Tips for Effective Facebook Ads for Small Business

"By June 2019, there are 1.59 billion daily active Facebook users on average." - Facebook Newsroom

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In other words, there are approximately one-fifth of the earth's population who uses Facebook, daily. To illustrate, it is as if the whole population of China uses Facebook everyday, plus another 200 million people! If that does not sound like that perfect platform to connect with your potential customers, I'm not sure what else is.

It's fair to say that Facebook is the most used social media platform in the world.

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Facebook ads is the most effective and easiest online advertising platform to use for small businesses. It lets your business target according to demographic composition and user interests. However, is it really true? Is Facebook Advertising really effective?

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Weebly held a survey among 2,600 small business owners, and unfortunately, 62% say their paid ads on Facebook are not hitting the right target. Yes, Facebook ads might be handy to use, especially for small businesses, but it does not mean that it is easy to execute properly.

Your business did not only waste money, but your brand is not building its identity when you don't hit the right ads objective.

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A few mistakes that businesses make that could ruin Facebook Ads:

1. Poor targeting
2. Chose the wrong advertising objectives
3. Combats Ad Fatigue

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Thus, here are the 4 things you need to take note before you get started with your Facebook Ads to prevent those common mistakes and maintain its effectiveness:

1. Business Goals

Build your advertisement around your goals, not the other way around. Knowing the goals of your advertisement before building one is the most important factor in making it successful. Facebook’s advertising platform lets you create ads based on any of the specific objectives of 3 categories: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. Knowing which is your priority will let your business build the ads to the best possible effect. In addition, accurately measure your ROI.

This table should be able to help you decide the purpose of your ads based on your business goal.

2. Detailed Targeting

There are two main types of Facebook targeting for you to target the right audience group - demographic targeting and detailed targeting. Demographic targeting allows you to narrow down your audience by selecting age, gender, location, interests, occupation, income, and many more details. Detailed targeting is where you can target users based on their behaviors, such as the brands they like or they usually purchase to even their interest groups and occupation.

Tips: The narrower your Facebook Ad targeting is, the more likely it is going to deliver to the right audience.

3. Be Creative

Your potential customers are bombarded with other advertisements, most likely from your competitors, 24/7. It is crucial to be at the top of your customers' minds. Remember that the audience is probably on Facebook to browse their feed from watching viral puppy video or be updated with their acquaintance's social life.

This makes it even more important for your ad to not only stand out but also be memorable and witty for them to engage in your ads. Our recommendation? Be creative and stand out from all the other ads. You could do so by first knowing your customers well enough to know what will make them engage with your ads. Is it using a fear strategy? Are they FOMO? Speak their language to catch their attention! Other methods you can try out is using various form of gifs, memes, attractive graphic, videos, and images.

4. Frequent Tracking

After posting your ad, it is important to constantly track and record the result of your ads. Be extremely careful to not decide too fast or too slow - find a sweet spot. Facebook will take up to 3-7 days to optimize your ads so do let it run for that time frame before you decide to change it up. Letting bad ads to run for too long is a big no-go especially for small businesses with a minimal budget.

Good thing takes time, so does your Facebook ad!

While you analyze your ads, keep in mind to always ask yourself whether it is delivering the right message to the right targeted audience. Your campaign will usually be more costly in the beginning. However, after knowing how to maximize the effectiveness of the campaign, your Facebook Ads Campaign will do its job and give you a stable ROI.

Tips for effective Facebook Ads for small businesses:

1. Develop your strategy. Determine what you want to achieve and how you’re going to measure it.
2. Treat Facebook Ad like a partnership. It is a powerful medium for your small business. Thus, take it seriously as part of your marketing plan.
3. To accomplish more results, be prepared to invest more of your time and money. Don't worry! As long as you invest wisely, target the right audiences with the right messages, you will see a positive ROI.
4. Facebook is social media. So, be social! It is an advantage for small businesses as you have fewer people to manage. Connect with influencers and your audience. Those relationships can be profitable.

It's not all tough once you're use to it, and once you achieve the results!

With that being said...

Facebook Ads, is one of the most effective tool to advertise your small business. It is advised to get started with your Facebook Ad sooner than later.

"Advertising is totally unnecessary. Unless you hope to make money." - Jef I. Richards

Psst... you might also be interested in:

1. Low budget Marketing Ideas for Your Small Business
2. The Small Business Owner’s Basic Guide to Digital Marketing
3. Low on Budget? Here are the 20 Low-Cost Marketing Channels