Why are Facebooks ads important for your business? And what does Growth marketing have to do with this? We would like to tell you some more about Facebook marketing and the do’s and don’ts that we consider when we are growth marketing. If you are interested in the use of ads and growth marketing, read along 😉

Unlike SEO and SEA, paid social (or paid advertising via social channels) does not require a specific search query in order to reach your target audience. The targeting options is exactly where the magic of Facebook ads lies. This, together with a huge amount of users and an algorithm that enables you to find who best matches your offer, partly makes it up for the high CPAs, since you only pay to reach the customers that are most likely to be interested in your product. The challenge, on the other side, is understanding this audience, in order to provide the right data to the algorithm and ensure that your creatives stand out from the incredibly large number of posts.

Think before you start:

If you don’t have one already, set up a Facebook business account.
Install your Facebook pixel, adding this small piece of code on your website will allow you to track your conversions, retarget visitors, and create lookalike audiences. You can read Facebook’s guide here.
Define the Campaign objectives
Identify the target audience you want to reach (age, gender, interests, existing mailing lists, etc…)

1. Saved target group

These are target groups that you create yourself based on interests and demographic data (age, gender, interests).

2. Custom target group

You can upload a list yourself (e.g. your mailing list), or retarget users. In the first case, the more information on the list the easier it will be for the algorithm to find who you are looking for. When retargeting users, Facebook allows you to reach people who interacted with your website, Facebook or Instagram page.

3. Lookalikes

You create these groups based on your custom target groups. The power of paid social lies in how well you create audiences. This means that if you give the algorithm a target group, it will create a new one, similar to the one you provided.

What is the message of the campaign?
Write the copies for your ads, compelling titles, and descriptions that fit both the goal and the audience, include your USPs
Have the creatives you want to use ready, and make sure the visuals suit the different types of ads. (You can check the size requirements for every placement here)
Define an ad type (carousel, single image or video, instant experience, all these options are something you can and should experiment with!) and the placement of the campaign (FB or Instagram? Feed or stories?)

Determine your bidding strategy and budget, how much are you willing to spend for each sale or lead?

Do's👍🏽

Make a schematic representation

It is always important to keep an overview of what you are doing. We, as a growth marketing company, we’re constantly attempting to keep track of everything. This is a method of ensuring that we do not forget important details.

Set the right budget

Try this by making sure you strike a balance between setting a limit that is only as high as you can afford while still giving the reach you desire. Balance = key

Have one lookalike audience

This audience is based on customers. From there, you can segment it by most valuable customers, customers in the past 3 months, etc.

Ensuring 100,000 people in your target group

For the saved target groups, try to ensure that there are around 100,000 people in your target group. This makes the data more reliable and usable.

Use emojis

Do this to stand out more, messages without any emojis would just look boring, right 😜. There is one thing, do not exaggerate or you will end up looking childish.

Best performing posts

See which posts from your own social channels are performing best and use them in the ads.

Double-check for typos

An ad is usually something that is used as a promotion for a company. Writing mistakes can look unprofessional. Research has shown that typos can ruin a first impression, undermine credibility, jeopardize brand positioning, and damage reputations. Conclusion: AVOID THEM.

Check the advertising policies

If you are operating in an industry subject to restrictions (alcohol, politics, etc.) always check the advertising policies. It would be a shame if an advertisement gets deleted when you put a lot of work en effort into them. You can press this button to see.

Request a review request

If you get kicked out by Facebook for a policy violation (it happens more than you think 😉) always request a review request. They are often approved and your ads will be live again. This saves the time that you would have put in a new advertisement.

Make enough variations

Variations like: copies, visuals, type of ads. When you make enough variations, you can test and see what works best. Growth marketeers (like us) are very set on testing. The more data, the more knowledge, the better the application of the ads.

Get the Facebook pixel helper extension

This is an extension and occasionally check whether the pixel is still correctly set on the website. Before making a purchase choice, most consumers will see a brand several times. The Facebook pixel is a piece of code that you may embed on your website to boost the overall effectiveness of your Facebook marketing campaign. Consider retargeting as a way to show visitors a feature of your product or service that they might have missed the first time they visited your site.

