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TARGETING CAPABILITIES
The biggest advantage to using Facebook over other marketing platforms is the ability to target people very speci cally. Facebook’s targeting criteria is so advanced that you could target males aged 47-52 living within 3 kilometers of your golf course, who work in the legal eld, have adult children, an anniversary in the next 30 days, and are interested in travel.
Being this speci c often doesn’t make sense from a business stand- point, but the capability is there. On the other hand, being able to target people based on the place they work or their interest in golf can be very valuable.
There are two ways to think about targeting on Facebook. There is the broad net approach, where you set the targeting to be very broad (18-65+ males and females who live within 50 kilometers from your golf course) and design the ad to speak broadly to everyone. This is comparable to advertising in the newspaper, where you had little to no control over who saw your ads.
The other approach is to be very focused with both targeting and content of an ad. You can select very speci c attributes such as the indus- try user’s work or the things they are interested in. You can then design the message for the ad to speak directly to that type of person.
For example, if you wanted to target people who are fans of the Edmonton Oilers, your ad copy could say something along the lines of “the Oilers were gol ng early this year, have you been out to play our course yet?”
The approach that you choose should be based on the amount of resources that are available to run the Facebook ads. The broad tar- geting option will require less effort and time to create. They will also take less time to manage during the campaign.
The focused approach may require multiple iterations of the targeting, messaging, and the ad creation. You also need someone to review the data on a regular basis to determine if the ads are working. When the message and targeting match up with a focused approach, itcanoutperformthebroadapproach by a long shot. Both will work, but they require different types of resources.
BUDGETING TIPS
Speaking of resources, you will need to spend some money to get your well-designed ad out into the world. The actual design of the Facebook ad will cost time and/or money; however, one of the best parts about Facebook ads is that the minimum budgets to run the campaign are extremely low. I’ve seen businesses get started with as low as $5/day on self-managed ads. This allows almost anyone to get started with very little nancial risk.
The inherent risk with running low budget campaigns is that it’s easy to jump to conclusions with- out having enough data to make decisions. You can’t determine if an ad worked or not if it was only shown to 200 people. The ad must be seen by more than 1000 people to collect enough data and under- stand if it’s going to work. The good news is that should cost you less than $100.
Selecting the right budget to start a campaign is nothing more than an educated guess. Once you have some data from the campaign, your guess can become a bit more accurate with simple math. Budget setting on Facebook is more of an art than a science. As you run more Facebook ads, it becomes easier to estimate budgets, so the key is to start somewhere.
If you are running the ads on your own, you should start with a low budget ($500-$1000/month) to learn as much as you can without being overwhelmed. If you are starting with an employee who is experienced or an agency, they should be able to help determine a starting budget based on market size and competition.
Facebook has two budgeting options for a campaign. You can select a cost per click (CPC) model, or a cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) model. In the CPC model, you only pay for the ad when it is clicked on. In a CPM model, you pay every time someone sees your ad. I always suggest that my clients select the CPM model because your brand will be in front of people more often.
Facebook has different ad delivery models for CPC vs CPM ads and I have seen better results with the CPM model. People must see an ad multiple times before they make a purchasing decision, so there is lots of value in the impressions without clicks.
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
Now that we understand the indi- vidual pieces of a Facebook ad with a little bit more detail, it’s easy to understand why proper planning is required to run an effective campaign. The act of setting up a campaign is simple. If you have good imagery, a compelling story to tell, and decent targeting, your ads will work.
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“The approach that you choose should be based on the amount of resources that are available to run the Facebook ads.”