Marketers are spending big on social advertising. According to BIA/Kelsey social media advertising revenue will grow from $2.1B in 2010 to $8.3B in 2015. Social media users are being targeted now in more ways than ever: in Facebook news feeds, LinkedIn profiles, promoted tweets, and much more. But Facebook advertising has proven to be one of the trickier mediums to master.
With all of the money marketers are spending on Facebook advertising, it’s becoming more and more important to use that budget effectively. Below are some important tips marketers can implement as they set up Facebook advertising campaigns.
Advertising within news feeds
Studies show that the sidebar ads on Facebook don’t get much love. Marketing Land recently reported that news feed ads attained a click-through-rate 44 times higher than right-side display ads, and a conversion rate 5 times higher.
Using the news feeds advertising feature you can interrupt your audience while they scroll through their news feed keeping your brand in front of them while they are already surfing the web, and often, instead of hoping your right-side display ad catches their attention.
Set up mobile-specific campaigns
More than half (53%) of Facebook’s ad revenue in 2013 came from mobile users, and with more than 70% of Facebook’s monthly traffic coming mobile revenue from mobile will continue to grow. The explosion of mobile Facebook use is reason enough to set up campaigns that target mobile users specifically. Mobile-specific campaigns enable advertisers to tailor ad copy, creative, and landing pages to smartphone and tablet users. Having an understanding of these users helps marketers implement the best ways to help them quickly convert from impression to click, call, or like on their mobile device.
Refresh creative regularly.
Rotating ad and landing page creative regularly is probably more important on Facebook advertising than any other type of display paid search program. The most important part of your ad is the image, and making sure it catches the attention of your target audience can be tricky. By refreshing the images in your creative regularly you ensure that users will see a variety of your ads and images so they aren’t inundated with the same creative day after day. KISSmetrics recommends having only a few ads in each campaign, running them until they’ve accrued enough impressions and clicks, and then throwing out the lowest performing ads and optimizing the ones that perform well.
Facebook advertising is one of the more challenging mediums marketers will encounter. Because of the social nature of the platform, it can be difficult to get user’s to engage with businesses. However, when done following the above outline techniques along with other best practices for display advertising, Facebook can be a viable medium for brand awareness, lead generation, and more.
Want more tips for social media and lead gen? Our white paper, B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads, is a great resource to use as you continue learning.