A Guide to Effective Facebook Advertising

Digital marketing is an incredibly sought after skill, which has become quite synonymous with Facebook Ads.

Facebook has a user base of over 2 billion active users. Facebook Ads gives advertisers the ability to advertise to its massive user base.

There are hundreds of thousands of advertisers bidding for a spot on Facebook's platform. This makes it incredibly competitive. There are also advertising agencies charging thousands of dollars each month to help companies do their advertising.

Despite this, advertising on Facebook isn't all that difficult. Of course it takes practice and experience, but all you need to stay ahead of your competition is know that being profitable with Facebook Ads is just doing these 3 things.

*If you don't understand any of the terms used, check out my 'Crash Course to Digital Marketing Terms'

1. Gather (Appropriate) Data

The most important thing to know when starting on Facebook Ads is that the whole game is about data. The person with the most (appropriate) data performs the best. 

Of course, you'll start without data, but on your journey you'll have to be constantly building useful data. You'll need a Facebook Pixel on your website to help you collect that data.

'Useful' being the imperative word here. Add to carts, link clicks, and initiate checkouts if you're looking for sales(which applies to most e-commerce businesses). Likes, follows and engagement only matter if you're trying to grow your page(not recommended if you don't have deep pockets).

Generally, it's a good idea to start off with interest targeting to gather data at the beginning. Advertisers do this by constructing an 'ideal customer' and targeting interests based on his/her traits.

At this stage, don't expect to get too many sales, you may get a few, but just breaking even at this point is an extremely likely outcome. Remember, you're still gathering data and competing with others.

*Facebook is pretty good at optimizing to give you exactly what you ask for. If you ask for sales, they'll give you sales, if you ask for likes, they'll give you likes.

2. Retarget

After you've collected some data, you can start re-targeting the audiences you've built. 

Of course, you should only re-target people who have seen your ad but didn't convert. Showing your ad to them for a second time could remind them of your product, or be that final kick that they need before purchasing your product.

You can re-target people who have clicked on your link, added to cart or initiated checkout. The warmer the audience is, the better they will convert.

The same goes for page follows. Re-target the people who engaged with your post, and they will likely like your page in the future.

3. Lookalike Audiences

This is where the profits start rolling in. Profits meaning you'll start making much more than you spend. Much, much more. If you do it properly.

Using the same audiences that you've gotten from your interest and re-targeting ads, you can create a lookalike audience. 

A lookalike audience is essentially a group of people who share the same traits as the people who purchased from you(if you decide to create a lookalike audience from your purchase audience).

An audience should be of a pretty large amount before you start creating lookalike audience from it(about 1,000).

Once you've reached this stage, you should be able to generate steady profits from your Facebook Ads.

Because the lookalike audience is one that you've created, you'll have a lot less competition and hence it will get significantly cheaper to acquire each customer.

However, you should continue testing your interests and re-targeting your audiences to scale.

If you had any issues understanding or have anything to add, please do leave a comment or contact me at 'jingrui.wu.2002@gmail.com', I'll get back to you ASAP. 

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