Facebook Advertising is more than boosting a post

According to Statista, Facebook is the world’s most used social media platform with over 2.6 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2020. How can we advertise on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram to reach the huge populations that ‘live’ online? If you think that clicking ‘Boost Post’ is all that’s needed, then you might be wasting your budget, here’s why…

Boosting posts is the simplest way to advertise on Facebook and Instagram, yet, it only provides limited options for meeting objectives, targeting and placement. To get real results, it’s important to develop an effective Facebook advertising strategy that helps reach specific business goals and the audiences you care about the most. Whether you are looking to reach a wider audience, maximising engagement or driving conversion, you can plan and customise the ads to match your campaign with the specific needs of the audience. Here are the steps you should follow for creating an effective Facebook Advertising strategy:

1. Choose your ad objectives: Before creating an ad campaign, consider the Marketing Funnel and set ad objectives that best align with your current business goals. Is it to grow page followers, generate clicks to your website, get more people to watch your campaign video or drive people to purchase your products? Facebook ads work best when you are focused on what you want to achieve.
2. Make good use of audience targeting: Targeting determines whether the audiences you care about the most can see your ads. When boosting posts, you can select behaviour, interest and geography for your target audience. Going further, you should build a custom audience based on the user interaction of your Facebook page or Instagram business profile, website traffic, mailing list and such. Lookalike audience also allows you to reach new potential customers who are similar to your existing audiences.
3. Customise ad placements: Ad placement is often overlooked. What platforms or placements do your audiences see the most? What types of devices do they usually use? There are various placement options that you could leverage on Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network. Each placement has its own pros and cons. For instance, news feed has a higher click-through rate than right column ads, yet right column ads can be a more cost-effective way of reaching new audiences. Utilising different ad placements helps you make the most of your ad dollars.
4. Set your budget: It’s important to work backwards and look into the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your campaign. You may also use past performance and industry average as the benchmarks to estimate the amount of budget needed to achieve your KPI’s. Setting expectation will help you manage and optimise the ads after they have launched.
5. Create engaging ads using different formats: Content is always the key to success. Think out-of-the-box and create ads that are engaging for your audience. Video, carousel ad, photo album post and slideshow are some ad formats to consider. Additionally, adding a description and a call-to-action button such as Learn More, Send Message and Shop Now, are good tactics that encourage people to take action after viewing an ad.
6. Track performance and optimise your ads: After your ads are live, you should monitor the delivery and cost per result. There might be one ad performing better than a different ad, or perhaps one audience group is taking more action than another audience group. With these insights, you can optimise your strategy and make adjustments to ensure your Facebook Ads are effective.

If you’d like to know more about how Sinclair can support you in developing an effective Facebook Advertising strategy, digital marketing or other social media strategies, then please do reach out to us, we’d love to help.