Advanced Facebook Advertising Techniques to implement in 2015

  • Vikas Chawla
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  • Published Date : 12 January , 2015
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  • Updated Date : 24 May , 2021
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    • 5 min read

With Facebook deploying constant tweaks to its news feed algorithm, the reach of organic Facebook Page posts have dramatically dropped over the last 6-8 months and is going to drop further in 2015, as per Facebook’s announcement on the News Feed.

What this means is that Business Pages will need to constantly innovate to provide interesting and engaging content to their users in order to reach their News Feed. That being said, advertising and boosting posts is going to be a more significant aspect of every brand that wants to leverage FB. To aid in battling this scenario, we have compiled a list of lessons learnt that includes certain targeting techniques which can help you make the most of your ad campaigns, reaching more number of potential audiences with relevant messaging.

Building Custom Audience

  • If you haven’t tried Custom Audience feature of Facebook yet, then 2015 is the year to leverage yet.
  • Your company can create a Custom Audience by uploading your email addresses, phone numbers or Facebook user IDs. This could be a list of your existing customers or prospects you met through your other promotional activities.
  • By uploading this database on FB, your Facebook Page can have unique campaigns targeted towards these audiences. Let’s assume you are running an ecommerce site and you have 1000 users who bought t-shirts from you in the last 3 months. By uploading this database onto FB you can feature your new T-Shirt launches to this audience.
  • The use cases for Custom Audiences are endless and it also comes handy in filtering down large audiences with a specific set of interests.
  • Even if your database is small, Facebook allows you to expand it by creating a "Look-alike audience” which creates an audience similar to that of your uploaded database – they take into account demographic data and interests.

Using a Landing Page to run Website Conversion Ads

  • If you’re going to run an ad campaign on Facebook, make sure that the traffic is driven to a dedicated landing page where your visitors can be converted into potential leads/customers. In our experience over the last one year, running page like ads and boosted posts can have limited impact on the end result of your business (i.e. conversions or leads or online orders). Website Conversion Ads or Website Click Ads on Facebook can be far more effective medium to leverage the large and relevant audience that Facebook has in India.
  • A landing page is critical to deriving results because the landing page has a single focus and is able to convert a higher percentage of visitors into leads or customers. Please do keep in mind that the Landing Page should ideally be an expansion of what the ad/promotion tries to showcase. Below is a snapshot of a landing page & ad for Saint-Gobain Glass.

Behaviour

  • The behaviour section of Facebook Ad targeting is an often underutilized feature, but actually one of the most powerful targeting mediums.
  • Using this section, your page can target FB users who have certain mobile/internet behaviour. For example, users who use 2G internet connection vis a vis 3G or 4G internet connection. Or users who run small businesses or manage a FB page of their own. Or users who are regular travellers or regular photo uploaders. Or users who use specific mobile devices (iPhone 6, Nexus 5, Note 3 etc.) or Feature Phones vs. Smartphones.
  • Another interesting targeting medium under behaviour is called “Online Spenders”. This has proven to be very effective for e-commerce companies. Facebook through its Website Conversion ads knows which users are spending online. This has immensely helped in making the targeting niche for online shopping sites that we have advertised for.
  • They also have an Expat Category if businesses are interested in targeting NRIs outside India or targeting Expats who reside in India.

Demographics

  • Apart from the regular targeting of Age, Gender & Location, there are interesting targeting filters under Life Events. They have categories like Friends of users who have recently engaged or recently moved homes – these categories can be interesting for a company into gifting. Another category is “Anniversary within 30 days” so it can be interesting for restaurants, hotels, travel companies and gifting companies who can target users whose anniversary is coming up. Another interesting category is called “Parents” where Pages can target expectant mothers as well as parents who have children of specific age groups – this can be very effective for a business like a kids store, play school, entertainment centre etc. Many such categories exist so check them out to see if its fits your business needs.

 

  • Job Role/Company – It can be useful for a B2B company to form a strong inbound marketing strategy by targeting users in a specific industry or job position.
  • Demographics, in general, will help you increase your ad’s performance and reduce the effective cost per click and cost per action, narrowing your audience to a greater extent.

Interests

  • Helps target those audiences who have expressed interest in subject matters or brands that are connected with the ads. This helps the brand/business tap the most responsive set of population who might be interested in the product.
  • For example, a business which is selling musical instruments, it can target users who have interest in Guitars, Keyboards, Yamaha & Casio. These interests span not just broad topics but even specific brands (i.e. Yamaha & Casio in the above example). This can also be used to target users of competitor brands or websites.

Creative / Images used in the Facebook Ad / Post

  • The right images & text used connects with the audiences and creates an appeal for the product being advertised.
  • While creating an ad, one must ensure that the text used must contain a brief (preferably 3-4 words) description of the product/service being advertised in the form of popular adjectives. This description along with a clear call to action can help in getting a higher click through rate.
  • Mentioning the price is also important since it gives the audience an idea of whether they can afford the product or not.
  • Images that are used for the creative should not be cluttered with too much text or design. The neater and confusion-free they are, the better the ads work. Facebook of course has the 20% text rule so Facebook ads cannot have more than 20% text.




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Sahil Goel2015-02-24 < Reply

Really interesting article. Would really like to know about your offerings in a better way! Cheers!

Social Beat2015-02-24 < Reply

Thanks for your comments and for reaching out to us Sahil. Our team will reach out to you at the email id provided. Thanks, Team Social Beat

Amit2015-01-27 < Reply

Haven't tried custom audiences for our ecommerce website... has it worked in ecommerce?

Social Beat2015-01-27 < Reply

Yes Amit, absolutely. For ecommerce the best practice would be to have custom audiences for each category of your site so that you can run more targetted ads for each of the audiences.

Shoaib Basit2015-01-13 < Reply

I think FB ad campaigns are the cheapest and all brands should try it out

Social Beat2015-01-18 < Reply

Absolutely Shoaib. We couldnt agree more

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