Advertisement is an important aspect of running a business. Without advertisement, the number of people that will know about your business will be very limited and this will affect your sales and income negatively. One popular way to do advertisements is through the Facebook Advertising tool.
As business owners, irrespective of the type of business you’re involved in, one factor that you cannot do without is the customers. The aim of starting a business is to make a profit, and the only way to make a profit is if customers patronize you. Many business owners face difficulties in getting customers to purchase patronize them, and this can be due to improper advertisement of their merchandise.
Nowadays, technology has reached a new height making the world more connected and easier for information to travel from one point to another point thousands of kilometers away. This improvement in technology is something that can be utilized to boost one’s business and make more profit.
Importance of Social Media
Social media is one of these technological advancements. Social media brings the world together and it allows us to communicate with other people from other parts of the world. This means that we can also use social media for the promotion of our business, thus expanding our customer base exponentially.
An example of such social media platform is Facebook. Facebook is one of the oldest and most used social media platforms, there is almost nobody without a Facebook account. Research shows that about 35% of the world’s population makes use of Facebook. If you’re looking to grow your customer base, Facebook is a great platform to use. This article is going to give you some pointers to help you advertise your business on Facebook without incurring too much cost.
How to Run Effective Facebook Advertising for Small Budgets?
One major problem people face when trying to advertise their business is making the best out of their budget. A lot of people find themselves spending huge amounts on Facebook ads without any significant improvement in their customer base. To avoid such a situation, you must have a clear-cut idea of what Facebook advertising is like, then you can go ahead to invest in it we’re going to be showing you some things you need to know to make the best out of Facebook advertising.
Identifying the appropriate audience
Facebook is a globally used social media platform with over 2 billion active users. This stat stands to show you just how influential of a platform it is. While this large number serves as a big advantage for marketing strategy, it can also be a huge setback.
The over 2 billion users of Facebook are not all people from the same areas or backgrounds, these users consist of different people all over the world, with different age groups, different jobs, and most importantly different needs.
One major mistake that people make when advertising on Facebook is that they advertise blindly. What does it mean to advertise blindly? It means that they advertise without any specific target in mind. Advertising without any target in mind is like dropping a needle in a haystack, there are too many people using this app and while a large number will need what you’re offering, there will still be that larger number that doesn’t need it.
For example, if you’re a business owner that deals in accessories that are needed by pregnant women, it will be a waste of advertising resources to present these products to young kids or teenagers on Facebook. This is why it is important to identify the appropriate audience before you even make a move to advertise. Once you know the category of people that your business is suited for, you can now go ahead to make moves that are tailored to get the attention of these audiences.
Estimate your budget
This is another step that you need to consider thoroughly before running your Facebook Advertisement. Most times, due to poor planning or improper budget estimation, many have to settle for less than what they have already spent, and some even don’t get anything out of the investments they’ve already put into the adverts.
To avoid the situation mentioned above pay attention to this step. Before launching a Facebook advertisement, do a budget estimation. A budget estimate will include all the potential costs, some things to consider when estimating your Ads include:
- the average cost to secure a customer
- how long will that customer patronize you
- and how much income the customer will bring in (LTV)
The customer lifetime value (LTV) refers to the estimated amount that you can generate from one customer, with this in mind, you can make a more detailed budget. LTV allows you to have a good idea of how much income you’ll be expecting and how long it will take.
By the time you start making these calculations, you will start getting a good idea of how much you will need to spend to successfully boost your business. Apart from the customers’ angle, there are still other parts of Facebook marketing that you need to create estimates for, and that includes; the type of graphic (image or video) that will portray your business and the cost of creating it.
Another thing to note is, that the amount that you arrive at after creating a budget will not necessarily be the exact amount that you will end up spending. It is advisable to include an extra spending gap. This spending gap refers to provisions made in case of any additional cost that might come up, and more often than not, extra charges always come up.
Be Creative in your Facebook Advertising
This point is as simple as it sounds. Advertising on Facebook and other platforms is not only about getting a lot of people to see your adverts, it is very important that your advertisement should be able to hold the attention of your audience. You can use yourself as an example, you know the way you change the channel when a boring Ad comes up, that is the same way most users skip or block off Ads that are boring to them.
Before you rush on to Facebook to start posting adverts, you need to come up with very interesting content that can hold the attention of your audience. Creative advertisement is shown to increase the number of people that will engage your page, and more engagement is equivalent to more potential customers.
When creating your advert, ensure that it includes some of the following;
Relation to the target audience
When creating an advert for your business, ensure that the graphics portray an image or message that is relatable to the target audience. In simpler terms, ensure that the advertisement is something that your desired market can relate to. If your target audience cannot relate to the advert then they won’t see how the benefits of your business.
