Facebook Advertising – Tips & Best Practices for Every Budget

Good News:

Facebook advertising has revolutionized the way small businesses promote their business online. Thanks to hyper-targeting opportunities available on social media, getting your ad in from of your target market or driving traffic to your website has become easier and more budget friendly than ever before.

Bad News:

The latest stats have the organic reach for a Facebook page post at just 2%, meaning that SMBs looking to utilize the power of Facebook ads generally need to add some financial backing to their efforts. But with more than a billion people logging into Facebook every single day, there’s no shortage of opportunities to use the channel to drive traffic to your business or website. From the free to big-budget backed, we listed our favorite tips to get the most out of your Facebook advertising.

No Money, No Problem Free Ways to Promote Your Social Pages

Let’s assume you’ve already created a Facebook page for your business (great start!) but what’s next? There’s nothing sadder than a great looking social media page with nothing to show for it. Give your Facebook page the first signs of life by publishing a few posts that you think your fans will appreciate. A great place to start is with a beautiful welcome message, or maybe a special discount welcoming you to the Facebook block. Whatever you post, make sure to keep your audience’s taste in mind.

Facebook penalizes pages that do not produce Likes, Shares or Comments by showing future posts to fewer people (but we’ll delve into that further down in the post). Once you have your first couple of posts up, you’ll want to attract the right audience to that shiny new Facebook page of yours!

Paid Promotion That Will Pay Off!

The sad truth of online marketing is that organic (read: free) posts on Facebook are getting less real estate on newsfeed. If you’re really looking to make a splash on social media, you’ll need to put down some financial backing behind your best posts.

Facebook may be a free tool, but the website has cleverly put several actions in place to keep profitability up on its end – meaning they’ve made it pretty darn clear that they’re looking for business pages to spend in order to get noticed. And in fact, SMBs everywhere are buying into Facebook’s hype. This past year alone, Facebook says that there were over 50 million small business paid advertisers on the social network. Simply put, when done right paid promotion can really be a worthwhile marketing tactic for your business.

It All Starts With the Right Intention

Now that you’ve decided to create a paid promotion on Facebook, the natural next step is deciding what you’d like said post to accomplish. Are you looking to gain more exposure for your Facebook page and build your online reputation? Are you looking to send existing fans back to your website? Are you looking to show off your awesome business to new fans? Hmmm…

Once you know why you want to create your post, you’ll have an easier time deciding on the type of post you’ll be creating. Some basic suggestions include:

Link posts: A post that directs people who click on it to an external page outside of Facebook like a dedicated landing page.
Video posts: This can include a more traditional looking commercial, testimonial and how to.
Image posts: Like a sale, online coupon or happy customer. While this may be an image alone, you can always include a link in the post’s caption.

Whatever you decided on, don’t forget to hook your audience to your ultimate next step by including a killer CTA.

Targeting Your Audience

Face it, Facebook knows a lot about us – we mean a lot. With every page we like and every friend we add, we tell Facebook a little bit more about who we are as people. While this may feel creepy on a personal level, the influx of user information is incredibly helpful for advertisers (like you). Facebook uses the information that we’ve so kindly provided them to feed advertisers with targeting options to get ads in front of the right audience. From specific characteristics like age and gender, to more tech-focused intent like people scanning their page from mobile or desktop view, we listed some of the more popular ways Facebook advertisers target viewers.

Target based on location: One of the smartest ways to target your ads is to stay local. If you have a physical location, you likely already know that local based searches out-perform any other results on search engines. Create a post to target people in your city based on key user characteristic and you’ll be sure to see a flow of new foot traffic coming into your shop.
Target based on interest: Promote your business to people who like things related to your industry. See heaps of fans of Ford cars in your community? Oh hey, let them know that your mechanic’s shop just so happens to specialize in that!
Target based on look-a-like pages: Think you’ve got a leg up on the competition? You might just want to let that competitor’s Facebook fans know that you’re the better alternative.
Target based on gender, age or other defining characteristics: Think a certain type of person would be madly in love with your business? Create a user profile and target people just like them. You can even target friends of people who already like your page.
Target people who already like your page: Every business loves a regular. Let the people who already like your Facebook page know about upcoming promotions or new stock that just came in and remind them that they’re due to pop over soon.
Retarget fans who stopped by your website: One of the best things about Facebook ads is that you can target your ads to people who have never even stepped foot on your Facebook page. Sneakily remind users who recently visited your site that they should pay you another visit by using Facebook retargeting to show ads of your business on their Facebook feed. You can even use Facebook’s retargeting to remind people who have stopped by your eCommerce store about the super cool products they left in their shopping cart without making a purchase. More information on Facebook’s retargeting can be found in the Facebook for business page.

Promote Your Newsletter

You already know about the value of email marketing but did you know that you can use social media marketing to promote your newsletter? If you use Wix ShoutOut for your email newsletters, you have an instant connection to Facebook marketing right at your disposal. Create beautiful Facebook ads and mimic the target market of your subscriber base to reach new people – all from your ShoutOut dashboard.

Partnerships & Endorsements

Not for the faint of budget, celebrity endorsements are a sure-fire way to spread branded content – and they’re not just limited to award-winning artists. Social media celebrities like George Takei, and Youtubers like Michelle Phan have built legions of loyal fans from their online only pages – and are no strangers to name dropping a brand or two.

But be forewarned, when it comes to space on a hyper-successful social media page, there’s generally no such thing as free love. Advertisers shell out big bucks to get their name mentioned on those channels, so think wisely about your ROI before committing to this expense.

Of course, there are still ways to cross-promote on social media and keep your hard earned cash. Consider making a deal with a local business to share each other’s social content as a one-off, or ask a high-profile customer to drop a line about a sale you’re running on their profile.