10 tips for good Facebook ads

Statements such as “Facebook ads are useless! “or “Facebook ads just cost a lot of money but don't generate any revenue” you hear over and over again. Used incorrectly, this is often the case. But if you pay attention to a few points and optimize your ads, then Facebook ads do make a difference. Here are 10 tips on how to make your ad a success too and how you can actually generate revenue with it.

1. Objective

The first step with Facebook ads should always be to define a clear goal. If you don't know what your goals are, it's hard to achieve them. You should always consider what you want to achieve with your campaign. Do you want to generate leads or is the main goal to collect addresses for your email mailing list? One goal of restaurateurs could be to attract new guests, for example. Or do you want to draw attention to a specific campaign with your company and need more reach to do so? You also need to consider whether the ad should directly promote a product or whether you want to increase the general awareness of your brand. You should always ask yourself such questions in advance so that you can formulate a clear strategy.

You must also set this as the first step when creating ads on Facebook. You can choose from the categories Awareness, Consideration and Conversion, each of which has precise sub-goals. You can also see them in the picture. With awareness, you either increase your reach or your brand recognition. Consideration means reaching new prospects or getting people to install your online shop's app, for example. Conversion is the goal of changing a person's status. In this case, this usually means turning an interested party into a buyer. So you want to reach direct buyers with your ad.

2nd target group

Just as important as knowing what you want to achieve is knowing who you want to reach. Defining the target group correctly in the Facebook ad manager is arguably one of the most difficult tasks. Many entrepreneurs and their advertising campaigns fail because of this. If you don't find the right audience, you're just wasting money with your ad because it's being leaked to many insignificant users. Facebook offers many options here to define its target group. By gender, age, place of residence, interests and much more. The more specifically you enter the information here, the more targeted the ads can be displayed. The challenge is to define a group that is comprehensive enough but not too comprehensive. If you have too extensive a target group, the budget per lead will only increase, as there will be a large number of ineffective ads for each actual lead.

Facebook distinguishes between 3 types of target groups.

• Core target groups
• Custom Audiences
• Lookalike Audiences

Core target groups are those that you can define yourself using the characteristics described above. The advantage of this is that you are very free to decide. You can also determine for yourself how large your target group is. The downside is that you can quickly get off the mark if you don't know your customers exactly enough.

Custom audiences are people who have already been in contact with your company. For example, you have already visited your website or liked your page. Lookalike audiences are target groups that are similar to your custom audiences. More about this in point 4.

You should also regularly revise your target audience. Especially at the beginning, it is often not possible to make clear statements about the effectiveness of ads on a target group. Facebook's Audience Insights tool gives you important insights into your audience's data. Based on this, you can constantly revise and improve your target group. Some ads often appeal to a particular group more than another. If you gain insights about this, you can optimize the target audience for your ads.

3. Indicators for warm contacts

Facebook advertising usually has a greater effect when it is directed to so-called warm contacts. These are people who have already been in contact with your company or product. This is usually used to define users who have already been to your company website or those who have “liked” your Facebook page. As mentioned above, these are the custom audiences. The conversion rate is significantly higher here. The advantage of warm contacts is that you no longer have to explain to them what your product or service is. The user already knows you and so you have a certain reputation. This therefore significantly increases the probability of sales success. You can identify warm contacts using the Facebook Pixel, but more about that later.

This also gives you the option of filtering more precisely within the warm contacts. For example, you can only play on all those who have visited a specific subpage of your website or who have performed a specific action. For example, it makes sense to send ads about your delivery service to people who have visited your delivery service page.

4. Lookalike Audiences

Another very helpful tool from Facebook to determine its target group is Lookalike Audiences. This tool makes it possible to identify users who are similar to those who, for example, have already visited your site, like or follow your page, are similar to your existing customers, or have carried out other comprehensible actions online. Lookalike audiences are therefore people who are similar to their custom audience. Facebook refers to typical target group characteristics, such as age, gender, interests, etc. and searches for profiles that are similar to your custom audience in these respects. This gives you a more accurate and suitable target group than if you set it manually through interests. This increases the chance of reaching out to the right people who could really be interested in your product. This in turn increases the chance that your ad is effective and that the advertiser will take action.

You can choose between different percentages (see picture). The difference here is that the higher the percentage, the larger and therefore less accurate the target group becomes. With lower percentages, you get a more targeted target group.

Helpful for creating lookalike audiences are also Video tutorials.

5th Facebook pixel

Now, of course, the question is how to find out who has already visited your site. This is easy to find out with an analysis tool: Facebook pixels. This is code that you can create in the Facebook Ads Manager and then paste into your website yourself or through a system administrator. Find out how to create it here. The code then registers the users of your website. This can also be used to measure and improve the effectiveness of your advertising, as it analyses actions that users take on your site.

For example, if a visitor to your website places something in the shopping cart but doesn't buy it, this is saved. You can then see these people in the manager and send them targeted ads. Only if you have integrated this pixel into your website can you identify groups of people who have already interacted with you. This is necessary in order to be able to use Facebook tools, such as Custom Audiences, and to place targeted advertising.

