Facebook has an average of 1.86 billion monthly active users worldwide, and this number grows 17% every year. That’s 1.23 billion people logging into Facebook every day. This is a huge pool of potential customers that no business owner should ignore. You will also be able to reach a balanced audience on this platform since there are almost as many male as there are female users. With an average 152% ROI, you should be starting your Facebook ad campaign right now and we are here to help if you need social media consulting.

Without further ado, here are several ways you can grow your customer base by boosting relevant traffic, increasing conversions and encouraging repeat sales with properly optimized Facebook ads.

Daily Targeted Reach

As a seller, you will often want to target people between the ages of 25 and 34. On Facebook, there are an average of 1.2 million of these users on Facebook each day, which means that you can reach over 365 million per month with an effective campaign. If you set up your ad so that it can appear to users on a daily basis, you can reach a maximum potential of these users.

Set and Track Goals

Once you have outlined what you want to achieve from your Facebook campaign – gaining brand recognition, driving traffic to your website or listing, expanding your audience, increasing engagement, increasing overall sales for your products – you can take advantage of the platform’s internal analytics to track how your ads are performing. Facebook Insights offers a wide range of statistics on ad performance that will help you test and revise your ads to ensure optimal performance.

You will also want to get down to the specifics when planning goals, and possibly explore other tools to measure your success. Facebook’s internal analytics is a good place to start, but there are also several other tools you can search for online and test out to see how they fit your goals and style. One of these is a code called a conversion-tracking pixel that tracks user behavior so Facebook can optimize your campaigns by using its powerful algorithm to create a lookalike audience that you can follow to adjust ad targeting. Using this code on your checkout page, you can also track what users do after they click on your Facebook ad.

Proven Content Format

Before you start running ads, you probably already have a basic format that reflects your brand. Your Facebook ad format can incorporate these elements, but needs a very simple tried and tested format to be effective:  relevance, visual appeal, value, and a call to action.

If you choose your audience settings wisely to target the users with the highest chance of converting, you will save time and money. You can also track and improve these ads as you go along using Facebook’s relevance score to show you how your visuals, text and links are performing on the platform.

Image and video are preferred by Facebook users and rank higher in the platform’s algorithm. The more appealing your visuals are, the better your chances are that people will like and share them, and be interested enough to click through and remember you. Note that video is the best option, but you should be careful to create a video that can be understood without sound since 85% of users watch without sound. You should also have a screen capture to show first that aptly summarizes your pitch. When using images, make sure you have them sized properly – optimally 1200×628 pixels – so they don’t get cropped and look funny.

Your text can be very short, focusing on a value proposition that highlights the benefits and why they should click through to learn more about your product. This can be a discount, free shipping, or social proof from a review. Don’t forget a smashing CTA that your readers will not be able to ignore. Creating a sense of urgency immediately after proving your value will encourage them to click to find out, for instance, just how much they can save, and when the offer will expire.

Prime Positioning

Facebook offers two basic ad formats, which appear either in the right column of the desktop interface or the news feed. There is also a mobile friendly format of the news feed ad.

The original Facebook ad, on the right column, is the standard Facebook ad. It is not as costly as the news feed format, but does not see as many clickthroughs. To succeed with this format, you must work hard on your visual appeal and relevance to catch users’ attention, and have a strong value propositions and call to action.

The news feed format will appear directly within targeted users’ feeds, which accounts for much of why they rank higher in terms of engagement. Users see them as soon as they open Facebook, as opposed to the right column which some users tend to ignore. When using this format, be careful to follow Facebook’s policies on organic posts. The mobile format is essentially the same as the news feed ad version as it displays in the mobile news feed like organic posts do and must comply with Facebook best practices.

Unique Ad Types

You can group multiple products on a single ad via the Facebook Power Editor. This multi-product ad feature allows you to target multiple users by adding a range of products (or services) to a single ad. Users can then scroll through them and click on the one that grabs them. When using this option, consider how you will group your products for relevance and visual appeal so you don’t lose any potentials who don’t find the first few appealing or are not impressed by your color-coding.

If you are offering a discount of other offer that you want users to be able to redeem on Facebook, you can try the newer offer ad. Many users don’t want to have to get off Facebook to look at a product offer, which can hurt sales. With this type of ad, users are more likely to take you up on your offer. You can put all the information straight into the ad, but the downside of course is that you still won’t get hits to your webpage.

Dynamic Product Ads are a very high ROI strategy that can capture those users who are on the fence or who you want to come back. Retargeting users based on visits to your page can bring back triple the number of cart-abandoners. The process is easy with Facebook’s ad templates that can pull in essential product information – product name, images, pricing – and show them to people as single or multi-product ads. Just use the Facebook Business Manager to upload your catalog, and set up your audience and template. You can also use the Power Editor to select categories.

Build Relationships

Since Facebook is a social network, it is the best place to engage with people on a deeper level. You can connect on Facebook with daily non-sales posts, and you can also build relationships through a series of ads that tell the story of your brand. This strategy humanizes you and has a powerful emotional appeal that can increase your impact by up to 87%. Combine this with information from your audience analytics and you can build a strong fan base of targeted customers using the Custom Audience Tool to give special deals to your best followers. More than just dangling an item in front of their noses, you can build relationships with your prospects, turning them not only into customers, but loyal fans who can multiply your impact with their likes and shares.

Again, if you need help setting up, managing, or posting to your social media pages, please contact us to assist you with your social media needs.