Ensure that the product or business you’re promoting is visible for all to see, and also your central theme
In a bid to make the advertisement interesting and eye-catching, it is easy to lose the ad’s important message. When creating content for your advert, ensure that the message you’re passing across is very prominent. It will be pointless if your advert is very interesting but still leaves the viewer wondering what message you’re passing.
What this tip is telling you is that create your advertisement content around your business or product and ensure that the advert is something that will pike the interest of your audience enough for them to engage your post.
Keep an eye on the ads and be ready to make adjustments
One common mistake people make is that, once they’ve created and uploaded an advert, they just stop. However, Facebook marketing is not so simple that you can leave ads to keep running without making any adjustments.
With the improvement in social media technology, you now monitor your adverts from the very moment that you upload them. The ability to monitor your posts from the minute they are uploaded, makes it possible to make adjustments faster.
It is a big mistake to wait for long before checking the response to your ad. This can lead to underutilization of your investments that has gone into marketing your business.
Once you upload your ad campaigns, it is necessary that you keep real-time track of them. There are even apps and software that have been designed to help you keep track of the engagement and activities on your adverts, an example of such is Socialays.
Keeping real-time track of your advert means checking your adverts every time or frequently. Keeping track allows you to know what viewers think of your campaign and how you can improve it.
Also, just keeping track of your advert is not enough. Once you’re getting reviews and engagements on your post, you need to make necessary adjustments as well. If you notice that the engagements on your advert are not up to your expectation, you need to make adjustments. The Facebook Ads Manager is a feature on your Facebook that allows you to keep track of your ads.
Track the right metrics for your business
The metrics for your business refer to milestones that you can use to gauge the progress of your business. Before you upload your Facebook ads, you must determine what your metrics are. These metrics will enable you to shape the content of your ads. Some important metrics that are common to most Facebook ads include:
Engagement
It refers to the number of people that clicked on the advert or commented on the advert. Engagement is a very important metric to track because it tells you to a great degree how effective your advert is in capturing the attention of the audience. If your engagement is low, it means your advert is not engaging enough. With this, you can easily adjust your ad campaign to something better, or you can change your audience base completely.
Traffic
This is another important metric to track. Traffic refers to the number of people that came across your ads at least once. Monitoring the traffic on your ads lets you know how many people have seen that ad within a period. With this information, you can further improve your advertisement scheme.
You can use the information on your traffic to determine if your advert is reaching your target audience or not. If the traffic on your advert is low, it means that you have to get to more people. You can do this by expanding your audience base.
Leads
Leads refer to the number of people that sign up or register for whatever your advert is portraying. Use “leads” in conjunction with engagements to get a rough percentage of your audience who shows interest in your product.
The engagement will show the clicks and likes as well as comments. The leads on the other hand will show who follows your company. You can use this information to determine those that are interested in your product, and then re-strategize using this information.
Sales
This refers to the amount or degree of change in your business income due to the advert. The sales are the major determinant of how effective your Facebook advertising is, if the sales recorded exceed that from before the advert, then you know that your ads have been effective. If you notice little to no change to your sales after uploading, you need to reevaluate your ad. A good advert is expected to boost sales as much as possible.
Reach
Reach refers to the number of people that came across your post. The reach of your ads will affect the other metrics to a large degree. The low result indicates that the post or ads did not reach a lot of viewers. This is due to an insufficient audience base, your post is not engaging enough, or viewing your advert being restricted.
Knowledge of your reach helps you strategize properly and make the necessary adjustments where necessary.
With knowledge of all these metrics and properly keeping track of them, you can easily shape your adverts. You need to monitor these metrics so that you can make adjustments when necessary and as soon as possible.
Build on your Facebook Advertising
After creating a Facebook advert and uploading it, don’t stop there. Don’t stop even if you gain a lot of engagement or leads. Go ahead and build on that campaign. You can do this by creating more related adverts off the results from the previous one.
After you’ve created your first advert, you will notice an increase in viewers. To make sure they stay engaged, go ahead and create more content. This strategy is especially effective for ads that have a lot of engagements but low leads. After engaging your ads, give the audience something to increase their interest. Make them want to be a part of what you’re offering.
Final Thought on Facebook Advertising
Facebook advertising is a very effective way to boost one’s business. Facebook is one of the most used social media platforms, and individuals from all over the world are active on it. It opens a lot of opportunities for you to promote your business, it brings together potential buyers and even partners.
In this article, we have talked about important things you need to make the best out of Facebook advertising. With these, you are sure to see a noticeable improvement in your business performance and the effectiveness of your adverts.
When creating adverts for Facebook, we can see that is important to have a target audience in mind. Having a target audience will help you construct your advert and shape it to fit your audience. Also, it is important that your content is creative, and has the ability to capture the attention of your audience.
Another important tip is calculating your budget before making your advert, we’ve also listed some things you need to include when making a budget, and the fact that the estimated budget is still just an estimate, not the exact price you might end up spending. Advertising with Facebook is very effective and simple, and it is one of the best ways to promote your brand.
