As brand advertising gets more crowded and more competitive on Facebook, you've got to keep up with the times or face getting left behind. That's why we've compiled this short, yet super effective list of Facebook advertising techniques that are fairly simple to employ and can pay off in a big way.
- Figure out who your customer is, write ads for that exact customer, and then target only that customer. Don't let this fool you – it's actually pretty easy to do. First, if you don't already know, find out who your customers are. Are they 40 year old fathers who don't like their jobs? 23 year old women in their first serious relationship? 30 year old managers who love stock car racing? Whoever they are, create detailed personas for each one. Depending on your business, you might only have one persona or you might have several. Next, write ads that target each exact persona. If your customer is a 35 year old gym rat, then that's who you target the ad to. Last, use the Facebook demographics to target your exact personas with your exact ads. What you've effectively done with this strategy is go from using an ordinary light bulb to see if you illuminate anything profitable, to using a laser with precision targeting to hit your mark every time. If you haven't already been using this technique, you should see your Facebook advertising results double, if not triple.
- State your price up front, right there in your ad. Yes, it's counter intuitive to do this, but here's why it's a great idea: It pre-qualifies your prospect. By stating your price up front, you are filtering out those who aren't willing to pay your price, which means they won't click on your ad. And if they don't click on your ad, then you don't pay for those clicks. So you end up paying less and getting better qualified leads, which means you have a lower cost per click. There is an opposite way to look at this if you're giving away your product for free. For example, when you're using Facebook ads to build your list, if you state up front that your offer is free, you will get more clicks but you'll also get a lower overall quality of lead. Instead, you might make your ad look like a paid product, and only tell them it's free once they click to your site. This way you're more likely to build a list of potential buyers, rather than a list of nothing but freebie seekers.
- Use scarcity to get the click. You know who you're targeting, you've written the ad just for them and you're only displaying the ad to those people. Plus, you're pre-qualifying them with price, but you can still do better if you add in some scarcity, too. This scarcity might be in the form of a sale that lasts only for the next 48 hours. For example, that price you posted is only available when they get it now, not later. Or your scarcity deal might be for the first 99 people only, or you only take new clients for one week every two months. Whatever it is, find a way to introduce scarcity into your ad to get the click.
- Add a call to action button. While you'll want to test this out, it's nearly always true that adding a call to action button will increase your conversions. Facebook is a bit unique, in that you can only add certain buttons: “Download,” “Sign Up,” “Shop Now,” “Learn More” and “Book Now.” So test to see which one gives you the best results.
- Remove all distractions on your dedicated landing page. If you're sending them straight to your home page, they're likely to look around and then leave without taking the action you seek. But if you send them to a page dedicated to exactly what your ad promised, they are much more likely to take the action you want, whether that's filling out an opt-in form or buying a product. Make the headline and copy match your ad, remove competing distractions, and make it super simple for them to do what you want them to do. Did you notice what we've effectively done here in these 5 steps? We've created a marketing funnel – one that can continue to pay off for months to come once you get it set up and profitable. Learning and using these simple techniques is a skill that pays.
In fact, you could perform this as a service for other marketers. Or you can simply do this for yourself and keep all the profits. Either way, you're building a business here, not just playing with a hobby, so take it seriously and the rewards will be yours.
Social tagging: ads > Facebook > target market
