New 3-Part Series: The secret to designing Facebook Ads that actually make money

In this 3 part series, I want to show you how I work with small businesses to  take advantage of advertising on social networking platforms like Facebook and Linkedin.

These ads can be very cost-effective and, because you set the budget of what you can afford to spend on a particular campaign, they can’t get out of hand and start costing you a fortune.

They are also extremely hard to get right and many times I have just had to rejig a headline or change an image on an ad which was producing little or even no clicks, and it has started to attract a really good Click Through Rate (CTR).

At any given moment, we usually have between 40 and 70 ads running concurrently (both for my own businesses and my clients’) and the budget of these ads varies dramatically from $20 per week up into the tens of thousands per week.

In my experience, there are 7 important factors to designing a Facebook Ad that actually makes money and I am going to share them with you: targeting, compelling headlines, the right copy, the perfect image, split testing, being persistent (but not stubborn) and how to outsource – and who to outsource to.

Let’s start with finding your target market.

Targeting

This is something that most of my clients are not fully aware of prior to us running a Facebook Ad campaign for them. The level of targeting for your ads is something that cannot be matched by any other form of conventional advertising and it’s all because of the amount of information that people share about themselves on Facebook.

You’ve probably seen the ads on the right hand sidebar of your Facebook profile and wondered how they are so specific to something you like, something you have recently discussed online or something that is almost spookily matched to your age, sex or where you live.

This is because marketers (like you) have used the information that you have in your Facebook profile to have the ads which they believe you will click through on appearing on your Facebook profile.

When we design a great Facebook Ad, we can then target it using the following filters:

Location
You can make your ad appear to people who are in Australia, in N.S.W, or even your home town (great for local marketing). If your target market is mostly overseas, you can target those living in those countries as well, and remember, Facebook works in 75 different languages.

Demographics
You can target people of a certain age only. Or those who are in an age range determined by you to be in the target market of the particular ad we have put together. You can even target the ads so that they only appear on people’s profiles on their birthday, which is something that we have had a lot of success with this year.

You can also target people by which gender they are, which gender they are interested in, and whether they identify themselves as single, in a relationship, engaged or married, and by which languages they speak.

Likes and Interests
This filter is particularly important if you want to find potential customers who are liking your product, your service, your brand, or a competitors’ brand. Also, it helps you better define your market and stop you targeting people who are absolutely NOT interested in your product, service or brand.

I have found this section can be the clincher when it comes to getting the number of the potential reach down to a more targeted and functional one before we place the ad for clients.

Education and Work
Firstly, you can decide to target people who are at school, at university or have graduated university but then further target them by which school or university they are currently attending or which university they graduated from.

Then you can also target based on where people say they work which can be particularly useful if you are placing recruitment ads and want to target potential applicants in a similar industry to your own.

Connections on Facebook
Lastly, you can target people who are already connected to (or not yet connected to) a certain Facebook Page, Facebook Group, Facebook Event or Facebook Application. This is also helpful in identifying people with similar interests and therefore at a higher chance to be interested in what the clients’ ad is offering.

Did you know … that I run Facebook Ads and Linkedin Direct Ads campaigns for my small business clients? If you would like to find out how I might be able to help your business, call me TODAY on 02 4324 2594 or email me nick@thebowditchgroup.com.

In Part 2 of this series, I will share the secrets of writing compelling headlines, the right copy and the perfect image.

Have you tried using Facebook Ads but been disappointed by the results? Or have you had a great win using Facebook Ads?

Please let us know in the comments below. When you leave a comment on this site, it appears straight away – no signing up, no waiting for the comment to be moderated – it will appear below straight after you have posted it.

Related Posts: The Secret to Designing Facebook Ads that Actually Make Money

Tagged as: Facebook, facebook ads, Linkedin, linkedin direct ads