It's no surprise that Facebook can be an excellent platform for reaching new consumers and growing your business.
There are numerous ways to use Facebook for small businesses, but you must plan for success and set reasonable goals given some of the restrictions of the Facebook network.
Here are our recommendations for successfully leveraging Facebook marketing for your small business.
1. Match campaign targets to your objectives.
What are you hoping to gain from Facebook ads? More sales, a larger newsletter reading, and increased awareness? This is an important consideration in selecting how your Facebook advertisements account will be set up. Fortunately, Facebook ads provide objectives for practically any purpose you may have for your campaigns.
There's no way for me to propose the best campaign goal for everyone.
If you're interested in more than one, I recommend hovering over each name and clicking the I button next to each to learn more about their ideal use cases. Facebook also includes a link to learn more about each.
2. In Audience Insights, you may find your target audience.
Understanding the target demographic is one of my preferred places to start with any new account. With its Audience Insights feature, Facebook advertisements make this very simple.
To see this data, you must have your Facebook page linked to your Business Manager account.
Navigate to the planning section in Facebook Business Manager's main navigation and select "Audience Insights."
The tool will then display a pop-up asking if you want to start with all Facebook users ("Everyone on Facebook") or only users connected to your business's page ("People connected to your Page"). When you select "People connected to your Page," it will highlight the section in the left-hand menu where you can select which Facebook page data you wish to examine. Find your page, and you're ready to go!
This tool will allow you to view demographic information, Facebook activity, device statistics, and so on.
If the report is empty, it signifies you don't have a sufficient number of people for Facebook to share insights. But don't panic, it doesn't mean everything is lost.
There are probably larger brands identical to yours that you may leverage. Assume you own a modern furniture business. West Elm and Crate & Barrel are two similar brands. You can gather insights from their audiences by typing those brand names into the "Interests" field, just above the Facebook page selection on the left side.
Overall, this data can be quite useful when deciding which demographics to target, what inclinations people have, and possibly which gadgets to include.
Finally, you don't have to use this target audience exclusively (or even at all if you don't want to), but it's a wonderful starting point when it comes to figuring out how your customer base translates to Facebook targeting.
3. Recognise the targeting layers
When creating target audiences for Facebook advertising, it's critical to understand the distinction between AND and OR targeting logic. Knowing the distinction here can mean the difference between aiming for 15,000 and 15,000,000.
The manner Facebook formats it makes it easy to remember: all targeting specified in a box is OR targeting, whereas numerous boxes mean AND targeting. Your target audience will grow as you add more interest to this box.
But suppose you want to target people who like these companies, but only those who like this brand AND make a particular amount of money. This is when the Narrow Audience function comes into play.
When we narrow our audience, we are selecting the intersecting portion of the Venn diagram of the two groups.
So, for our campaigns, we'll select a smaller target and layer in income tiers.
Our targeted section has portions separated by a box. This demonstrates that to be included in our target audience, users must meet any single requirement from the first box AND any single criteria from the second box. We've limited our target audience significantly by including the income segment in the second box.
When you're creating your target audience and using layers like this, make sure you keep the AND and OR targeting logic in mind to avoid being too tight or too broad by ignoring the boxes.
4. Check that your geotargeting is accurate.
A small business's target geography is not predetermined. Some SMBs are strictly local and exclusively serve their nearby locality. Others may be national in scope and appeal, while others may serve a very specific community worldwide.
Whatever category your company fits into, make sure you're using the right geotargeting to reach your target audience. All Facebook geotargeting parameters are stored at the ad set level.
The first thing to double-check is that you're targeting folks who are in the right place at the appropriate time. This setting defaults to People who live in or have recently lived in this location, which is probably fine for most marketers, but if you have more limits, you may want to alter it.
Assume you're the local furniture store that doesn't ship outside of your nearby area. It could make sense to change the targeting to only those who live in this location, as you'll be excluding people who are either travelling to or have recently visited that location. Either of these parties could be halfway around the world by next week, which would be a waste of your valuable advertising dollars.
