22% use Facebook. No matter what niche you are in, there are many potential customers just by clicking a button.
Although Facebook advertising is extremely lucrative, you will need to learn a lot before you can see positive results.
Recent changes in PPC advertising have made it more affordable. This increases the cost per click of campaigns and makes it more difficult to make a profit as advertisers flock to Facebook.
Many marketers invest money in Facebook, only to find that they are left empty-handed and conclude that Facebook doesn’t work.
Losing money, in the beginning, is normal. This is why I advise you to view this as an investment in your educational future.
Your first campaigns may fail, but you will gain valuable insights into your audience’s response to your messages, which you can use to improve and iterate.
These hacks will help you move quickly from losing money to running profitable campaigns.
1. Find Niche Fanatics
While targeting people based on their interests can be a great start, it is important to make sure you are not just targeting curious web surfers but buyers as well.
There are both casual and dedicated fans in every niche. What group would you say is more likely to buy your product if they saw it in an ad?
If I was selling mixed martial art apparel, I would like to get my message across to people who have UFC posters on their walls, MMA-themed sheets, and signed t-shirts of their favorite fighters.
It would be a mistake to target Conor McGregor’s fans, the most well-known fighter in the world. He has more fans than anyone, but only a small number of them are MMA fans.
People tune in to see Conor McGregor fight, even though they haven’t seen another UFC event during the year.
It’s better to target niche celebrities that the casual fan has never heard of but that the diehard fans love.
Consult Facebook’s Audience Insights.
To view the affinity scores, enter an interest and then click the “Page Likes” tab. This will show you how likely it is that people who are interested in your topic (as compared to average Facebook users) will like other pages.
If you can find pages that relate to your niche on all other pages (100x or more is excellent), then you are on the right track.
Jorge Masvidal is a UFC fighter but, unlike Conor McGregor, his fans are primarily diehard mixed martial artists fans. The affinity scores on his page confirm this. They show that the average follower is more likely to be a diehard fan of other fighters and is therefore more dedicated than casual fans.
2. Get engaged fans
You can also increase your Facebook fans by running ad campaigns. You can invite people to like your posts by inviting them to your page. A large portion of these people will agree.
You’ll often find that campaigns targeting your Facebook fans convert better than those that target cold traffic using demographic and interest data.
You can also target the people who are most interested in your content.
Amanda Bond, founder of The Ad Strategist has some handy tips to help reach your most passionate fans.
Click the “Audiences” tab in the ads manager and select “Create Custom Audience”. Next, create an audience that has engaged with your page over the past 365 Days.
Test your results by running an ad campaign for this audience.
Amanda’s guide to setting it up can be found here.
Consider creating a custom audience to view a portion of the video content you post on Facebook. A person who has seen 25% of a video will know your brand and be more open to your ads.
This is Amanda’s guide to this process.
3. Make data-driven decisions
Your decisions when you advertise with Facebook will be based on assumptions.
Your audience might be younger, so perhaps you have concluded that smartphones are more popular than desktops. If this is the case, you may choose to show ads on mobile devices.
You might have created a product for men and ignored female customers when you were targeting them.
It’s much more effective to keep your assumptions loose and then invent based on the vast amount of data Facebook has after you have run your first campaign.
In the ads manager click on the tab ‘Performance’ and filter your results using ‘Performance or Clicks’.
Next, click on the “Breakdown” tab to see a variety of filters.
The most important filters are ‘Age’, ‘Gender’, ‘Platform,’ and ’Placement’. However, you can also use other filters if they’re relevant to your campaign.
You can now see how your audience is broken down in terms of cost per Click, click-through rate, and, most importantly, cost per Acquisition. This will allow you to make inferences about which types of people are responsive.
You may find that mobile users convert more than desktop users. To see if there is a trend, you can run a $5 per-day split testing (one ad for mobile and one for desktop) to confirm your suspicions.
If you find your metrics are better for people aged 35 and older, then run your next ad and exclude younger users.
Always test your assumptions and let the data guide you.
4. Rotate and Refresh
Ad fatigue refers to the phenomenon where people are unable to process an ad after seeing it multiple times. This was known as banner blindness in the early days of internet marketing.
You won’t need to wait for your ad to be shown multiple times, especially if it’s targeted at a smaller audience. This can be monitored in the frequency tab of the ads manager.
The less likely a person is to click on an ad, the more they see it. Facebook charges you a fee every time an ad appears on a person’s newsfeed.
This was confirmed by Adspresso‘s study, which showed that once the ad frequency is 9 or more, the average cost per Click increases by 161% when compared to the start of the campaign.
If your frequency is rising and your KPIs have fallen, it’s worth refreshing your ad copy. Your campaign can be redirected by changing your headline or picture.
Are you unsure where to find great ad images? Look through the free stock library and then add text with Canva.
Alternatively, you can include multiple ads (creatives), into your ad sets from the beginning and then rotate them. Your frequency will increase the more ads you have in your ad set.
5. Combining Influencer Marketing with Retargeting
You might consider a different approach if you are still struggling to make a profit despite testing your interests for months and tweaking your targeting over time.
Instead of using Facebook ads for people to come to the top of your funnel and then using Facebook ads to convert, you might consider other channels.
My experience with Instagram influencer marketing has shown a great ROI. Neil Patel reached a similar conclusion in 2014 when he hired Instagram models for his brand promotion.
You can use tools like Ifluenz to search for influencers on Instagram and then pay them to shout out your brand.
Many Instagram influencers don’t have the marketing skills to make their accounts monetizable.
If you are targeting up-and-coming influencers the cost of getting them to promote your product is minimal, but the return on investment can be great. You will continue to gain traffic to your page as they grow their channel by paying them for a permanent ad picture.
Your Instagram account will be linked whenever an influencer promotes your product. In your Instagram bio, link to the landing page or product when your followers click through to it.
What does this all have to do with Facebook ads?
You’re still missing out on 97.65% if you consider that the average landing page conversion rate is 2.3%.
It’s OK, they can be retargeted via Facebook. Retargeted customers are 70% more likely than cold traffic to buy.
After installing Firefox Pixel you will be able to track the movements and actions of your visitors to your website.
Click on the “Audiences” tab. Create a custom audience. This will allow you to create a new audience from people who visited your URL or landing page but have not visited your thank-you page.
Next, send a retargeting advertisement reminding them about the product they viewed but did not purchase. To encourage conversion, you might include a coupon code or leverage scarcity.
Retargeting campaigns typically have a lower CPC or CPA than campaigns that target cold traffic.
