How to create your Facebook Ads strategy

Facebook ads work. Just ask one of the many brands that have used Facebook to successfully connect with their target market. Through a combination of thoughtful strategy and compelling ad content, brands from diverse industries can reach their market and communicate their brand’s value on this platform.

However, like any type of success, effective Facebook advertising takes some planning. Before you dive into developing ads, you need to consider what your goals are, who your audience is, and what type of content you will create. Below I’ll go into more detail about what you should include in your Facebook ad strategy before you even start thinking about creating content.

Create Facebook Advertising Goals

Though your ultimate goal may be to make a sale, not every customer is ready to buy. That is why it’s important to consider what goals you want your Facebook ads to achieve before you begin creating content. The type of Facebook ad that you use for your campaign will depend on your unique goals:

Increase Brand Awareness

Failing to engage your audience is one of the biggest Facebook marketing mistakes you can make. Engagement is essential to building meaningful customer relationships, which is how your company creates brand advocates and encourages repeat sales. Organic reach has dwindled in the past year, so if you want to remain visible and increase Facebook engagement, engage fans by using link, photo, and video ads to promote your content.

Get More App Downloads and Engagement

With more than 1 billion mobile users, Facebook is a great place to advertise your app. The platform offers two app ads options for those who have this goal in mind. The app install option takes viewers right to your app store landing page, while app engagement ads allow you to link to specific areas of your app, such as the registration page.

Generate sales

Generating sales is one of the most common, yet difficult, goals for brands advertising on Facebook. If you want to send traffic back to your website or a targeted landing page, use a page post ad with compelling visuals and ad copy. Carousel ads are also great if you want to highlight multiple products at once and direct viewers back to specific product pages.

Decide Who to Target

One of the greatest advantages to Facebook advertising is the ability to target specific groups of people who use the platform. Targeting helps you increase the quality of leads to reach more qualified buyers. There are many targeting options available, including:

• Location – Target your ads to where your customers are, including surrounding areas.
• Age – Choose the age range of your typical or ideal customers.
• Gender – Target your ads to a specific gender.
• Demographics – Demographic targeting includes information regarding work, education, relationships, financials, and politics.
• Online Behavior – Target people based on purchase habits, purchase types, device usage, and more.
• Life Events – Use this feature when advertising a product/service that coincides with a major life event.

Keep in mind that you can use custom audiences and lookalike audiences to target certain populations as well. Custom audiences allow you to target or exclude existing customers, while lookalike audiences let you target viewers who are similar to your best customers.

Develop a Content Strategy

You have decided what your goals are and who you want to target, so it’s time to create your ads, right? Not so fast. Beginning Facebook ad development without a strategy for the type of content you will create may lead to wasted time and resources.

In addition to your marketing goals and target audience, consider the following as you plan your content:

• Brand Voice – Your ads are sometimes a customer’s first impression of your brand. Make sure that your ad content maintains brand voice and tone, and optimize your images for branding.
• Visuals – Visuals help drive action. In fact, people are 85% more likely to buy after watching a brand video, and image posts generate 650% higher engagement rates than text-only posts.
• Value – The best way to stand out in a sea of Facebook posts is to provide your customer with something they find useful. Communicate brand value in your ad content.

After you have created a Facebook ads strategy, it is time to start creating content! Now that you know what your goals are, who your audience is, and which elements you need to include to engage that audience, your ad content creation efforts will have a clearer focus.

What objective do you most commonly use Facebook ads for?

This article was originally published at Maximizesocialbusiness.com, by author Sarah Jane Burt.

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