Facebook is impeccably one of the best avenues to advertise your service or business on the internet today. The low CPC (Cost Per Click) is by far the most affordable and highest reaching compared to competitors. While Google Ads and Microsoft Ads CPC keep steadily getting higher, the best time to capitalize and expand your business is now with Facebook advertising.

Having the ability to manage your Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads is by far the best asset when you are using both channels to advertise, make sure you have created an account. Let us discuss the five tips on using Facebook advertising.

1. Match your marketing strategy to your business goals

There are countless opportunities when it comes to social media marketing on Facebook. The best way to start when forming your social media marketing strategy is to align it with your business goals. Here are a couple of questions to ask yourself other than "How can I make money on this?" or "How can I get leads quick?":

"What will be my budget and how long will I be running my campaign?"

"What images will attract my clientele?"

"How can I reach the right audience, what text do I use?"

"What is my targeted audience?"

"Do I need a custom landing page for these ads?"

This can be a bit overwhelming at first, and you can have a hundred unanswered questions. Try to tackle one question at a time and work from there. It’s best to keep your goals as specific as possible. Here are a couple of examples of how to effectively match your business goals with Facebook marketing strategies:

If you have a new business and your goal is to increase brand awareness or want to create a lot of traffic, consider growing your Facebook followers through page like ads. This can be achieved by using the best images or videos possible in order to acquire optimal results. It may be something like a goal of 500 new followers per month or a minimum of twenty likes per post.

Each goal requires a different action and a different type of image or video. Try to not have an all in one purpose image, customize it for your audience. If your goal is simply to increase profit for your online store, a conversion campaign on Facebook Ads Manager would be the ideal way.

2. Invest and be patient

Facebook has been having a steady decline in organic reach over the past couple of years. It can be very demoralizing when you make a perfect post but you have no one to see it. As Facebook becomes increasingly prioritizing their Ads platform, it is becoming more important to invest your money wisely if you want your business to reach its goals.

An advertising budget is a necessity for any social media marketing and especially on Facebook. You could be wasting a lot of money if you’re not careful about how you use your Facebook budget.

For example, there is no sense in spending $30 to boost every post you make to an audience of 300 followers. It is wise to grow your followers through the use of page like ads and posts boosted to external audiences before you begin putting money behind posts boosted towards your followers.

Generating followers with a page like ads and engagement with boosted posts can be done with a relatively low budget. Campaigns that require a higher budget are ones that are tailored for generating leads and sales, especially when the competition is fierce. When it comes to these ads you have to be willing to spend money to make money.

That is why post clients get detoured from the whole process. Sometimes it will take a substantial amount of money to find the "sweet spot". Positive ROI does not happen immediately in most social media advertising efforts. Depending on the industry you are competing with it could take months of A/B split testing to find the right message and the right audience. Once your campaign has been fully optimized, Facebook can be an amazing resource for generating leads and sales.

If your Facebook ads are not performing as well as you would like them to, it may be time to call in a social media expert.

3. Videos are the key to low-cost and high return

High-quality images sadly are no longer enough when it comes to social media marketing on Facebook. This is a fact!

Videos serve to build trust in your business. 57% of consumers report that videos give them more confidence to purchase items online. Videos are particularly effective for explaining complex concepts in ways that still images simply cannot. Try this strategy yourself, you will thank us later!

Video ads prove to be top performers continuously, with average click-through rates higher than all other ad formats. Engagement rates for video ads tend to be an astounding 3x higher than engagement for non-video ads! Here are some factors to consider when using video ads on social media platforms.

1. Video Length

If your social media marketing strategy includes Facebook video ads, be sure to keep your videos short video ads that are between 15 and 30 seconds long tend to be best. Having a short video will get the message across fast and effectively.

If your video ads are too long, you may not be able to get your full message across to your onlooking audience. Let's face it when we are scrolling on our feeds, how many of us will look at a 2-minute video of someone selling a shirt.

It’s best to keep the call to action in the middle of your video ads. This way you can catch engaged viewers’ attention before it drops off and they continue scrolling down their newsfeed. Having the CTA at the end of the video runs the risk of many viewers never getting to it.

2. Sound & Subtitles

85% of social media videos are actually watched with the sound off!

This means that in order to be effective, your Facebook videos should be able to convey your message without relying on the use of sound. Subtitles are the best option for these circumstances.

Making sure the video you made makes sense without the use of sound. This is highly important if not it is likely only that a small percentage of viewers will even know what message you are trying to convey.

Additionally, many videos are not watched fully or to the end. The most important and engaging information should come first since it is likely that most viewers will not watch to the end of even a short video.

3. Video Formatting

Not many people know about video formatting and why it should be even a concern when it comes to Facebook videos. Square videos tend to perform best, especially on mobile platforms. If a square video simply isn’t possible, opt for a vertical format rather than horizontal.

So what types of videos should you post on your Facebook?

Some great ideas for videos are: 

Explain the product or service your company offers in an engaging manner.

Testimonial videos from happy customers/clients

Promotional video or giveaways

Most companies or even influencers know how much video production can be, and it can be a substantial amount of money that you would not want to cough up. Do not shy away from using your trusty iPhone or Andriod. The advancements of technology and the affordability of some of the high-end mobile phones makes them a fine option to use for your video creation needs.

4. When to hire a marketing team

Our last tip for succeeding with social media marketing on Facebook is to hire a marketing company that knows what it is doing and understands your goals. Facebook is growing and evolving rapidly, sometimes it can be very overwhelming to keep up with the advancements.

Having your responsibilities lessen with a social media marketing agency that actually is keeping up with Facebook’s trends and evolution can be a huge asset to have.

Social media management and marketing agencies have access to additional analytics that go far beyond the information you can learn from Facebook insights alone.

The best part of hiring a social media marketing team is they save you money and a tremendous amount of time. Let us do all the heavy lifting while you focus on other avenues of growing your business and reaching your goals.

They can save you money by making your advertising campaigns optimized for peak performances. Also, hiring a full-time social media manager can be very costly. Hiring a social media agency is only a fraction of a full-time addition to your team. Find out why we are the best option for your goals.