How to use Facebook ads as a cost effective marketing tool?

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How to use Facebook ads as a cost effective marketing tool?

A sound and effective strategy should be devised for leveraging Facebook as a cost-effective marketing tool.

As a modern-day marketer, it is easy to get lost in the hustle and bustle of marketing strategies with no clear plan of action. The ad hoc strategy of creating videos, blogs, emails, SEO, guerrilla marketing, and cold calling, with absolutely minimal connect with the prospects, never delivers optimal results.

It is essential for app developers to choose specific marketing channels for their app and then delivers consistent effort on each platform. Social media channels offer a force that connects the largest communities and individuals worldwide. Billions of people across the globe keep checking social media every day.

Facebook Ads for Business

Leveraging Facebook is one of the key options of social media marketing much owing to the fact that your audience is surely on Facebook, as it has user base larger than the population of China! With 1.49 billion Facebook members worldwide and nearly 22 billion ad clicks on an annual basis, Facebook is one platform that delivers the largest advertising opportunity for app developers in India along with other businesses since the advent of Google’s search.

Since the days of organic reach have been long gone owing to dwindling effectiveness and results, one would have to invest on ads on online marketing channels. Even if businesses are strapped for cash, they need to ensure specific Facebook budgets on a daily basis.

According to Brian Carter’s Moz article, Facebook proved to be far less expensive than all other channels when tested with a group sample of thousand people. He equated that every $1 spent per day on Facebook ads gets a business an audience of an average of 4,000 fresh people from the intended audience.

Facebook ads also offer different ad types, including video ads with particular targeting capabilities based on behavior, interest, connections, age bracket, language, or location.

One can even try out remarketing strategies on Facebook through custom audiences, especially those who have already visited the site.

Once a business finds a relevant audience, one can clone them with a feature termed as “lookalike audiences” that enables businesses to reach new people, similar to the demographics of your relevant audience, and those likely to be interested in your offerings.

Setting Up a Cost-Effective Facebook Ads Campaign

Although Facebook advertising is cheaper than other channels, it is important for businesses to plan and strategize their marketing approach efficiently for maximum returns.

Step 1: Define your intended audience, and overall ad spend budget

Customize your target audience based on demographics such as location, age, gender, interests, behavior etc. One can even set advanced criteria to include or exclude certain demographics or retarget the audience that you have interacted off late.

For instance, mobile app developers in India define the nature of the audience based on the demographics who would be interested in their app. They would target businesses for their enterprise apps while targeting the youth aged below 30 for introducing games.

One should then ascertain their budget on the ad. The budget amount should be the maximum amount of money that can be spent on Facebook ad marketing. One can set a daily budget or a lifetime budget for the advert set.

Step 2. Access the Facebook Ads Manager

Since all ad campaigns run through the comprehensive Facebook Ads Manager tool, one should click on “Manage Ads” on your Facebook account, or by accessing CTAs on your page.

Navigate to the menu and click the green button to create your first ad based on your goals.

Step 3. Choose the right objective

Select the objective for your ad campaign on Facebook from a list of 15 options based on your approach. They are bifurcated within three categories of benefits.

Awareness – to generate interest in your offerings, to promote your business and expand reach.

Consideration – get people to consider your business for their needs, get video views or even generate leads for your business.

Conversion - encourage prospects to purchase or avail service, boost conversions, drive engagement and help people claim offers.

Name your campaign based on your objective

Step 4: Set relevant goals for Facebook Ads

Before a company sets to create any Facebook adverts, it’s important to what the business is aiming to achieve. One needs goals to measure success.

For app developers in India, increase in downloads of the mobile app through Facebook Ads is a huge priority. Choosing this goal for Facebook Ads campaign will give direction to the campaign. One can even set goals of bringing in new leads, boosting social media engagement and even for expanding content reach in other demographics.

Step 5: Create your advert

Now you can choose images (or video), a suitable headline, precise body text, and the position of the ad as it should be displayed on Facebook. You get 90 characters to frame your ad and a quick message on top of the ad.

You can use existing ads from the Facebook Ads Manager dashboard and pick an individual post to use as an ad. On the other hand for creating a new one, you can select the right format for the ad from 5 existing options or create a carousel of three different ads or even a looping video advert. The format should be perfect to send the message across your intended audience. Add relevant content that is short and precise while direct enough for Facebook’s feeds. Make it enticing enough to appeal to the target audience. Use images and videos to make an even stronger impression.

Step 6: Choose the right ad placement

Advert placement is integral to Facebook Ads, whether it should be displayed on News Feed, desktop feed or the right-hand column. Facebook would recommend the default settings to optimize the ad placements at cheapest average cost and with the best results.

Step 7: Place your ad order

To submit your ad, place your order. Facebook will review the ad before it is made live!

Conclusion

The average industry benchmarks have been quite strong with respect to Facebook ads. A sound and effective strategy should be devised for leveraging Facebook as a cost-effective marketing tool. Relevant goals and the right placement of the ad would also go a long way in deriving maximum value from the ads. One should even spend time and money to optimize the ad campaigns for major success.

Author:

Juned Ghanchi is co-founder and CMO at IndianAppDevelopers Company, leading mobile app development company.