Facebook has always been a great advertising online platform for small businesses. The two major reasons for this are:
One. Facebook lets you target your most ideal audience. You can narrow down your audience based on their geography, demographics and interests and your ads will be seen only by those who you think would be interested in your products or services.
Two. It’s Cheap! Compared to most advertising platforms, Facebook advertising is budget-friendly while delivering astounding results.
Combine these two features of Facebook ads and you have a winning advertising strategy, which is why Facebook has been so popular among small businesses.
But lately, it has come to light that smaller budget campaigns haven’t been running too well. It has also been noticed that the Cost-per-Clicks have increased.
Facebook said that average ad prices increased by 5% in the first quarter, as advertisers bought more mobile ads. While the average Cost per Click in the UAE still remains relatively low in comparison to other parts of the world, you may have noticed that you haven’t been getting as many leads as you used to.
There’s a simple reason for this.
Facebook ads have become extremely popular in the past few years and now too many small businesses are competing for limited ad space. It’s a simple imbalance of supply and demand.
To get a perspective on the level of competition, know this.
There are currently 4 million active Advertisers on Facebook.
In an intensely competitive environment such as this, it’s usually the big businesses that fare better owing to their bigger budgets and dedicated management teams that constantly assess the performance of their strategy and strive to improve their ads.
If you are a small business, it is very likely that you cannot spend too much of your time and resources managing and updating your Facebook ads performance.
So here’s what you can do to boost your Facebook advertising strategy and ensure that you get the best results for your campaign.
- Optimize Your Targeting:
For any marketer, Facebook’s targeting options are simply gold!
If you get this right, you’ve already made a long leap towards better gains.
Facebook knows a ton of information about its users which you can use to your advantage while targeting your ads. For instance, if you own a spa for women in Dubai, you can target your ads to women living within Dubai, belonging to the age group of 20-65. This would give you a broad audience. You could narrow your targeting to include women who’ve shown interest in spas, massages and beauty treatments for more relevant audience.
Besides, you have other features such as excluding audience sections that you don’t want your ads delivered to and you can create databases out of your existing customers.
The trick is to really get into the mind of your potential customers and gauge their interests.
Target only those who you think will be interested in your ad.
If your ad is viewed by someone to whom it is relevant, you have better chances of converting.
This way you can ensure that your budget isn’t wasted on an irrelevant audience and you make the most of your budget , even if it’s limited.
- Get your message right:
Remember that Facebook ads are different from Facebook posts.
Your copy needs to be straightforward and crisp.
More importantly, your visuals need to grab the attention of the viewer.
Get your visuals right and you ensure that the viewer doesn’t just scroll past your ad.
- Test your Ads:
Rather than creating just one ad and hoping it performs well, create a couple.
Play around with the text and visuals and see which ad performs better.
This way you can allot your budget to the highest-performing ad and get better results.
Keeping an eye out for ad performance and negative feedback will help you update the ads accordingly and ensure better returns for the money you spend.
- Make sure it’s Mobile-responsive:
You have to remember that most Facebook users are on their phones.
So your ad has to look great on a mobile phone screen.
Facebook gives you the option to review this while creating your ad.
Keep in mind that if your ad directs a viewer to another page, then that page has to be mobile responsive as well.
We very well know that you may have been getting all this right all along and you’ve still noticed that your ads aren’t performing well enough. So how can you surpass both Facebook’s ever-evolving algorithm and your many competitors?
Well, keep reviewing your ad performance several times a week. In the Ads Manager tab of your Business account, check the ‘Performance’ column above your ad sets. Customize it according to what you need to monitor.
If your ad sets aren’t performing well, keep a lookout for Relevance score, Positive and Negative Feedback, and Frequency. An ideal relevance score is between 8 and 10. It gives you a rating for how well your targeted audience is responding to your ads.
Also, keep a note of the Frequency. This figure stands for the number of times your ad is getting delivered to the same person. Depending on your campaign goals you may or may not want your ads to get delivered to one person too many times.
Make sure that your Positive Feedback is hovering between medium and high; and your Negative Feedback is never high. If it is, it means that your audience doesn’t want to see your ad. So, you’ve got to adjust your targeting and reach a more relevant audience.
While there is intense competition for the ad space on Facebook, if you get these points right, your ads will perform significantly better.
Despite the increase in prices of Facebook ads, it is still economical for small businesses as you have complete control over the budget. Besides, you just cannot miss out on a lucrative, leading advertising platform such as Facebook.
So make the most of Facebook’s brilliant ad platform and watch your business grow.