6 Things To Know Before You Launch Facebook Ads
When’s the last time you visited Instagram or Facebook? Right before you started reading this? Perhaps 15 minutes ago? Surely it can’t be yesterday, can it?
In fact, 63% of Instagram users check the app at least once per day. Most of these users are highly engaged too.
There’s no doubt that Facebook and Instagram are playing a crucial role in both people’s life, and in digital marketing.
Imagine having the possibility to reach 2.8 billion users around the world? I’ve also mentioned the importance of social media in my very first post.
This is where Facebook Ads come in, and there has been an enormous opportunity for businesses to grow with Facebook ads. The best part is the fact that it’s extremely easy to use.
Beside Facebook Ads, we also have list of Google Ads mistakes for you to avoid.
Before you dive in, I have listed 6 pointers that will definitely help before you launch Facebook ads. Let’s get to it!
1. Facebook pixel is extremely important
I apologize in advance for putting a possibly unfamiliar term as the very first point you need to know. Trust me, this is a crucial one.
When you’re doing business on the web, one of the most important aspect to keep in mind is making sure business activities are tracked with laser precision.
For Facebook ads, Facebook pixel is that data-gathering tool that will help you track conversions from Facebook ads, optimise these ads, and even reusing the data gathered by building remarketing audiences.
Facebook pixel use cookies to track users. They are also the key element that is responsible for one of the most effective ads strategies out there, retargeting.
You can use Facebook pixel to track plenty of events; from purchase, lead, add to carts, schedule, and more. Here’s an article that provide a full list.
If you’re running an e-commerce website, pixel supports integrations from WooCommerce to Shopify. This makes setting up your pixel for your conversion tracking relatively simple.
Due note though, there are a couple of things to keep in mind around Facebook pixel, which is the reason why this is a point 1.
When you’re going to install Facebook pixel, you’ll need to make sure you comply with data regulations regardless of the purpose. This will take some time especially if you need to start your policy and cookie banner from scratch.
Also, you’ll need a reasonable amount of website traffic if you’d like to effectively target your audience. I’d suggest aiming for at least a couple of thousands of unique visits, and it’ll take a while to reach this number if you’ve just started.
The last pointer to keep in mind is how tricky Facebook Business Manager is for some people, and how this can be a learning curve especially for those who’ve only been using ads only from their Facebook Pages.
So, is it worth the hassle and time? Absolutely!
Whenever you feel like jumping to Facebook ads, do make sure to prioritize setting up your Facebook pixel properly.
Also read: How to Choose the Most Suitable Digital Marketing Agency
2. Really know your audience
Within the early stages when you launch Facebook ads, you will often be relying on detailed targeting. So, you want to make sure that you have a clear idea and persona of how your typical audiences would look like.
In case you have no idea, “detailed targeting ” is a way for you to target your ads by refining the group of people you are showing your ads to using information such as demographics, interests and behaviours.
When you’re still early, you wouldn’t have as much concrete, customer data that can be defined as an ideal audience. Hence, you won’t be able to do any “fancy” strategies (e.g Lookalike, customer list, 30 days website visitors, etc)
A lot of early-stage startups will need to start their Facebook ads journey from detailed targeting in order to start feeding data to their Facebook Pixel.
In other words, going for detailed targeting will also mean that you’re seeking for cold audiences, with hopes that a good percentage will go warm.
By thoroughly researching, interviewing, and understanding who your audiences are from the get-go, you’re indirectly guiding your approach to Facebook Ads detailed targeting.
Here’s a relatively straight forward example; Say you have a baby-care product that you’d like to boost by launching Facebook Ads.
By putting yourself in the shoe of your customers, you’d have a better understanding of their demographics and behaviours online.
It’s a lot more effective to target those in their 20s compared to their 50s, and it’s a lot more effective to target those that have changed their status to “Married” for the past years, as compared to others.
These are some of the amazing things you will be able to do with detailed targeting. You’ll be able to filter prospective cold audience in advance, expose your ads only to those that (you think) matters, and attract a higher quality traffic to your website.
If you worry about your website visitor, make sure that your SEO is good. Don’t worry, we have a list of the free SEO tools.
I get it, there will also be those Facebook Ads managers who disagree to the technique mentioned above, saying how we have to have our detailed targeting as broad as possible.
Each have their own methods, but the point that I’m trying to make here is the importance of defining your audience clearly before you launch Facebook Ads.
3. Make sure you know your goal
A lot of businesses thing that running Facebook ads is easy. Just input an age range, a couple of keywords, make a compelling creative, and you’re ready to go.
Here’s the thing; running Facebook ads is easy, but running an effective and accurate Facebook ads campaign is extremely difficult.
So how can you make sure that you’re running an effective and accurate Facebook ads? One key aspect to take note of is to make sure that you have a clear goal.
Sure, Facebook ads do provide campaign objectives to help optimize your campaign. Some examples include brand awareness, traffic, conversion. It makes setting up ads a lot easier, but it doesn’t mean you can just jump in with a campaign objective you see fit.
If you’re doing e-commerce, the quickest answer to an objective will be someone purchasing your product. But it’s not that easy considering the different steps your prospects would have to take in order to purchase.
Write these goals in every step of your customer’s journey, because this can help you make (hopefully) better decisions before you launch Facebook ads.
Think about the bigger picture; do you want more new customers? More website visitors? More social media engagement? There are tons of goals out there, just make sure to think about goals that are SMART.
A goal that is specific, but can’t be measured will hinder you from optimising your ads moving forward.
