of tools to businesses, and it’s never too late to learn more about them .

READ MORE: HOW TO LEVERAGE FACEBOOK FOR YOUR BUSINESS