Calls to action

Use multiple strong and clear calls to action, because you don’t have the luxury of time with your audience. Your calls to action must be basic enough for them to understand in a matter of seconds. Don’t be like others who save their CTAs for the end of the ad; otherwise, your audience will be too impatient to act on the ad.

Use visuals

It is important to stand out, but fit the brand. People have a tendency to make quick decisions. A first impression of a person can be formed in less than a tenth of a second. Websites are no exception. Users establish an opinion about your website or ad in roughly 50 milliseconds (ms) (0.05 seconds), which decides whether they will stay or depart.

Creatives picturing people

This usually works the best. The better the creatives you utilize in your advertising, the more likely they will resonate with your target audience. Consider media size, the attraction of the picture, and always use high resolutions.

Do some testing

Like A/B testing. The more you experiment with and test your Facebook advertisements, the more you’ll be able to create the right ad for your campaign.

Manage your ad comments

You don’t want to risk turning a great advertisement into a social media disaster.

Don’ts 👎🏼

Other than campaign killers such as putting the campaigns live and never looking at them again, there are some things you should always keep an eye on:

Facebook audience expansion

This needs to be always disabled. It will mess up your targeting and will add people to your audience that you have no control over.

Don’t base your lookalike audience on leads

Facebook will look for people who can potentially become a lead, not necessarily a customer.

Don’t see the traffic from campaigns as the most valuable traffic

When working with traffic campaigns, be aware that what you will get to your website is often not the most valuable traffic.

Stick to no more than 20% text

Facebook ads containing a lot of text will not be rejected today, but they will be more expensive. Facebook will penalize you by limiting the reach of your ad if it contains too much text. This means that fewer individuals will see your advertisement.

Do not use poor-quality visuals

Never.

Don’t be deceptive

Don’t use clickbait and most defiantly, don’t lie. This is because you will have no idea how long it will take to regain trust once it has been lost. Deceptive ads will not only irritate your clients, but they may also result in a Facebook ban.

Don’t forget about the mobile users

84% of Facebook users watch the website from their mobile phones. Make sure the ads are mobile-friendly.

Don’t stop monitoring the ad

It is important to keep track of the statistics of the ad. In growth marketing it is always important to keep track of the statistics, this is your guide to the right strategies. There is one thing you should keep in mind, don’t change it constantly. The ad will stop during that time (that means less reliable statistics and fewer views).

Don’t miss out on video ads

45% of Facebook users watch more than an hour of Facebook-video’s per week. Make use of this information!

Where does the art of targeting come from?

Like it or not, Facebook knows us better than our friends do. And it’s all information about ourselves that we granted it free access to, from our personal data to what we like and what we don’t. Everything we did since we first scrolled through the terms and conditions, liking, following, commenting, and blindly accepting everything that crossed our path through the years, helped Facebook collect data to build one of the most sophisticated and precise user personas ever. Looking at the bright side of it, if you have to see advertisements, they might as well be something that you could actually be interested in. Because if there is anything more annoying than being submerged with products, is being submerged with products we will never want to buy.

It can sound intrusive, but it definitely is a true gem for advertisers.

Facebook ads platform gives us the opportunity to target the specific niche based on demographic factors, behavior, shopping habits, interests, and more. For example, did you know that if you are operating in the United States, you can segment people based on their annual income?

On the downsides, we count high CPAs and an oversaturated market. This leaves very little space and fierce competition that will make even the giants struggle.

“Brands can pop up from nowhere overnight and you can advertise on Facebook. Suddenly, there’s a brand that you’ve never heard of that’s pushing ads and you’re like, where did they come from? So ultimately, we weren’t selling anything.”

– Matt Knapp, CEO of Dollar Shave Club, in an interview to Mi3.

💡

Facebook stays the world’s largest social network and even if as a growth marketing agency we are convinced that in terms of media diversity everyone should be experimenting more (how? See for yourself🤭), as of now Facebook remains one of the places every brand wants and needs to be.
We hope this short do’s and don’ts will help you get up and started and, who knows, become one of the spotlight takers Knapp was referring to earlier.

Did you like this blog? Keep reading! Find here our guide to Google Ads. If you would you like to know more about how to improve your paid social strategy, click on the button below and get in touch!

Facebook Ads do’s and don’ts you need to know