Tips to make Facebook Ads work

Facebook Advertising can feel daunting when you’re a business owner juggling a million different tasks. If you’ve tested the waters before and didn’t get much value out of it, don’t despair! We chat with Facebook Ads specialist Veena Gandhi and find out her tips to make this marketing channel work for you and your business. She also shares how eComm retailers can maximise their efforts during key sales periods like Christmas.

How long should we run our Facebook ads?

As advertisers, we should always remember, why was Facebook created? Every time we think about this, we’ll not only create better messaging but messaging that connects with our target audience.

Facebook was created to ‘connect’ friends and family. As a rule of thumb, engagement is key to Facebook. As an advertiser, therefore, we need to make sure that we create engaging content, first. Whether it’s paid or organic traffic, Facebook doesn’t want to give its users a bad or mediocre experience. It wants users to have a long-term relationship with Facebook. Similarly, it wants a long-term relationship between brands and users.

As an advertiser, we should look at the platform, long-term and just not a short-lived solution. 

Different content strategies should be followed at every stage of the funnel to engage the customer.

Don’t expect to run ads for $10 for two days, and get results. Remember, it’s a long-term game.

Running Facebook ads is a slow burn and must align with your business goals. It’s a marketing platform and like all platforms, the algorithm needs time to deliver results. 

How much budget should we put towards ad spend? Does it depend on the type of ads? 

Generally, I recommend $1500 as a testing budget. This is required to test audiences, creative, offer/hook.

It’s not money lost- but should be viewed as an investment to collect data and learn from the data. 

For eComm businesses, tell us how they can achieve a successful sales period (like Christmas or Mother’s Day) with Facebook Advertising.

Events like Mother's Day or Christmas or Black Friday is a time when our feed is cluttered with offers. As a result, the cost of advertising starts going up. 

What we need to do: 

• Start building newer audiences months in advance. 

• Start engaging with these audiences (before you start selling them during these events).

• Start testing out lookalike audiences (an email list, purchase, add to cart, website traffic, etc).

During these events, you’d have built an engaged audience ready to buy from you.

Finally, test special offers before these events. Run a weekend offer a couple of months before the big event and see how your audience responds to it.

Tips to get Facebook on your side even if you have a small budget.

1. Install schema on your website/landing pages

Installing Schema is basically, allowing Facebook to gain more information about what users are doing on a brand's website, what they’re looking at and how well the site is performing. Basically, a deeper understanding of the website & therefore gathering more info. Facebook does this by looking at the markup data.

2. Ensure landing pages load in three seconds or less

3. Mobile Responsive - Think Mobile first!

4. Keep posting engaging content regularly on your Facebook business page. And if you can spare $5 a day then boost (yes! Boost) content from your page posts either to existing fans or new customers

How can Facebook still be relevant for service-based businesses?

• Service-based businesses can follow a content-based content strategy. 

• These businesses need to add value before they start selling. 

• Facebook is really pushing groups. Service-based businesses can look at building a community through Facebook groups. Daily Live recordings in the Facebook group, relevant to the target audience can help build your community.

• The biggest challenge for any service-based business is to build credibility. A Facebook group, wherein, the service-based business adds value, engages with the community, will help in establishing credibility.

Which Facebook ad formats should we go after? 

• Facebook is currently pushing video content. Want to grow your audience? Do a LIVE on your Facebook page.

• Similarly, if you’re running an eComm store, videos, collection ads and carousels are worth testing.

• Instagram Stories are growing rapidly and it’s still not as expensive as a newsfeed or Insta feed ad format. It’s also worth exploring.

About Veena

Veena is a growth-driven marketer at Digital Street. She has over 14 years of advertising experience and has led million-dollar campaigns for companies like Leo Burnett, McCann and FCB.

A data-driven marketer, she helps eCommerce brands in the fashion, beauty, lifestyle & fitness niches to scale and grow to 7+figures. As a digital consultant and performance media specialist, she works closely with advertising agencies from providing digital strategy, CRO solutions, full-funnel builds and digital advertising solutions. Her industry-relevant blogs are featured in DashThis, Jeffalytics. She mentors eCommerce businesses to scale to 7-figures.