6 Dos and Dont’s: Successful Facebook Ads for Small Business

By now, you’ve likely heard the case for Facebook ads, maybe even from Facebook ad management services: much of the developed world has access to the social media site, which boasts approximately 2.7 billion monthly active users that regularly access its content. What’s more, nearly 70% of eligible individuals living in the United States have a Facebook account.

Put another way, if you operate a business, your customers are highly likely to be on Facebook.

The statistics are compelling — the world’s largest social media platform has an impressive reach. If you’re a small business owner, you’ve no doubt heard the case made for Facebook ad campaign services or may have even dipped your toes into creating ads yourself. If so, you’ve joined the more than 80 million businesses around the world who make use of Facebook business services. But, are Facebook ads really worth it?

Are Facebook Ads Worth It?

The answer to this question isn’t a simple one. Over half of all marketers feel that their Facebook ad strategies were successful. This figure is backed by the fact that an estimated 80% of all social media referrals to ecommerce stores came from Facebook in a recent year. Unfortunately, the story is a bit different when it comes to small businesses.

Nearly 62% of small business owners who utilize Facebook ads for business feel that their campaigns were unsuccessful, and nearly as many Dont’ feel they’ve achieved the ROI they expected. If you’re a small business owner, it’s easy to read these stats and begin to feel hesitant to launch a Facebook ad campaign of your own. However, there’s simply no reason your business needs to be a statistic.

Dos and Dont’s of Facebook Ads for Small Business

According to the numbers above, Facebook’s ad services are fairly successful overall – so why do some small businesses struggle to find the same success as larger ones? Unless you’ve endeavored to hire Facebook ad agency services, the difference between your small business and the professional marketers who indicate significant growth with Facebook ads is fairly simple: failure to think like a marketer.

Although it’s unlikely you’ll reach Facebook ads consulting services levels just by reading this guide, identifying key points for success and key behaviors that can lead to failure is an essential practice to undertake before you begin a campaign. To help, we’ve developed this brief list of dos and Dont’s of Facebook ads for small businesses:

1. DO: Develop a thorough understanding of your audience. Knowing all you can about the group of users that currently consume your business’s social media content can help you determine which types of campaigns are likely to prove effective. Better yet, identifying gaps in your current audience will help you determine lucrative populations you’re not reaching, and develop strategies to engage them. Appealing to the demographics and the interests of these groups will make your ads more likely to find success.
   Facebook is very helpful in this endeavor, allowing you to sort and filter by a number of properties. Sorting by location, age, gender, language, interests, and more means you can develop targeted ads that are more likely to appeal to the groups you’re trying to engage.
2. Dont’: Dismiss the value of a general knowledge of marketing techniques. If you’re a small business owner, you already wear many hats and have a lot of responsibilities — nobody expects you to become a marketing guru overnight. However, building a basic understanding of social marketing can help you with each of the points on this list.Learn which stages of the social marketing funnel your users currently reside within – Awareness, Consideration, or Conversion — and the types of ads that are most likely to appeal to each. Then, consider your options on Facebook, which divides its ad types into three categories depending on these stages.
3. DO: Clearly define your objective for the campaign. Do you want to drive more traffic to your website? Broaden your reach? Define your brand? Determining what you want your ad to accomplish will help you make decisions regarding everything from your ad copy to its placement.
   For example, if you decide your objective is to drive conversions, that will guide your placement to capture the attention of buyers and your copy will reflect it with the appropriate calls to action. However, if your objective is simply to make uninformed users more aware of your brand, you’ll use a different set of techniques altogether.
4. Dont’: Go in without a budget or a strategy. This marketing pitfall is an offshoot of failing to define your objective. Without a clear objective, you’ve left yourself without a means to craft a solid strategy for implementation. Worse, you’ll find yourself without a way to measure success and can end up blowing your budget in the process.
   Once you’ve identified a goal (i.e., to increase conversions), you’ll need to determine a benchmark for engagement with your ads – base this on your current follower numbers, competitor examples, and even your past engagement rates. Using the same strategy, determine a conversion value benchmark to indicate success. Then, monitor these points consistently so you know when success occurs.
5. DO: Utilize A/B testing. Simply throwing your marketing dollars behind a single ad type and hoping for the best is a quick way to deplete your social marketing budget and join the ranks of the 62%. Worse, it means you’ve learned nothing about what types of offers work best or what adjustments you could have made to turn things around. Simply monitoring your progress in the dashboard is not enough — it’s important to engage in testing to determine your best steps moving forward.
   A/B testing, Facebook ads style, simply means you are testing two different ad variables (or even ad offers) against one another. Choose two ad strategies that target the same group, featuring topics that appeal to a large number of people. Then, compare the two after 250 or more conversions to see which was more favorable to your budget and ROI.
6. Dont’: Write off asking for help. As we mentioned earlier, you Dont’ need to be a marketing guru to run a successful Facebook ad campaign. However, by the time you’ve effectively-researched your audience, set objectives, developed a strategy, performed testing, and monitored your progress, you will have devoted a serious amount of time to social marketing — time you may not have as a busy small business owner.
   It’s also important not to undervalue the experience and toolkits dedicated Facebook marketing services bring to the table. The right firm can help you learn about the process, craft a plan, and maximize your budget, all while helping you achieve your desired brand growth.

When you’ve developed a dedicated Facebook following that benefits your potential customers as well as it does your business, Facebook ads can be the ideal next step to help you find conversions and growth. Sites by Sara’s social marketing team can be there every step of the way, from content creation to social SEO to paid ads. If you’d like more information about the benefits a Facebook marketing partner can provide, call or send us a text at (385) 355-5351.