Benefits of Social Media Marketing | Avoid These 3 Mistakes
Table of Contents
Online marketing is still dominated by two giants, Google and Facebook.
However, Facebook is still the de-facto social network. It champions more than 2 billion users, and on average a user spends more than 40 minutes per day on the platform.
People spend a collective 152,160 years on Facebook per day.
That is 80 billion minutes a day that the human population spends on one platform. 80 billion minutes is equivalent to 152,160 years, YEARS, per day. Think about that for a second.
Now, depending on how you feel about Facebook the number may frighten, disappoint, or excite you.
One positive is that a huge portion of the human population is now easily accessible. If you are a business owner, a social media influencer, a non-profit, or even a single person just trying to spread a message, then Facebook is an essential tool to master.
However for the marketers that do use the platform, a huge number make careless and avoidable mistakes.
The point of online ads is to increase your CTR (click through rate). The caveat is, however, that you want to have a high click through rate for relevant customers.
If a marketer does not qualify their leads then the sales team will quickly point fingers that marketing is bringing in unqualified leads. Honestly, this occurs frequently.
55% of People Are Doing It Wrong
Over 50% of people are missing the the target. Whether your marketing department is doing this or not, I do not know, but it leads us to our first problem: not being specific enough that your leads convert to paying customers, subscribers, etc.
Choose Your Audience
The magic of Facebook is to target your ads to certain users based on specific criteria like age, location, gender, interests, etc.
After creating a Campaign and an Ad Account you will be led to an Ad Set.
An Ad Set is where you will begin to define the audience. The first thing that is required is the location.
You Need To Make Yourself Familiar With This Panel
The first line is a more advanced line. Custom audiences is where you can import certain criteria like emails, phone numbers, or other audiences to help you make an audience or one similar to an audience you already have if you are trying to extend your reach.
The next line is where we will begin.
For example, let’s say that you are a local coffee shop that specializes in traditional Italian Coffee based in Dallas.
The Map Defaults To 25 Miles You May Want To Adjust Accordingly
The first thing that we will do is set the location to Dallas. It will automatically adjust the radius to 25 miles. Depending on your business, then you will need to adjust this.
Going with our example of an Italian Coffee Shop, we might target a smaller radius. I will put the radius to 10 miles. I think that even more local awareness you do not want to have too narrow of a reach because someone who lives outside of the area and commutes in might be an ideal customer for you.
Lower The Radius, But Be Careful Not To Make It Too Small
After we add in the desired location, we will change our audience for age and gender.
For our example, I put the age to 16-30 because I picture that our coffee shop targets all the Dallas hipsters and this would be an ideal range to start with.
I also left the gender to all because we do not discriminate between the men and the women hipsters.
Customize To Your Target Demographic
Now when you are first starting you might be surprised who actually responds to your advertisement. You might think that your target audience is 25-30 year olds to find that it is actually the 16 year olds who love your ads.
You should always to continue to optimize your ads for the best performance. Additionally, these insights can help a lot for understanding the profile of your customers.
Now the languages we will most likely put in English. However, you will want to fill it in to your desired language if it is different.
The next section is an important section, and the one that people often leave blank. Right now, anyone 16-30 in this area will see your ad: a lot of those people might not be good customers for you. Let’s narrow our audience a little bit.
I made a small list of things that someone who might like Italian Coffee might also like:
*Italy
*Coffee
*Starbucks
Don’t Be The Person That Forgets This Section
When I insert coffee, I will get information about the number of people who are interested in coffee. I also added in Starbucks, and people who like Italy.
Be Creative With How You Choose Your Audience
After adding in these demographics we can see that our audience went from the millions to the thousands. This is perfect.
We can and should add in more interests. For example, Facebook suggest people who like coffee houses and different types of Coffee beans like Arabic. I would also add in these categories.
However, we do not want to be too narrow that Facebook has a hard time delivering our ads to any people.
