Are you an impulse booster when it comes to Facebook advertising?

[D]o you find yourself thinking that more people deserve to see this magnificent example of your work? I know – let’s boost it!

So, you hit that boost button, choose a random amount of money, try half heartedly to target the right demographic and hope for the best. I used to be that person. It felt like buying a lottery ticket or sticking a tenner on a random horse. Did it work? I literally have no idea, because I had no goals, no plan and no way of measuring the results.

Over the last year, I’m been researching, experimenting and tweaking my Facebook adverts to get measurable results. So, over the next few of posts, I’m going to be looking at Facebook advertising and sharing some of the techniques that have worked for me. There are lots of theories about Facebook advertising and I’m not an expert, but this basic overview will give you a head start.

In this post, we’re going to be looking at the different types of Facebook adverts you can choose from, the objectives they serve and where they might show up in the newsfeed. If you’d like to start by thinking a bit more about your objectives as a business owner, I highly recommend this post about translating business objectives to Facebook objectives, from my good friend Corey Potter at Fuel Your Photos.

Let’s get started. Firstly, hop on over to the Facebook Adverts Guide. It shows you the location of each of the advert areas. More importantly, it shows you the options available for each objective and what a typical advert will look like if you choose that option. Do you ever see really cool-looking Facebook adverts that have images in a carousel or what seems to be custom call-to-action button? They can all be found within the objectives area when it comes time to design your advert, but you can explore them here in the Adverts Guide.

I’ve highlighted the four sections you’re most likely to use:

BRAND AWARENESS

Think of this as a good chance to warm up your potential ideal clients before you really start to woo them. Brand Awareness ads typically feature a Facebook like button and a Call To Action button. These type of adverts are perfect for your audience segment who won’t go for a hard sell. They’ll give your page a ‘like’ but they’re not ready to sign up for your email list, for example. They just want to get to know you better, but on a casual basis.

CLICKS TO WEBSITE

This kind of advert is perfect for when you have something very specific to show people on your website. When I recently released our free Blogging Guide, this was the advert objective I chose. Yes, it’s true that in order to get it, you need to sign up for our email list (and why on earth wouldn’t you?) but this gave me the chance to gently warm up my visitors with a landing page laying out the benefits of the guide. Have a look at my landing page and you’ll see what I mean. It also brought traffic to the site who then went on to browse the store and blog.

LEAD GENERATION

If you’re looking to build your email lift and you have an enticing offer – say a discount or a free download – this is the one to use. Short and to-the-point, call-to-action buttons include apply now, download, get quote, learn more, sign up and subscribe.

PAGE POST ENGAGEMENT

This is deluxe version of boosted posts. If you’ve been casually boosting posts up until now, consider using the Facebook Adverts manager next time you have something great to share. It will give you more control over your demographics and audience that a post boosted on the fly.

RESEARCHING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Before you’re ready to create an advert or boost a post, take a little time to do some research using the Facebook Audience Insights Tool. The first time I discovered this, it blew my mind. It was created to help advertisers target their audience more effectively and it’s the tool you use to build Custom Audiences based on their location, demographics, interests, relationship status, behaviour, likes and more. The audience you build using the Insights tool can be saved and used in any of your future ad campaigns, including boosting posts. You’ll probably end up creating several custom audiences depending on your current marketing goals.

As you begin to create a custom audience, you are prompted to enter your page name in order to target either people who already connected to your page or people who aren’t. I find this super useful and in fact I now have three main custom audiences.

1. PEOPLE WHO AREN’T CONNECTED WITH MY PAGE. They don’t know me or trust me yet, so these adverts need feature more introductory information.
2. PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY CONNECTED WITH MY PAGE. These people like me enough to like my page, so they are perfect for targeting with email sign up incentives and special offers
3. PEOPLE WHO HAVE ALREADY VISITED MY WEBSITE. They people are very interested in what I have to offer. I target these people with special offers and right sidebar general awareness adverts. (I’ll be dealing with how you can target these people, using the Facebook pixel, in another post).

People who aren’t connected with my page are just as important for me to target because I always want to be feeding potential new customers into my marketing funnel.
I start by choosing the People Not Connected To my page option. I then add basic location data (if you’re a photographer, you can be WAY more specific) and age limits, as well as key interests, but how do I know I’m on the right track?

Here’s a snapshot of my People Not Connected audience. I like to look at the behaviour of this potential audience by focusing on the Page Likes tab. Facebook will show the top categories and page likes of the people I’m targeting. Below I’ve highlighted the names that jump out at me as being closely linked to my ideal client. It’s showing me that they are interested in photography-related brands, similar to mine.  The Page Likes tab can really let you know that you’re getting your targeting right.

If you’re a photographer, you can drill down a lot further in the Advanced > Behaviours tab. There you can drill down to Relationship Status, Work, Life Events and more to really create a snapshot of your ideal client.

Once you’ve refined your audience, you can save it and it will be available to use in the Facebook Advert Power Editor.

BOOSTING POSTS

if you do boost a post, make sure you plan and execute it in the Adverts manager rather than boosting a random post on your page and make sure the link and the copy you include will appeal to the specific demographic you are targeting. After all, you’ve gone to the trouble of targeting these people – it would be a shame to waste the opportunity. If the goal of your boosted post, is to reach more of the same people whom you are featuring, then make sure your copy is relevant and appealing.
Here’s a quick example:
First read this….”Check our Fiona and Mark’s wedding in Provence – congrats guys!”.  It’s friendly enough but definitely not clickworthy.

Now try this….”Planning a wedding in France? Check out the stunning locations we found for Fiona and Mark’s wedding portraits.”

I know which one I’d be more likely to click on.

The Facebook Audience Insights tool is probably one of the most powerful marketing insight tools you have. It’s free and it’s pretty straightforward to use. To get the most out of Facebook advertising, make sure you know what your goal is, over and above just ‘reaching more people’. In other posts, we’ll be looking at using the Facebook pixel to re-target existing site visitors as well as measuring the effectiveness of your Facebook advertising campaigns.

You can get hold of our lovely free tutorial on the all-important Facebook Pixel here.

And if all that has made you feel you might be ready to turn things up a notch with your Facebook Ads, check our our course, Smarter Facebook Ads, which we built specially with small creative businesses in mind.