Facebook Advertising -- The Map is Not the Journey

Facebook advertising gives every business the ability to precisely target their advertising with exceptional knowledge of the consumer’s behavior.

Knowing the consumer by age, behavior, interests, and location helps you optimize the metrics that matter most. Even though it’s an exceptional platform, Facebook can be intimidating as you work through nuances and the science vs. the art of critical characteristics such as your audience size vs. your target.

I recommend building a map to understand the key steps that the platform will help you with as you drive toward advertising success on your Facebook journey:

Strategy / Objective / Finances

?Many businesses jump into Facebook advertising with no clear goal in mind. Do you want to develop more leads, drive site traffic, improve brand awareness, create engagement, or deliver conversions? Or how about all those? Sure! And I only want to spend $1000.

Align the platform, the strategy, and the finances before you build the ad and connect to your consumer. This is the first step to a successful Ads integration. Life moves fast for sure, but if you skip the critical thinking in the strategic piece and try to connect to the operational part of the puzzle via a cheap budget, you will pay the price down the line.

 Target Audience

When you create your ad campaign, identify the consumers you want to target. If you haven’t reached an audience size of at least 500k, you’re too light in the space or too narrow in your target.

Secondary KPI’s Relative to Budget

Try to measure everything, and you end up measuring nothing.

So know that cost per sale matters most and then calculate what’s the next most important. Should you focus on in-store visits? Leads? Or better yet the Common Currency of CPM? CPV’s could work too if you’re looking to capitalize on Facebook’s video prowess and efficiently-delivered volume of video views to be found during this global pandemic.

No need for on-again, off-again strobe light marketing that slows down the steady acquisition of your customer base and Facebook’s ability to scale. In the end, setting a per-day or lifetime budget that you can live with will also help you keep a steady hand. 

Know too--at least from a CPM perspective--the cost of advertising varies based on your strategies and objectives, geography, audience size, and the day and times of your advertising. In specific retail industries scheduling your advertising helps make the most of your budget by ensuring that you’re open for business. For those that sell online, optimizing to conversions that transact matter most and should help to drive appropriate returns on the investment, otherwise known as your advertising.

No matter the choices you make, knowing that not making choices drives outcomes, too.

Facebook Ads allows for many options, but once you learn to use them to your advantage, you can use your map to help you on the journey to success. Just know--from the start--that the map is NOT the journey with Facebook Advertising!