This Is A Good Potential Range For Your initial Ad
After we add in our interests we want to exclude people that are not in our demographic. I choose to exclude people who were interested coffee tables and makers. I did not think that these people would fit our perspective profile.
We Also Want To Exclude People Who Might Be Looking For Something Different
Now, this section is one of the key sections of Facebook ads. There are tons of other features, but if you deliver your ad to the wrong people, then all of the rest will be useless.
You should be meticulous during this phase. If you want to learn more about how to setup campaigns Facebook has a great guide here.
Make Your Headline Memorable
The headline is incredibly important. A recent study showed that only 2 of 10 people read beyond the headline. That means you need to grab 80 percent of people with just a few words.
Enter copywriting.
If you are not a master copywriter, then we are here to lend a helping hand.
Make Your Captions Easy To Read
So what makes a good headline? 6 magical words. Yup, that is it, 6 words.
People generally respond better to negative words, numbers, and something personalized.
Some examples:
Negative Keywords
You probably did not notice the title of this article, “Don’t make these Facebook Ad Mistakes” starts with a negative keyword. Other negative keywords include: no, without, and stop. These all will help to drive a higher click through rate of all of your ads.
Numbers
“91% of People Respond To This Call To Action” Do not use rounded numbers like 90 or 100.
The more obscure your number the more believable. Also, make sure that you write out the number.
Additionally, the bigger the number, the better it will perform. “156,342 people clicked this link today” make you want to click the link even more.
Personalization
You sometimes need to add in a little extra something to make it stand out. For example, “50 Strange Ways To Grow Your Instagram Followers – The Last One Will Blow your Mind”
If you are awful at writing headlines. then you should think about using this awesome formula.
This Is a Simple But Effective Way To Write A Headline
Like anything, the more attention to detail you put into the post, the more likely you will see higher rates of click through rates and conversions.
Picture Perfect
We often see people running ad campaigns with pixelated and poorly cropped pictures.
This triggers a flood of negative subconscious feelings about the advertisement.
However, a beautiful picture can trigger a flood of positive feelings for your potential customers.
What is a good picture? Well let’s take a look at a few examples.
Use Bright And Eye-Catching Photos That Also Show Your Product or Service
Whoever is running Shopify Facebook advertisements knows what they are doing.
Shopify does a great job of showing a simplistic but bright picture that grabs your attention.
The first thing that we see is the dark red nails, red knitting needles, and red yarn.
This is contrasted with a blurry person in the background who is also wearing a knitted sweater.
This picture does an amazing job not only grabbing your attention, but also incorporating elements of their business.
Shopify wants to leverage people who have hobbies like knitting to sell on Shopify.
Additionally, look at the headline which starts with a negative keyword. Shopify did a great job at speaking to their target customer both through the image and the text.
Now let’s take a different example that uses humor.
Slack is messaging application that is mainly used for businesses. However, with their bright color and unique sense of humor they find a way to stand out in an otherwise boring field.
This picture is hilarious. It has nothing to do with a messaging system. However, it grabs your attention.
Normally, we do not see people riding pink horses on their way to a few meetings.
However this picture is excellent at being unique. People generally respond to things that are unique or unusual. That is also why large and obscure numbers work. They are unique and unusual.
Flex That Humor Bone
Do not be afraid to flex your funny bone and give your brand a sense of humor. Perhaps this is what will help you stand out in your industry.
The next example does a great job at contrasting. Contrasting is one of my favorite techniques to grab people’s attention.
NatureBox image has a nice white and grey background. The food looks great, but they grab your attention with the red “free trial” message.
Who Doesn’t Love This Ad?
This is a great example of how you can get the attention of some scrolling quickly through Facebook.
Often this will make someone stop scrolling and see what you have to say.
Orange is also another great color to help grab people’s attention.
Conclusion
Facebook ads can be a game changer for businesses of all sizes. However, the worst thing to see is people throw their money away.
The more meticulous you are with the details the better your return on investment will be.
Through proven techniques and principles you will also have great success in your marketing campaigns.
