How can Facebook help you achieve your marketing goals?
I am sure you know what Facebook is and roughly how it came about but here is a brief overview (or you could just watch the 2010 film, The Social Network). Mark Zuckerberg began the now known Facebook in early 2004 whilst a student at Harvard University. Originally it was designed to digitally show profiles of current students at Harvard include images and bios. This quickly extended to other elite universities, before opening to all universities and high schools. Now, today, we have the biggest and most widely used social media network in the world.
Today the Facebook platform includes Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. How huge is this? Well, it was reported that in 2019 there was on average 2.45 billion (yes, billion) monthly active users on Facebook’s family of applications! To put this into perspective, a quick Google search told me the population of the world is currently around 8 billion. So, solely through Facebook’s platform, you have the opportunity to advertise to over 25% of the world's population.
So, how can you advertise on Facebook?
In this article, I will break down the fundamentals of Facebook advertising and why you should be utilising the platform.
The Facebook pixel
Let's start with what I believe to be the most important aspect of Facebook advertising - the Facebook Pixel. The Facebook Pixel is a small section of code which you install in the <head> section of your website. The pixel then lets you track information being received from your website, such as which pages people are visiting, devices being used and other insights. With this information, you can then design your ads so that they speak directly to specific audiences, and make those visitors more likely to take an action you care about, like making a purchase or signing up to your newsletter.
Put simply the pixel is the brains of the operation but there is so much you can do with it.
We will get into this in the next section 'Facebook Audiences' but the pixel also allows you to create custom audiences based on the data received from your website. This could be creating a segmented audience, viewed as a blog post, abandoned a checkout, signed up for your newsletter and much more. We can also create look-a-like audiences with this data - hold onto your hats!
Facebook Audiences
As mentioned previously Facebook has billions of monthly users but in order to keep your ROI (return on investment) positive, you need to ensure your ads are being delivered to the right audience. For example, there would be very little point in showing your new range of swimming shorts to someone who lives in the North Pole. In my opinion, Facebook’s targeting is what sets it above any other marketing platform. How well it knows its users is scary!
Facebook offers several ways to target a new audience to ensure optimum delivery:
- Custom Audience
- Lookalike Audience
- Core Audience
Custom Audience
Custom audiences are created from data you already have about your customers from various sources. You can create custom audiences from:
- Website- information gathered from your pixel
- Customer List- segmented email lists, phone numbers and more
- App Activity- same principle to a website
- Offline Activity- offline actions such as in-store actions or over the phone
- Video views- how much (%) of a video a user watched
- Facebook page- how someone engaged with your FB page
- Instagram page- how someone engaged with your IG page.
We already know so much information about these customers, so we can create high-performing campaigns supporting our required marketing goals. For example, you can provide information about your business or a welcome discount code to customers who have registered to your newsletter but haven't completed a purchase yet. Having the ability to re-target customers that are already aware of your brand or have previously engaged with your business is a real game-changer.
Lookalike Audience
Lookalike audiences are a fantastic way to find potential new customers. This works by selecting a custom audience such as 'purchasers over the past 30 days’ or ‘customers who subscribed to a particular offer'. The Facebook algorithm will then create a lookalike audience based on people who share demographics and behaviours with your current customers. The primary use of lookalike audiences is to help you target ad delivery to people similar to ones they already know.
Core Audience
With core audiences, you have a lot more control over your specific targeting. You can create an audience based on your potential customer's location, demographic, interests and behaviours.
Ok, so maybe you are unsure who you should be targeting. Well, Facebook has a fantastic tool called 'Audience Insights' where you can find information about your potential customers. Let's say you have just opened a new coffee shop in South London. In Audience Insights, you can find information such as demographics, page like etc., relating to people who live in South London and have an interest in coffee.
So, why is all this important? Well, with Facebook, not only can you design an ad to reach a specific demographic of your target audience, but you can also track those people through their full interaction journey via your pixel and then re-target them with even more specific ads.
Ad Design
Ad design - this is an enormous topic, one of which I will not be able to cover in its entirety in this article. It is important to remember that Facebook user’s swipe extremely quickly through their news feeds, so your ad must be targeted correctly, relevant and also make a real impact in just a few seconds.
With regards to ad design, you have two separate factors that need considering. First, is your ad's objective. This is what you want your ad to achieve - conversions, lead generation, brand awareness, video views, website traffic etc. Each ad objective is designed to target your audience in different parts of your sales funnel. Ok, let me run you through a quick sales funnel for a new pet accessory company:
Step one - You want to spread the word of your new brand via Facebook and increase the number of likes on your brand page. For this, you would run a brand awareness campaign targeting a core audience with interests in pets
Step two - You want to direct your new Facebook followers to an editorial you have written about how eco-friendly your products are. For this, you would run a traffic campaign targeting a custom audience of new Facebook followers over the past 14 days
Step three - For every customer that has read your editorial you want to now direct them to your product pages. For this, thanks to your pixel, you would run a conversion campaign targeting everyone that has visited your editorial page
Step four - Finally you may run another conversion campaign targeting everyone that abandoned a checkout.
You should be able to put yourself in your customer's shoes and think about what information they require to direct them through your sales funnel.
The second aspect of ad design is the format of your ads. How does this ad appear creatively - video, image, carousel, slide show, dynamic ads etc? Much of these formats are very much self-explanatory but it is important to consider different formats for different ad objectives and customers in different parts of the funnel. Personally, I run a lot of video ads because I feel it is the clearest way to provide information about a product or brand. Here are a few points I use to try and make my ads stand out from the crowd:
- Always put a powerful image as your video cover photo to catch the viewers attention (you need to entice them to view more)
- Keep the viewer hooked by using quick transitions
- Let the customer know what the video is about in the first three seconds
- If your video needs more explanation, try and use creative text overlays rather than a voiceover, as videos are typically played without sound.
I hope this article has got your creative juices flowing on how you can be utilising Facebook’s advertising platform. I believe any brand or business can use Facebook to generate more customers, leads and sales. I mentioned this in my last article but I feel it is extremely relevant - if Facebook can help swing the US election why can it not help you achieve your marketing goals?
Thank you, if you have any questions please let me know.