how to guide – Renelly Morel

As a social media strategist or Digital Marketing Manager knowing how to leverage Facebook advertising to give your online campaign some fuel is essential. It can take your campaign from community only and expand it to a wider more relevant audience who’s yet to connect with your company.

I’ve worked on a number of products that used Facebook ads and when done right they’ve worked wonderfully. Here’s some knowledge and pointers to get you started. First off you need to know when you’re ads are preforming well and who you want to target.

using Facebook ads

Ideally you want to use “CTR” (click through rate) to measure how well your ads are preforming. The clickthrough rate of an advertisement is defined as the number of clicks on an ad divided by the number of times the ad is shown. The higher the CTR, the better your ad is preforming. Here are some benchmarcks to help you better understand what a good CTR looks like:

Optimal CTR: 0.11%-0.16%
Above Avg CTR: 0.07%-0.09%
Average CTR: 0.04%-0.05%
Below Avg CTR: 0.02%-0.03%
Poor CTR: 0.01%

Another important factor that you need to consider is what type of ad campaign you’d like to run. You have two to choose between. Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Impression. I prefer to CPC because you only pay when someone clicks on the ad. Cost Per Impression is good when you are solely focused on getting awareness.

Now that you know the two types of ad campaigns and you have an idea of what success looks like let me take you through the things you need to work on to set up a proper CPC Facebook ad campaign.

Know you target audience – The more targeted you are the better. Figure out which target demographic you want to focus on and what interested (relevant to your campaign & brand) you’d like to target. Here is an example of what I mean. The interests targeting is very important because it helps you build an audience who would be already inclined to be interested in your business (if done right). So if you have a product that is gluten free you should probably target people who eat gluten free.

Here’s an example of audience & interests targeting. For a dance game like Zumba Dance Fitness you’d probably want to target women between the ages of 17 – 35 who’s interests in include, dance, fitness, latin music, Wii games, Kinect games, etc.

Please note that targeting a large number of people does not work well. Start small within the range of 100,000 – 700,000 Facebook users.

Having a set budget is also essential. You can create a set a daily budget for your ad campaign. When you’re running a Facebook ad campaign you will need to bid against other companies for the ad space. The goal for your ad campaign is to spend less per click. Facebook gives you a suggested bid range to help you choose how much you should bid. I strongly recommend biding high especially because you won’t always spend the amount you bid. You’ll post likely spend less for the click and ad placement.

Another important aspect of a Facebook ad campaign is the creative and the copy. The creative needs to really stand out & capture people’s attention. The copy needs to be very clear, short, & to the point. It’s also recommended to have several different images to test when running ad campaigns & stick to the one that preforms the best. Ideally you’d want to test 3 different ads for the same campaign & choose the one that preforms best. This is how you optimize. It’s recommended that you do this weekly for Facebook ads.

There’s more important information to cover on Facebook ads but I’ll leave that for another blog (sponsored stories ads, Facebook offers, poll ads etc.) but this should give you a good understanding of how they work.

Got questions or comments? Let me know!

Renelly aka Nelly

how to start your social media plan

I’ve noticed recently that a handful of my friends have began creating social networking channels to promote their very own products and custom services. They’re on the right track but might be going about it the wrong way. Using Facebook, Twitter, and other online social sites can really help boost your online awareness and help you aggregate a community around your service or product. At the same time, it can be pretty overwhelming. Think about it. Once you take the time to create a Facebook page, YouTube channel, or a Twitter account, what’s your strategy? Just giving people updates here and there isn’t going to cut it. For companies, a lot of thought goes into populating each of these channels & they are all not created equally.

Here are some things I’ve learned along the way that you might or might not know:

Before creating your social networking channel, take the time to ask yourself a few questions. This will ensure that you start off with a game plan.

Who am I trying to reach out to? Figuring out your target demographic can help you craft your audience message to make sure you’re speaking to them in on their terms. If you are planning on targeting males 18-24 you want to talk to them about what they’re interested in while keeping your product or service top of mind.
What are my overall objectives? Creating objectives will help you hyper focus on what you are trying to accomplish. Don’t make it too generic or else your find it hard to get it done. Try figuring out what your brand or service needs. (ex. “Create awareness around my product & encourage the spread of information”)
What are others who offer similar products and services doing? Don’t try reinventing the wheel. Take the time to see what others are doing online. See what works, what doesn’t work, etc. It will give you tons of great ideas for your own plan. This is a common practice so don’t be afraid to do your research.
What sets me aside from the competition? Figure out what makes you different and what your edge is. This will come in handy when you are working on setting yourself aside from the pack.
What are my goals? Have you seen Facebook insights ,YouTube insights, & Twitter analytics tools? There is so much information in their and it can be overwhelming! Take the time to figure out what you goals are & what is important to you. Getting thousands of fans & views is not realistic. Start small and work your way up but don’t setting for tiny goals. Remember engagement is also important. Don’t just focus on growth.

Once you have really taken the time to answer those questions you can begin to build you social media plan. *YAY*

Upcoming social media 101 blogs: Breaking down the social networking channels, Standard Social Media Tactics, How to communicate to your audience online?

Got any questions, comments or blog requests? Let me know! I’m all ears.

– Renelly aka Nelly