After you've chosen that option, the rest is quite simple. Simply select "Include" or "Exclude" from the selection, then begin typing the place you require in the field to discover it. On Facebook, we can target the following types of locations:
Countries
States/Regions
DMAs
Electoral boundaries
Cities
Postal Codes
Addresses
Finally, in the lower right, select "Place Pin," and Facebook will provide you with a cursor to drop a pin anywhere you want on the map. You'll then be able to alter the range around it pin to your desired miles.
Overall, the basic purpose of geotargeting is to avoid reaching users that are irrelevant to you because they are too far away. Make certain that your ad budget is solely directed at areas that can fairly drive market opportunity your way.
5. Separate retargeting and prospecting.
This applies to all organisations, not just SMBs, however, I find that many SMB accounts frequently forget the distinctions between remarketing and prospecting.
We use retargeting to contact consumers who have already interacted with our brand in some way. These users may have visited your website, liked you on Facebook, or commented on a post. They are already familiar with your brand to some extent.
Prospecting is just a game of expanding the reach and locating new target clients. It is the polar opposite of retargeting.
When multiple audience categories are integrated into a single campaign, determining what works best and who is the most valuable audience is more difficult. With campaign budget optimisation in place, it will be more difficult to govern the money allocation between these groups.
Regardless of your goals, I recommend maintaining prospecting and retargeting in distinct campaigns for simpler management and improvement.
6. Keep track of your ad frequency.
The estimated value of engagements a user in any given audience has seen your ad in a specific time frame (this time frame is changeable based on the date range you're viewing) is referred to as frequency.
Whether you're targeting a tiny, local group or a nationwide niche, it's critical to avoid oversaturating and blasting your audience with your message.
This will be one of the simplest things to monitor because ad frequency is a column that can be added to your campaign manager page.
7. Effective budget management
The final Facebook advertising tip I'd like to provide is all about budgeting for Facebook ads. When it comes to budgeting, this platform is unlike many others. There are two crucial points to remember:
Make preparations for campaign budget optimisation.
Beginning in February 2020, all accounts' campaigns will be converted to campaign budget optimisation or CBO. This may not seem like a big concern, but it can be if your account isn't set up properly.
In a word, CBO transfers budget control from the ad set to the campaign level. The budget is then divided by Facebook based on which ad set is doing the best.
The issue is that the ad set that Facebook believes is doing best is not always the same one that you believe is performing best. Many posts have been published regarding CBO, and I recommend you do your homework on this topic because it will surely have an impact on your account.
Keep in mind that ad scheduling is linked to budgetary.
In a previous post, I discussed how lifetime and daily budgets affect ad set/campaign settings and how you may control when your ads appear. Check out this post to learn more about ad scheduling and budgeting and to ensure you're getting the most bang for your cash.
Take advantage of these Facebook marketing tips for small-scale business marketers!
There is no single, perfect plan for Facebook ads, but business owners should exercise caution when experimenting with the site to avoid overextending themselves. This is almost often the origin of the "I tried Facebook, but it didn't work" mantra. Here are some general guidelines to keep in mind to avoid this:
Align campaign targets to your objectives.
In Audience Insights, you may find your target audience.
Recognise the targeting layers
Check that your geotargeting is accurate.
Separate retargeting and prospecting.
Keep track of your ad frequency.
Effective budget management
Hopefully, these recommendations will give you the courage to test Facebook in a regulated manner—and ensure that your efforts will be rewarded!
DigitalxMarketing works with clients that want to analyse their present marketing plans, determine what marketing technologies and digital tools (like Facebook Advertising) apply to their business model, and plan, design, and implement a digital business blueprint to grow their firm and boost their online presence.
DigitalxMarketing Ltd has its head office in Wellington NZ with its support and resource centre based in the Philippines. DigitalxMarketing implements the latest digital strategies, tactics, tools, platforms and technologies to deliver integrated digital marketing services so your digital footprint can be found online.