It’s 2016 and you have to pay to play on Facebook. New to this phrase? When Facebook started, they were not an advertising platform. If you posted something, your fans would see it. Now that over 1.6 billion people are on Facebook, it’s impossible for your fans to see every one of your posts. The Facebook family is so interconnected that they created the Newsfeed to show us what our friends and businesses we like are doing. If you really like pictures of babies and hit ‘like’ on these photos, you will see a lot more babies on your Newsfeed. You’ll see less and less of the other posts that are going up on Facebook. This is Facebook’s algorithm in a nutshell. They show you more of what you’re interacting with and less of what you aren’t. Simple concept. But, that creates a big challenge for businesses to break through the noise.
Then came Facebook ads. What can you do with these? In short – reach your target audience. How? There are two ways:
- Upload a list of the emails you have collected – current customers, leads, newsletter sign ups.
- Create audiences based on Facebook’s targeting. You can choose to target people depending on their location, age, gender, language, interests, behaviors and connections. You can even choose to target your competitors’ fans. The opportunities are endless!
Graphics for Facebook ads
What is going to grab people’s attention? What grabs your attention when you’re browsing around your own Facebook page? Using photos of students in your business is a great way to go. You’re targeting the parents of the children, so keep that in mind. What do they want for their kids? A fun, safe, learning environment. How can you show that in a photo?
Text for Facebook ads
Create a headline below the image and add a description. Be conscious of the words you choose – and how many! You want them to be able to read the headline quickly and hopefully read the next few lines.
Try this: Start with your question. Then write two sentences to tell your audience what to do. Also, include either the link in the text or write “click below” to lead your readers to the link in the ad.
Track your ads
One of the best things about Facebook ads is the ability to know how successful each ad is very quickly. In traditional advertising, you weren’t really sure who heard your radio spot, watched your commercial, or who read your ad in the paper. Sure you would know if they came to your business saying they saw you in the paper where they came from, but the majority of the time you didn’t know. With Facebook and Google Analytics, you can follow someone all the way to your website and online registration page. With Jackrabbit, you can have a form on your online registration form for them to say how they heard about you. Then, you’ll have another way to see where your new customers are coming from.
Example:
For this ad, we wanted to share with our current fans a cool trick that you can use in Jackrabbit’s reporting. We aren’t trying to get new customers here, just show value to our own customers and give them a tip. This ad has no ‘conversion’ rate, but our customers appreciate the value we are giving to them to be better users and for Jackrabbit to help them even more.
The cost was $20 which was well worth it for us.
Here, you can see most people saw this ad from their phones. This shows how important it is to keep the text on the graphics to a minimum and make your headline powerful.
