Maybe your budget is $10, maybe it’s $10 thousand. Regardless, learn how to make each dollar count for a successful Facebook ad campaign.

To Master Facebook Ads, Find Out:

• Which metrics you need to look at.
• Effective ways to present ads.
• How to target your demographic.
• What successful Facebook Ads look like.

Metrics You Must Know:

CTR: The click-through rate. The click through-rate is the number of clicks on your ad divided by the number of pages your ad appeared on during a scheduled time. For paid ads, if the CTR is low, your cost per click will be high. If few people engage, that’s bad news. Facebook will give you a low relevancy score. Your ad will suddenly get more expensive as well as less effective. Read more about the importance of high CTRs.

CPA: Cost per acquisition. This includes likes. See more details here.

CPC: The cost per click. The average cost per click for a Facebook ad is $0.69. Improving that figure is the goal. Implementing the strategies in this article will be a good start.

CPM: Cost per 1,000 impressions (times the ad is shown). In Facebook Ads, they call it Optimized CPM. It is required to have a budget. Read here to learn more.

CPP: The cost per pixel. A pixel lets you track people who have engaged. In this case, it is people who have clicked on your ad. For Facebook ads, there is a conversion pixel that helps you track and target customers. It’s not nearly as complicated as it may initially sounds. Click here to read an article all about high converting ad campaigns using pixels.

Frequency: This tells you how many times one person has seen your ad. Obviously, the closer to one time, the better, but there are other guidelines. Read about a few in this article.

Relevancy: What does relevancy have to do with cost? The more positive interactions your ad receives, the higher your score. This means your ads will likely cost less. It is also more likely to help your other campaigns! Read more about how straight from Facebook.

Negative Feedback: Of course, there are always going to be naysayers. But what happens when your negative feedback gets too high? Negative feedback ranges from hiding any of your posts to reporting you as spam. Read about avoiding negative feedback by social media trainer Amanda Webb.

Present Ads That Will Convert to Clicks:

Use a Video: Mark Zuckerberg has been talking about videos being big business for a long while. Back in 2014 in an investors report, he gave great insight to the boom of video on Facebook.

“This quarter we announced a new milestone for video on Facebook, achieving 1 billion daily views of native videos. During [the] Ice Bucket Challenge, there were more than 10 billion video views by 440 million people.”

There are so many viral video examples that come to mind. I listed a few below this article for fun. Is this your first video? Here are some great storytelling and production guidelines from Facebook.

Link to your blog: Writing a strong article for your blog will get a response. How do you identify ideal topics for your audience? It is possible to ask them. Where else is a better place to do it than your Facebook page? They key to your ongoing success will be creating content consistently. Here are solid ideas on how to do streamline your writing.

Use a carousel ad: Carousel ads have been a great resource for business. Facebook reported that when advertisers use carousel link ads, they pay 30 – 50% less for CPA rates and 20-30% lower for CPC rates! While these are multi-product ads, don’t always rule them out. If you have several visually appealing, related services/products, give it a try. Read more about creating one here.

Target Your Demographic Effectively:

Don’t make the mistake of not narrowing down your audience. Some considerations to make to divide your target demographic include:

• Age Groups, Gender, and Geographic Location: Combining all three for narrowed down results is what SocialMediaExaminer.com suggests here. Note that some locations are so well known for one specific attribute – wealth, for instance – that they stand alone.
• Specific Interests: These start broad and then narrow down in dropdown lists. It’s important to use them. This Facebook page gives the example of a yoga studio taking “fitness and wellness”, and narrowing it down to “yoga” or “bikram yoga”. Specific interests are the key word, which is why I added it before ‘interests’.
• Purchasing Behavior: Yes, you can target users based on what they buy. Our habits have been categorized. There is a broad subcategory, health and beauty, clothing, etc. and then the behavior underlying it. This happened in 2013, according to Wordstream.com. It’s called Audience Insights. This is powerful information for those of us selling services as well as products.
• Income/Net Worth: High-end consumers have different needs then, say, a struggling college student. Not all regions have this income-based options. Others have detailed brackets in small increments starting at $30,000 a year. Don’t worry though, there are plenty of other indicators. Other than location, jobs are a good way to narrow down those with spending power. You can target C-Level executives, for instance.
• Major Life Events: Weddings, births, even deaths – they are all searchable for ad targeting. This can be a big one for healthcare, an events company, or any other service or product related to a big life moment.
• Relationship status: This can help companies who sell very specialized things. Engagement rings or dating sites are two thoughts that come to mind immediately. Narrowing down groups in this way is effective in those instances.

There are several others, including politics, ethnic affinity, and home ownership status. But the above felt like the best place to start. Now on to an exciting personal example of the power of effective targeting.

Facebook Ads Work Well for My Business:

Recently, I ran an ad for my program, Converting Free to Paid. I used a blog post I wrote, 7 Reasons Why I Can’t Do Free”. First, I put it up as a regular post then I initially advertised to a small audience for initial buzz.

After that I expanded it: I advertised to friends of fans, my imported list, and then a lookalike audience. (For those of you who haven’t heard of it, lookalike audiences share similar interests and other characteristics of my original audience).

I spent only $125 to show that well-targeted content is the true key to success. In just a few days, the ad attracted 8,500 visitors+, 637 social shares, and almost $400 in revenue during stage one. Incidentals were 42 page likes and 61 subscribers.

I am currently pixeling traffic. Moving forward, those who visit will be directly targetable for ads. Retargeting traffic in this way is inexpensive and has a very high ROI.

In stages two and three, I’ll retarget past visitors with other free content, a free webinar and, of course, the direct to sales page.

Start implementing the things you’ve learned today and watch your audience grow. For additional insights, see more tools and resources below.

Tools and Resources:

1. Teach yourself everything there is to know about Facebook ads, provided by Facebook. Click this link for the entire course.
2. Don’t underestimate this smartly put together page all about Facebook Ads by Dummies.com
3. Check out 11 great points for performing well on Facebook in this Hubspot.com article.
4. Learn the ins and outs of making multi-product Facebook Ads using Power Editor with Jon Loomer, a digital marketing consultant, here.
5. A fun article with numbers to show for it titled, How to Reach the Rich!.
6. Check out this Facebook page for the promised viral videos from within the article.
7. Need a good blog for an ad? Hubspot has a fun topic generator for blogs. Plus it’s just a great creativity boost.

Don’t forget, we offer Facebook advertising consulting and management. We also offer training on Facebook advertising. See the links below for what is currently available.