How to Use Facebook Marketing to your Advantage

With over a billion active users – more than 60% of whom log in on a daily basis – in 2016, Facebook is considered as the largest social network in the world and one of the most effective ways to market your products and services. So the question is how to use Facebook Marketing to your advantage while having a positive ROI.

The sooner companies large and small accept the fact that investing on Facebook to reach and captivate their ideal market or target demographic is the way to ‘thrive not just survive’ these days, the better chance they can have to put a considerable edge over competition. Online marketing techniques, specifically Facebook's, are ever changing and your business’ willingness to go with Facebook’s ‘pay to play’ rules will definitely provide you the right kind of exposure in the user’s news feed.

How to Use Facebook Marketing to your Advantage

1. Facebook Organic reach is 1 to 2% consider Paid Advertising.
2. Know who is most Profitable Audience and target them.
3. Do Conversation Tracking to monitor Conversation Costs.
4. Pause poor Ad Relevance Scored Ads.
5. Monitor Click Through Rates and Pause Under Performing Ads.
6. Ads Need to standout from the crowd - Contrasting Colours in the Words.
7. Add Eye Catching Words in the Ads.
8. Ad image is more important then the Headline.
9. Reply to Comments to Ads - to increase engagement.

The question now is: how do you use Facebook to your advantage?

1. Get 1 to 2% organic reach with Facebook

According to Ogilvy, almost all brands on Facebook these days have seen a dramatic plummeting of their organic reach, meaning, less and less people can see your page. Two reasons:

First, to avoid ‘overcrowding’ the users’ news feed with content. With 18+ million businesses competing for their attention, too much of everything will make them miss the things that matter most to them, while too little content in the feeds will make them lose interest in logging in again. Second, Facebook wants businesses to pay up if they want to widen their reach – quid pro quo.

From a business benefit viewpoint perspective, your target audience will most likely buy your product or avail your services if they get a Facebook recommendation – either directly from their news feed or through a friend. So there is no excuse even for businesses with very small budgets (pennies per ad) not to be able to afford to advertise if this would bring bigger customer turnout in the end.

2. Understanding your audience and who is the most Profitable?

It may not seem fair (that Facebook is trying to burn a hole in your pocket) and even if you organise a picket rally in front of Facebook office, it would just seem counterproductive for your business. The key is to properly determine the purpose of your ad campaign, focus on your targeted fan base and hit them with your best marketing plug ever.

You will have certain age brackets and specific genders who will convert at a lower cost – understanding who these people are and targeting them will increase your profitability.It might cost you some but if you learn to play the music, you’ll reap the rewards.

3. Setup Goals - Do Conversation Tracking to monitor Conversation Cost

To truly understand if your Ads are working, you need to know how much it is costing to acquire a new customer. Don’t make the mistake of looking at how much you are paying for a click, or how much it costs per 1,000 impressions as these are the wrong numbers to be monitoring. You need to know how much it costs to convert a customer on Facebook with conversion tracking.

Also remain in constant communication with loyal customers and even connect with prospects on Facebook by using its Messenger feature. A potential client might be looking to get an answer to his question privately before making a purchase or a long-time product user might need help with order confirmation and shipping info.

Either way, you can offer swift and instant customer care support which can increase your sales conversion rate.

4. Monitor Ads for Ad Relevance Score – Pause below 5

Honest, fresh, high quality content is a must to ensure a great ad relevance score. But don’t be too complacent about it. Experiment on this: show the same ad to different audience or use different ads to the same audience.

It is not unusual for use to have 20 different Ads and pausing poor performing Ads – it’s a lot of work but don’t you want great results?

The perfect combination of genuine content, innovation and variety will not only strengthen your brand image and reputation but also generate the higher sales figure for your business.

5. Monitor Click Through Rates and Pause Poor Performing Ads – Pause below 1%

Using CTR is a good start to measure the success of your Facebook marketing campaign to know which Ads are more engaging.Replicate high performing Ads and pause poor performing ads. You should have 2 Ads running at once per Ad Set and pause the poor performing ad.

6. You Need Ads that stand out from the crowd - Contrasting Colours in the Words

Blending your ad image features colours with Facebook’s colour scheme will render your campaign invisible. Colours that contrast and stand out on a page are the trick to entice the user to pay more attention to what you have to say.By strategically placing pops of bright colour in your ad, it can focus the eye on your product and even make it look as appealing as possible.

7. Need eye catching words in the ads

Since Facebook forbids you to use more than 20% of the image space for your copy, you need to ensure that your main USP or Value Proposition – however short or simple it may be – you need to instantly hook the reader to engage more.

8. Headlines are important but the Ad image is more important

Using emotional appeal in your Facebook ad can help improve your campaign’s effectiveness. It’s not just enough that you choose clean, uncluttered image; they have to be funny, bizarre, or unique enough to catch a user’s eye and get to linger on your marketing plug.

Sometimes, using images that aren’t related to what you’re advertising can have a powerful impact on the user’s brain - making them act on impulse and do exactly what you want them to do.

9. Reply to Comments in Ads - to help with engagement it also helps get you paid Ads shared more

Never ignore comments from your Facebook marketing campaign. You won’t just miss potential opportunities to gather valuable testimonies but you’ll also lessen the chance of building stronger relationships with your potential long-term customers.

Taking time to reply to comments on your newsfeed ads is a wise investment and it will give your users the feeling of worth and pride, which they can reciprocate by ‘sharing’ your ad. These posts get a free ride into the news feed of other people, which makes it an even sweeter deal for you. Make your Facebook marketing campaign share-worthy and witness your business grow right at the palm of the users’ hands.

Conclusion

With any form of advertising, it needs to be profitable and provide a return on investment. How to Use Facebook Marketing to your Advantage can be difficult, but your advertising campaigns need to be highly targeted and don't take the standard approach, or you will get standard results.  If you need help creating a campaign get in contact with use as I'm sure we can help.