6. No pure product advertising

The temptation to simply advertise your products on Facebook as usual is great. But that's not how social media advertising works. People use Facebook for a specific reason: they want to be entertained and communicate with each other. Because that is Facebook: an entertainment medium. As a result, you will not find much appeal with pure product advertising. On the contrary, many users are even annoyed by such advertisements and find them to be counter-productive. Instead, you should generate attention by providing content or real offers that really benefit customers. When your ad adds value to the user, it gets noticed. Through this ad, you can then attract you, for example, to a page where you can sign up for the newsletter. In this way, you generate leads with contact details, which you can then use to send advertising directly.

A study also showed that many users see Facebook as an information medium. For you, this means that industry-specific information also represents added value for your target group. Deliver such content, draw attention to your company and thus generate leads. An example of such content would be case studies or white papers. Here, you should always ensure a formal, factual, industry-related and professionally correct appearance. In this way, you generate a professionally competent impression among potential customers, which is projected onto your brand and product. If you can convince readers of your competence, they will also be more likely to contact you.

7. Plan enough time

Creating interesting content naturally takes time. You must plan for these and be prepared to invest. This is the only way you can see long-term success on social media. Regardless of how many ads you place on Facebook, you should consistently publish content on your page. Of course, this must also be of good quality. Take the time to create and edit high-quality images and videos.

Continuous monitoring is just as time-consuming. But this is just as important as good ads. You must constantly analyze and optimize your ads. If you notice that an ad isn't working that way, optimize it. Here you can also run A/B tests to try out options against each other. However, you must also recognize when an ad isn't working and then possibly even delete it altogether. If, after several adjustments and optimizations, it is still not showing any success, then your target group is probably not appealing to you. Then you should also remove them so as not to waste money unnecessarily.

In addition, you must remain patient. Facebook ads are seen more as a long-term investment. Not every investment will immediately pay off as a return on investment. Especially not if your goal is to build awareness or collect email contacts. So be patient and stay tuned.

8. As much budget as necessary but as little as possible

It is just as important to allocate enough budget to your Facebook campaigns. A half-hearted campaign with too little investment will ultimately be of no use, but will waste the money invested. There is no generally correct statement about how much budget is enough. It always depends on the objective, of course. If you want to build up awareness or an e-mail distribution list, you have to approach the matter more broadly. That's when a higher budget makes sense.

However, you should always plan your budget carefully before placing an ad. Because every budget that you provide, Facebook will also spend. This is about impressions and not clicks like Google. Therefore, you should always consider carefully beforehand how many impressions you need to reach your goal. To do this, it is helpful that you research how large your target group is beforehand. As a restaurant owner, for example, if you want to reach out to people in your area, then research how many people live within a certain area. This ensures that you don't pay for too many impressions even though your target audience is actually much smaller.

Facebook also offers you a little help here. Once you've set your budget, Facebook uses the other characteristics of your campaign to show you how many people you'll reach with that budget and the estimated daily results.

9. Facebook ads as split tests

Facebook's dynamic ad design makes it possible to create multiple variations of an ad. For example, you can try out different images, as well as different descriptions or titles. Several different call-to-action buttons can also be used. This allows you to test different combinations against each other. In the ad manager, you can then check which ad variation was best received by which target group. You should then use these later on. Those ads that didn't work well should be deleted. But after that, you should still constantly create split test campaigns. The more you test, the better your end result will be. However, you should always give Facebook some time. Especially at the beginning, when not so many impressions have been achieved yet, the values are often erratic and irregular. A common novice mistake is making changes at this stage.

However, you can not only test ad variations against each other, but also target groups, for example. In this way, you can find out which target group is actually the right one for you. To do this, you should use the previously determined top ad.

10. Different displays for desktop and mobile devices

Since Facebook is not only used on desktop but also a lot on mobile devices, it's important to optimize ads for all devices. The same display should never be used. Texts and images that look good on the PC desktop are often heavily distorted or very small and illegible in the mobile version. Then, of course, the ad is no longer useful. The trend is that ads for mobile devices need to be more compact. With the Facebook Ads Guide, you can see an accurate preview of your ad for different devices. This allows you to always check whether the ad is displayed correctly before activating it.

If you also use advertising on Instagram in addition to Facebook, you must also note that there are other formats here. Although you can also place these ads via the Facebook manager, you should adapt them for Instagram. Instagram itself also has various formats, such as ads in stories, in feeds or in video format. Details can also be found in our Blog post about Instagram.

conclusion

So you can see that there are lots of ways to optimize your Facebook ads. When used correctly, these tools have great potential. This is how anyone can succeed with their ads on Facebook and not just waste their money in the process. Of course, there may still be difficulties at the beginning. I'm sure everyone will make a mistake or two, but over time, you'll get the hang of it and become a real pro.

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