This is a guest contribution from Luke Moulton.
Blogging about something you’re passionate about? chances are there are others just as passionate as you, and chances are, a high percentage of these people hang out on Facebook and share the stuff they’re passionate about. Using Facebook ads to reach your target audience can get people Liking and sharing your content, and kick-start your traffic if you’re just starting out.
If you’ve dabbled with Facebook ads and not seen much success or traction, here are a couple of techniques to try to improve performance.
1. Laser Focus on Your Target Audience
One of the biggest mistakes I see people make with Facebook ads is to go too broad with their audience targeting. You probably have a good idea of your target demographic. For example: new mums living in Los Angeles. So when you setup a Facebook Ad Set, make sure you target your audience accordingly.
Recently I was helping an Australian e-commerce client with his Facebook ads campaigns. He has a range of items that are season and weather-dependent. Digging into his campaigns, I found that performance varied for cities in the north of the country compared to the south. Given it was winter in Australia when he was thinking of advertising, he was wasting money trying to promote warmer climate items to those in the southern states (remember, we’re in the Southern Hemisphere). Segmenting his campaigns down into regions (such as cities or states) help him to target products according to the weather in that region.
2. Boost Facebook Posts that are already getting traction
You may already have a healthy bunch of Facebook followers who share and like your content. When you notice a new piece of content you’ve posted getting more traction than usual, this is a good indication that the content could be popular to a broader audience.
This is a great opportunity to broaden you follower base.
The trick that will ensure you get maximum engagement for you spend is to boost your post to “Friends of people who like your page” AND share a similar interest to what you blog about.
Doing this means that the “Friends of people who like your page” will see a little social proof on the ads that appear in their news feed. And social proof is a powerful motivator.
3. Test vastly different images
Facebook is a very visual medium and the right image can make a huge difference in engagement and clicks to your ads. When you setup a new campaign, make sure you test at least 2 different ads that are identical except for the image.
Try adding a call to action to your image, making sure you your copy takes up 20% or less of the image space, as specified in Facebook Ads terms and conditions.
4. Setup Facebook conversion tracking
Wether you’re building an email list or selling product, Facebook conversion tracking gives you the ability to see which audience segments convert better, therefore giving you the ability to focus on getting more of those people to your website.
Running a Facebook ads report with Conversion metrics will show you (for example) which age range are converting best.
In the example above, Women aged 55-64 are converting the best and costing the least. If you see something like this as an on-going trend, it can be worthwhile separating this audience out into their own Ad Set so you can try to better tailor your ads to this demographic.
5. Rotate your ads
If you’re targeting the same audience on an ongoing basis, eventually they are going to get sick of seeing the same ads week in week out. Try to set a monthly schedule to refresh your ads, or focus more on promoting your better performing posts.
Luke Moulton is a digital marketer specialising in Facebook Ads campaign management. Checkout more tips on his blog at Plankton Digital.
