Facebook Ads Tips For Building A Successful Campaign
Checklist: Facebook Ads Tips for Building a Successful Campaign
This post is part of a series titled “How To Use Facebook Ads For Small Business”. Our goal is to help an average small business owner understand how to use Facebook ads effectively.
Action Step 1: Create a SMART goal
This is the first of several action steps that you’ll complete throughout this course. You’ll refer back to earlier actions to complete new ones, so you should write down your answers as you work on each step.
Using the examples provided above, write a first draft of the goal you want to accomplish. Now try to determine each element of the S.M.A.R.T. goal: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. If any element is missing, add detail to your goal to address it. When you’re finished, write down your finished S.M.A.R.T. goal for future reference.
Action Step 2: Create a Buyer Persona and Define Your Audience’s Attributes
We’re going to create a basic buyer persona using an actual customer – your best customer. Think of a customer that is passionate about shopping with you and does so frequently. Use the interview-style questionnaire below to get started. Don’t get hung up too much on any individual question. If you don’t know the answer, skip it and come back to it later.
Describe Your Best Customer
Her Background:
- What is your best customer’s name?
- Age?
- Gender?
- Where does she live?
- Is she married?
- Does she have children?
- What does she do for a living?
- Where did she go to school?
Her Interests
- What type of music does she listen to?
- What type of websites or blogs does she read regularly?
- What are some of her favorite brands?
- What TV shows does she watch?
- What magazines does she read?
- What are some of her hobbies?
- Does she do anything interesting in her free time?
- What products has she purchased from you in the past?
- How long has she been your customer?
Her Buying Motivations:
- When was the last time she purchased a product from your store?
- What was the occasion?
- Was the purchase for her or a gift for someone else?
- Did the visit coincide with an event, a discount or a holiday?
Her Problems and Challenges:
- Is there a problem or a challenge that she faces that one of your products solves for her?
- Is there a problem that she faces that can’t be solved by one of your products?
- Are there obstacles that keep her from visiting your store? (Distance, time constraints, family or work obligations, etc.)
Why Does She Like You and Your Store:
- Why do you believe she is a repeat customer?
- If she told a friend about your store, how would you imagine the conversation going?
- Do you go above and beyond? Order products especially for her if they are not in stock?
- Spend extra time helping her pick out the right products based on her individual needs?
In Her Own Words:
- Try to remember if she’s ever explained in her own words why she comes back to your store.
- Or why she likes a particular product you carry.
- Or why she enjoyed a particular visit.
- Or employee interaction.
We’re going to use the information above to help create something engaging that we’ll use for your Facebook advertising campaign. The individual customer you’ve chosen may not be a perfect representation of your typical customer, but by defining as much as you know about her, you’ve likely stumbled upon some extremely valuable information. We’re going to use that information to target potential customers that share some of the traits you’ve defined in your Buyer Persona.
Now that you’ve completed your persona, look over the information you’ve discovered. Determine 3 attributes that could make your customer a part of the audience that relates to your goal.
In example 1, the goal is to sell Trollbeads products to women ages 35-54 over Mother’s Day. So the customer from your buyer persona might relate to your goal because they like products similar to Trollbeads, because they are a woman, because they are in the age group or because they are a mom.
In example 2, the goal is to increase bridal registry purchases by targeting women who are recently engaged and her friends. This customer might relate to your goal because she fits the age group, has friends that shop with you, or has purchased bridal products from you in the past.
Write down your 3 attributes to use in the next steps.
Action Step 3: Brainstorm 5 ways to engage your audience
You know the best way to engage your audience is by reaching them on their own terms, based on what you know about them, and providing something that educates, informs, enlightens, entertains or inspires. Using the examples above as a starting point, brainstorm 5 ways to engage your audience based on the attributes you uncovered in step 2.
Above all, make sure these ideas engage your audience on their terms – don’t try to sell something! Remember the worst guest at a cocktail party, and remember the hypothetical conversation you had with your best customer. Think of ideas with this in mind.
Write your ideas down. We’ll use them in the next step to write your post.
Action Step 4: Write your post
Choose the best idea from the 5 ways to engage your audience you came up with in step 3. Using the principles of writing you just learned. Make sure your post gets straight to the point on the first line and limit the total number of characters to less than 90.
For now, write your post down on paper with the other action steps. We’ll actually put your post on Facebook in the next step, once you’ve chosen a visual.
Action Step 5: Create a Visual
Now you need to create or find a visual that will grab your audience’s attention. Remember the principles of compelling imagery and try to meet at least 2 of them: Be unique, local and relevant. Show your personality. Have a single point of focus.
Make sure your image is horizontal and at least 400 pixels wide. Ideally, you should crop your image to 1200 pixels wide by 627 pixels high to ensure it displays optimally.
Once you’ve created your visual, you’re ready to combine it with the text you wrote and post it to Facebook. You’ll need to create a post first in order to advertise it, but you don’t need to start advertising the post right away. You can show it to your page fans and then complete the rest of the course before you start broadcasting the post using Facebook ads.
Post your image and text to facebook, including a link if sending your audience to a web page is part of your goal.
Action Step 6: Complete the Walkthrough
The walkthrough above details all the steps involved in turning your post into a Facebook ad. Complete the first 5 steps using the above walkthrough and stop when you reach the section on audience and targeting. We’ll spend more time in the following chapters covering the audience and targeting section of the interface.
Action Step 7: Select your Demographic Info
Using the information above and referring to the walkthrough in the previous chapter for additional help, select the demographic information for your audience in the ad interface. This information includes age, gender, geographic location, connections, relationship, education and workplace. You don’t need to enter information for every category, just those that you’re using to target your audience.
Stop when you get to the Interests section – we’ll cover this in the next chapter.
Action Step 8: Brainstorm 5 ways to engage your audience
You’ve defined your audience and determined the best way to engage them, then created a compelling post. Now you need to tell the ad interface what attributes you’re using to target that audience based on Facebook pages you believe your audience likes. Using the information above, narrow your audience down by choosing interests based on products your audience likes, competitors of your store, competitors of the product you’re selling, or websites, blogs or other interests your audience is likely to have. Refer back to your buyer persona and action step 2 for details.
Action Step 9: Place your bid and start advertising
Use the information above to finalize your ad and place your bid. Set your budget at $100 for the lifetime of the campaign if this is your first attempt.
When setting your bid for clicks, you can either allow Facebook to optimize your bids for you or select “Manually Bid for Clicks” to adjust your bid manually, depending on your level of comfort with this step.
Click Place Order and start advertising.
Action Step 10: Measure Your Results
Congratulations on completing your first Facebook advertising campaign. The final step is an important one – measuring the results of your campaign. Because every campaign will start with a different goal, you’re the only person who can know if your campaign was a success. Use the data described above to get a true reflection of where your campaign fell short and where it succeeded.
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