A goal will remain a goal if it is measurable but unrealistic.
Therefore, make sure you have a clear, SMART goals before you even commit to launching Facebook Ads.
4. Ready to conduct all sorts of testing
Split testing and experimentation are a crucial strategy in order to know what works and what doesn’t for your business. Whenever you run ads, there are countless number of variables you can test.
Though the concept of split testing won’t sound as appealing as purchase (especially for business owner), I’d say it’s ideal to spend some of your marketing budget for testing.
Split testing is essential, because you’re seeking for your audience’s opinions on certain elements of your ads. No matter how incredible we think our ad creative is, split testing will answer the question “Is our ad effective?”.
Usually, A/B tests are executed for a couple of weeks (depending on the budget) in order for it to be statistically significant. A good rule of thumb is to wait for at least 1,000 unique experiences before jumping into a conclusion.
Here are a couple of common split testing variables for you to try:
- Landing page
- Creative approach
- Headlines
- Image VS Video
- Call-to-actions
In other words, we need to test content and hopefully it could go viral. Even memes could be the content!
Fortunately, Facebook has already provided A/B test feature for Facebook ads, though there are still plenty of ads manager out there who’d prefer to conduct testing via ad groups.
For me, I still rely on ad group A/B testing, though it doesn’t mean that I’m completely ignoring Facebook’s A/B test feature.
Facebook A/B testing might sound expensive, but any extra budget you decided to spend on split testing can easily give you massive returns in the future. At the end of the day, digital marketing is all about getting a return on your investment.
5. Understand that ads are not cheap, at all!
There is a very low barrier when you plan to launch Facebook ads, mainly in terms of the budget that you need in order to launch an ad.
To have a well-performing campaign, however, there needs to be a sufficient amount of budget. In most cases, “sufficient” would mean “massive”.
For smaller companies and startups who aren’t as familiar with how Facebook ads work, they will expect huge results from spending $100. It’s not their fault to think this way, but it’s good to set this straight.
Instead of asking the question “How much do I need to spend”, consider asking “How can I maximise my budget to get the best return on investment?”.
Of course, seeking the answer to the latter question won’t be as straight forward as the former. It takes a whole lot more time, thought and research, which is the reason why very few succeed in launching their Facebook ads.
In this case, an ideal definition of a great investment could be conducting an insightful testing and experimentation. As you know, data is extremely valuable in today’s world.
Eventually, you’ll have to spend money to acquire these necessary data, hence it’s good to start collecting data by running Facebook ads.
It’s not cheap at all to launch Facebook ads. Once you start, it’s probably not the best idea to stop. Make sure you plan your budget, and don’t forget to ask questions that matter.
Also read: Best 5 Proven Digital Marketing Strategies in 2022
6. Be aware that result won’t be instant
It might be extremely easy to set individual Facebook ads campaign according to available objectives provided by Facebook.
You will get an increase in page likes almost instantly, given the fact that you set your campaign objective to collect page likes.
But the situation would be far different if we’re talking about conversion as a campaign objective, especially those valuable ones such as purchase.
It’s highly unlikely that you’ll get a purchase conversion in your first, cold Facebook ad campaign, while experimenting different interest that might represent your target audiences using detailed targeting.
What’s more likely, however, is retargeting those who have visited your website for purchase, because they’ve at least shown initial interest towards your brand.
See the difference? It’s about going for cold audience, as compared to warm audience.
This is supported by a well-known concept of “Rule of Seven”, which basically states that it’ll take 7 touches for your audience to be receptive, familiar, and comfortable to consume your product/service.
Facebook ads can be one of those 7 touches. For cold, it might be your audience’s first touch. For a warm audience, it might be their 5th or 6th. A lot warmer.
With that said, though Facebook ads is an incredible platform to showcase your product or service, Facebook ad would be even more effective for a company when combined with other channels.
With hundreds of elements trying to get your attention every single day, it’s only natural for human to be more selective in picking the right place to pay attention to. Hence, Facebook ads won’t give you instant, positive, results.
Ready to launch Facebook Ads?
Facebook Ads is one of the tasks of digital marketing, it can be said as one essential skills. So basically, you have to understand this if you intended to focus your career.
Small businesses, founders, and startups tend to shy away from Facebook ads because:
- It’s something they’re not familiar with (They’ve never even visited business.facebook.com) OR,
- It’s something they don’t believe in (Mainly because of experience)
For me, it’s definitely one of the best ways to reach new customers, and to get the word out there about your offerings.
This is supported by a well-known concept of “Rule of Seven”, which basically states that it’ll take 7 touches for your audience to be receptive, familiar, and comfortable to consume your product/service.
Facebook ads can be one of those 7 touches. For cold, it might be your audience’s first touch. For a warm audience, it might be their 5th or 6th. A lot warmer.
With that said, though Facebook ads is an incredible platform to showcase your product or service, Facebook ad would be even more effective for a company when combined with other channels.
With hundreds of elements trying to get your attention every single day, it’s only natural for human to be more selective in picking the right place to pay attention to. Hence, Facebook ads won’t give you instant, positive, results.
I would highly recommend you consider these 6 pointers before you launch your first Facebook Ads campaign. Start by making sure your Facebook pixel has been properly installed, all the way to ensuring that you have the right mindset towards Facebook Ads.
If you still have doubt with Facebook ads, or if you’d just like me to set Facebook ads up for you, feel free to contact me here.
Make sure to consider Facebook Ads in your digital marketing strategy.
