The Facebook ad auction is so competitive. This can make it hard to break through the noise in your customers’ newsfeed.
Your ads might feature how awesome your product is. If you want to be profitable, you'll need more than that to make your ads perform.
To nail your business goals, you need to have a solid strategy as to how you’re going to get there. A strategy when executed the right way can change your business.
New businesses tend to rely on Facebook’s organic reach to drive sales. With algorithm changes, organic reach has taken a big nose dive. And businesses are forced to invest in paid campaigns or abandon ship.
Those who have invested in a Facebook advertising strategy are seeing some great returns for their money.
Facebook has many case studies which is a good reason for you to believe that Facebook ads will work for you.
Unfortunately many business owners fail to run profitable Facebook ads. This is where I want to help.
In this article, I’ll show you how to develop a Facebook advertising strategy for your business.
Some of the steps link to articles that go into detail on how to execute that step. Start from the very first and work your way through.
These are the same principles we use for our client’s campaigns. So believe me when I say this - there’s nothing stopping you from executing a well-planned Facebook strategy.
Before you develop your Facebook advertising strategy, you need to know your numbers.
Knowing your numbers will help you understand whether your campaigns are hitting the right KPIs for your business.
Here are the 4 key numbers you need to know:
AOV - Average order value
LTV - Lifetime value
CPA - Cost per acquisition
COGS - Cost of goods sold
If you don’t have a rough idea of what these numbers look like for your business, you are doing things wrong. Take a step back and figure out what your numbers need to be for your business to be profitable.
AOV is crucial for understanding how much you can spend to acquire one customer. If your AOV is $60, you wouldn’t spend $40 to acquire a customer would you?
Simultaneously, if your AOV is $60 you wouldn’t spend $40 to acquire a customer if your COGS was $20. That just means you’re left with no profit.
The only way these numbers would make sense for your business is if you have a high LTV.
Suppose your driving repeat purchases where your average LTV is around $200. What that means is, you’ve initially gone in a loss but over time you’ll make $200 from that one customer. Because you’re going to make back alot more money, it doesn't seem like a bad idea anymore to breakeven on your first purchase.
Use our profit calculator to determine the profitability of your business. You’ll be able to plug in both your business and advertising costs and forecast what changes you need to make to maximize profits.
To create a Facebook advertising strategy that survives the test of time, you need to think long term. In other words, the objective and the ads you run with them should reflect a long term strategy.
The campaign objectives you choose should always line up with your business objective.
Ask yourself what’s more important for your business?
Are you a new business that requires some brand awareness? Do you have products to promote and are looking to drive a ton of traffic through your website?
Selecting the wrong objective can be easy. What you want to do is, pick an objective that serves different stages of your customer journey.
If you’re just starting out, you might want to optimize for sales from the get go.
I get it - every business needs sales to survive.
But, your audience hasn’t heard of you. They don't trust you enough to buy from you. If
Start by creating a connection with them. Only then you will see a high return from your advertising efforts.
How customers perceive you will differentiate your business from that of your competitor.
Focus on developing a customer journey that:
Ads can be a powerful medium for your business to build a real connection with your audience and improve your brand reputation. Also, you’re paying for them. So why let go of the opportunity?
Okay so you have an idea of what your business goals are.
Now you need to outline how you’re going to achieve those goals.
This is where you map out your customer journey.
A customer journey represents the different relationships you have with your audience.
There will always be a segment of your target market that will want to purchase right away.
Others may need many touch points before they start warming up to your product.
A typical customer journey has 4 stages: attract, convert, close and delight.
Your customer journey will depend entirely on the cost of your products. That's why it’s important to know your numbers!
If you sell a commodity, you likely won't need to take someone through the 4 stages before they convert.
What if you sell something expensive? Or you're marketing a product customers are unfamiliar with?
In this case, you'll need to take customers through the 4 stages before asking for the sale.
For example, check out these brand awareness ads by LIV watches:
Notice the call to action - ‘Learn more’. While their goal will be to generate purchases, they know customers needs to trust them first.
By using a subtle call to action, they build interest which then leads to a sale.
For any Facebook advertising strategy to work, you need to know your audience.
As good as your products may be, you can’t be everything to everyone.
Don’t be afraid to get specific and think about who would benefit from your products. Are they moms? Are they moms with kids? Are they single working moms?
Who your target audience is, plays a pivotal role in advertising your business.
The better you know who you customers are, the faster you can grow.
It might be tempting to skip developing a buyer persona.
You might think you hardly know your customer. Or that the process is too cumbersome.
Understand this - the more generic your targeting is, the less it stands out from your competition.
Do a thorough research of your buyer:
Who are they
What are their needs and wants
How will your product solves their pain
The more you research, the higher your chances are of being successful.
Can you guess the biggest advantage of Facebook ads?
That's right! It's the the ad targeting feature.
This feature lets you reach out to people who are most likely to buy from you.
To get the most return on your investment, leverage the targeting options on Facebook.
If you've defined your persona, you’ll know what they're interested in. And will be able to reach them at an optimal cost. Which means high converting traffic and more sales for you.
Just as you have endless targeting options on Facebook...
you’re spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing the type of ads you want to create.
Experiment with various ad types and find out which drives the most conversions.
You will want to put in a little effort here.
Make your ads entertaining so that customers don't feel it's an ad.
Including humor or use images that catch people’s eyes.
Whatever you do, avoid using images which don't showcase the product well.
For example, the carousel ad format lets you show up to 10 images and/ or videos in a single ad unit. This eye-catching ad allows brands to showcase multiple products at once.
Another format to consider is video. Video ads are totally crushing it right now.
With so many choices available, familiarize yourself with the available ad formats and choose ones that are most suited to your brand.
Before your campaigns go live, you need to define your key KPIs for each stage of your customer journey.
You can get no results with your Facebook ads if you focus too much on the wrong metrics. These metrics look good on paper but don’t inform you on how well your campaigns are performing.
In the long run, you want to use these vanity metrics to guide your campaigns but not rule it. If you run ads based on these metrics, you will hurt your campaign performance and not get a positive ROI. Which means you’re running a campaign which is losing money, not making more of it.
Some key KPIs you can choose to focus on are:
Ultimately your key KPIs should align with your business numbers.
I'm sure you're excited to start running some ads by now.
But before you decide to blow out your budget on multiple campaigns...
it’s important to have a testing process to validate your audiences and ads.
You can only maximise your returns when you know the data you’ve fed into Facebook is actually working for you.
I recommend running small test campaigns to get your feet wet. Understand what is performing well before you dedicate more spend towards it.
Depending on your ad spend, always keep aside a certain percentage of your budget for testing.
It might look like you’re wasting money. But having a testing process is what builds scalable campaigns.
I’ve detailed the testing process we use in the agency here.
It will always be in the best interest for your business to adopt a hybrid social media strategy.
That is, supplementing your paid Facebook campaigns with organic content and community building. Doing so gives you the best of both worlds.
Although Facebook has limited organic reach, that’s no excuse to neglect your fans.
Look at this as two sides of a coin. Paid ads encourages conversions. Amplying content on the other hand, deepens the relationship with your customers.
Conclusion
Hopefully this guide has showed you how to develop a strategy for your business.
As you can see, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes when advertising with Facebook. Success begins by establishing your goals. After that mapping out your strategy will be far easier.
Remember that your job isn’t done when your ads go live. You will need to constantly refine your strategy if you want to maximize your returns.
