With more and more people turning to social media sites as a way to get their news and find out information, companies are beginning to shift their advertising strategies. Traditional and print advertisements are still important; however, companies also need to focus on using Facebook advertisements as a way to reach their target market. Here are a few steps that will help you improve your Facebook advertising campaign:

 

Figure out which kind of ad would best be seen by your target audience

News feed ads contain social information (see if your friends have engaged with the business), business name (your business name always shows), images and videos (encourage viewers to engage with your content), text (give more insight into what you’re promoting), and call to action (an optional button that encourage peoples to click). In addition, there are right column ads that contain images, videos, and text.

 

Make sure you are effectively reaching your target market

There are five different ways to target on Facebook. The first technique is to target by demographic, focusing on age, gender, marital status, geographic, location, etc. You can also choose to focus on targeting by interests or what users “like” or talk about on the site or target based on consumer behaviors. Lastly, a company can target by creating custom audience, such as email lists and lookalike audiences, and by looking at audience insights.

 

Use language that reflects your brand

You want to keep your Facebook ads short and authentic. Try to include buzz words that relate to your industry and that will catch the viewers’ eye.

 

Select an image that will capture viewer’s attention

Including an image with your text helps you communicate your message while also being more visually appealing to your target audience. An ad that includes a picture will be more likely to catch the eye of your consumer than an ad that only has text.

 

Include a call to action

Including a call to action will help you achieve your goal of the campaign. It greatly impacts and increases your conversion and click-through rate. Some common call to actions include “learn more,” “sign up, “shop now,” etc.

Consider the peak hours of social media engagement

The best times for engagement on Facebook are weekdays from 6:00 to 8:00 am. This is a common time because individuals check social media before school or work. In addition, 2:00 to 5:00 pm is also a good time to run your campaign. The worst times are on the weekends and every night from 10:00 pm to 4:00 am. However, still make sure you stay up-to-date with real time and make sure to pause your campaign if necessary depending on what is going on in the world.

 

Conduct A/B Tests

A/B tests allow you to test two different versions of an ad against one another to see which one performs better. Some elements you can change and test are different headlines, text, color, images, call to actions, etc. When running your test, make sure you only change one variable at a time so you can truly see what is affecting the success of your ad. Once you test one variable and see what works best, you can move on to the next. This process takes time, so be patient because it will be worth it in the end.

 

It is essential that you or your company decides what the goal of your ad is ahead of time. Knowing this goal allows you to know which metrics to focus on to identify the success of your campaign. From there you can create the proper call to action for your customers, which helps increase your traffic, profits, and the overall success of the ad campaign.

 

http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/social-best-times-post/491030?red=at

https://www.facebook.com/business/ads-guide/?tab0=Right%20Column

 

 

My name is Lindsay Kazan. I am a Junior at UW – Madison studying Marketing and Spanish. In the future I hope to pursue a career conducting market research for an international retail company.