Many in the business and marketing fields are transitioning to social media to build and market their businesses. With the cost-effectiveness of social media advertising, it’s no wonder why; ROI will always reign supreme. However, many have brought their traditional marketing philosophies with them and are frustrated with the results (or lack of results) they are getting. We will bring you one step closer to finding your “sweet spot” for low-cost ads with high ROIs.
How much should I spend?
This question was probably on your mind from the time you read the title so let’s get it out of the way. Firstly, this is a very subjective question because it all depends on what results you are trying to achieve with a particular campaign. We also recommend a period of testing; 1-2 weeks before dedicating a budget to your campaign. We recommend testing audiences, delivery optimization, creative and placements. Facebook makes it easy to test these factors with its A/B split testing functionality. Do not be afraid to experiment during this period, that’s the purpose. The end result should be a highly optimized Ad which is able to generate the ideal results at the lowest possible cost
How little can I spend?
In case you were wondering how little you can pay, its $1 US per day. If you’re thinking that it makes no sense testing because of how inexpensive it is and you couldn’t possibly be wasting money, then expect to get minimum results from your campaign. Facebook marketing gives you the power to make the most out of your dollar and not testing can mean the difference between $1 per result or $0.001 per result. Yes, you can pay less than a cent to achieve a particular result but you won’t know how far your dollar is going unless you test.
The Visual Content
The visual content is the foundation of any ad campaign and video content is preferred not only by social media users but by Facebook as well. You can fit considerably more value and information into one. Facebook loves video content so much they have made it extremely cost-effective to run an ad with a focus on getting video views. We know how much numbers mean to you so here they are; in our experience, Facebook charged us as low as $0.001 US per 3-second video view.
We are predisposed to notice movement in our environment, no matter how small. You are more likely to notice a video on your timeline as opposed to still images even if you aren’t really paying attention and seizing a user’s attention is the first step towards a conversion.
The optimal length of a video Ad is 30 seconds to 1 minute. Remember, this is social media, not YouTube. You would rarely find persons logging on to Facebook to watch lengthy videos. This will happen if you have an audience anticipating your content and the content in question is valuable. You may not realize it, but you judge the content you consume as valuable based on how educational, inspiring or entertaining it is…and so do your customers.
The Copy
Remember with social media and web design, less is more, very few will take the time to read verbose copy. Because it needs to be short, you need to make it clear to the reader that their problem is understood and that you genuinely want to help them. The easiest way to do this is to be human; be conversational in your approach. The biggest mistakes a lot of businesses and entrepreneurs are making is that they are trying to sound too corporate and this repulses users. Persons don’t want to feel like they are being sold to and ironically enough, the easiest way to sell on social media is not to sell… it is to bring value. Bring enough value and your product or service will sell itself as long as it is well presented. Remember, it’s not about you, it never was and it never will be. You are in business to serve, seek to write for your customers, not yourself.
Here is a short guide to copywriting taken from the book So You Think You Can Write by Julia McCoy:
1. Know your target demographic and your ideal customer.
2. Figure out the pain points, triggers, or factors that make your product desirable to your audience.
3. Work out the most efficient way of making the audience aware of your product, and what benefits it can provide to them—without sounding as if it’s a cold sell.
4. Develop ad copy that is effective and emotionally appealing to the audience.
5. Test this ad copy on a sample of ideal consumers to see how they respond to it. Change the ad, if necessary, to be more effective, and retest it until the target demographic finds it acceptable. (On a larger scale, this can be done using focus groups.)
Even Julia McCoy recommends that you test
Targeting your Audience
Having a compelling, professionally done video or graphic accompanied by a spectacularly written copy placed in front of persons who have absolutely no interest in your business is what we all a waste of time and more importantly, money. The main reason why your results are less than desirable is that you aren’t targeting your ideal clients, you have probably been trying to go too wide.
Creating a buyer persona of your ideal client is a simple exercise which helps you understand what they look like to Facebook’s algorithms. Here is a short list to get to started:
- Age range
- Sex
- Relationship status
- Religion
- Location
- Education level
- Income level
Interests
The more targeted your audience is, the lower the cost per result as long as all the other components of your ad are working in tandem. Now, remember this list is to get you started, use this to dig even deeper to find the customers whom you can best serve using Facebook’s Ad Manager demographic categories.
If you aren’t advanced, this is the best way to get started. There are more advanced techniques but they require other aspects of the digital marketing ecosystem. Don’t worry we’ll get into those in the future.
We understand how important it is for businesses to see returns on their advertising dollars as quickly as possible and to be able to track the performance of their campaigns. With that being said, we have put together packages to suit your everyone from entrepreneurs to enterprises.
