Facebook is constantly making changes to the way ad campaigns are run and with each upgrade, the ad experience is seemingly more friendly for both advertisers and Facebook users. While there are some unhappy advertisers, millions of advertisers still use it for its potential to reach an estimated audience of more than 1 billion users.
In September of 2016, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, announced the social media company reached a record high of 4 million advertisers using Facebook to share their business. eMarketer predicted Facebook’s ad revenue for 2016 to be $23.31 billion. Let these numbers speak for themselves, and you may consider 10 Pound Gorilla to run your next Facebook ad campaign. Here are the perks.
Set Your Own Budget
You’re a business and you’re advertisers — obviously, money is on your mind. With Facebook you can set your own budget. There are two categories for budgets: daily and lifetime.
A daily budget is a set amount of money your business plans to spend on advertising per day. A lifetime budget is a total amount of money your business plans to spend throughout the entire time an advertisement runs. These can be set manually with you managing your business’s budget, or automatically where you give Facebook a set amount, and they’ll create a budget for you.
Target a Specific Audience
A ProPublica investigation found Facebook uses more than 52,000 attributes to classify users, and there is reason to believe this is not a total estimate. What does this mean for you? You can choose the audience your ad targets. Targeting options include demographics (age, gender, relationship status, education, workplace, and job titles), interests (hobbies and entertainment), behaviors (past purchases, device usage, and online activities), and location. Choosing a target audience ensures your ad is reaching those who it would interest most. Think of it this way, would you expect to build brand awareness for your new athletic clothing line on the busy streets of Denver at noon, when everybody is focused on their next meal? No, you would want to build brand awareness at multiple sporting events, targeting an audience you know is interested in similar products at an opportune time for people to potentially make a purchase. Essentially, this is what Facebook considers before placing your ad.
Run Several Ads at Once
Some experts will recommend running multiple ads in order to see how Facebook users will respond to different ad placement, content, and formats. This also prevents ad fatigue, which may result in less click-throughs than a campaign with ad diversity. Formats may include images, video, text, and a headline. It’s important to keep in mind that space is restricted, so make your message small but mighty! One ad may include up to five images, a headline may include up to 25 characters, and text may be as long as 90 characters. As far as placement is concerned, you have the choice to display your ad on desktop News Feed, mobile News Feed, down the right column, or in the Audience Network.
At 10 Pound Gorilla, we recommend lead ads. These are ads that gather information about users who are interested in them. According to Facebook, in as little as two taps a business can receive demographic information, or at least the email address, of a user who clicks on the ad. By simply clicking an ad, the user can fill out and submit a form to send to the business in order to receive information from businesses such as newsletters, quotes, offers, product demos and more! The form is automatically generated from information in a user’s Facebook profile. However, the user has the ability to change, ad, or delete information before submitting the form. Additionally, businesses may customize lead ad forms with open-ended questions and multiple choice questions to gather information that better suits their purposes. In the end, lead ads benefit both businesses and those interested in the ads equally.
Value Counts
Facebook runs ads a bit differently than other advertisers you may have worked with. The process of getting ads viewed by users comes down to a bidding and auction system. What makes this system so successful is the “winner” of the auction is the ad with the most value, not the highest bidder, so small business can remain competitive too! Facebook determines value using a three-part formula of the advertiser’s bid (budget), ad quality and relevance (how people respond to your ad) and the estimated action rates (the measure of how likely someone is to engage with an ad in order to earn the business’s objective).
Easy Step-by-Step Process
Before this all seems too overwhelming, we assure you it’s not. Facebook advertising is a six-step process, and we can take care of it all for you!
- Work with 10 Pound Gorilla to thoroughly plan your business’s objective for the ad campaign. What do you want to get most out of these ads? Awareness? Consideration? Conversions? Let us know!
- Decide who your target audience is. Think about who would be most interested in your product or service. There is a happy-medium to be found between targeting too broad of an audience and too narrow of an audience, and we can help you optimize your reach!
- Choose where the ad will run: Facebook or other apps in Facebook’s Audience Network, like Instagram, Workplace, or Messenger.
- Set a budget and time period for your ad.
- Pick a format. Whether the ad is a single image or video, is a combination of multiple images and videos, is a slideshow, canvas ad, or carousel ad, our expertise can help guide you to the perfect format to spread your business’s message.
- After placing your order, let us help you manage the ad and keep track of the metrics in order to track the ad’s performance. If one version of the ad is more effective than another, we can edit the campaign to ensure you are getting the highest return on ads as possible.
Contact 10 Pound Gorilla and get started with a new Facebook ad campaign today!