By Jordan Platten, Co-Founder of LearnAds.io, an online education platform that simplifies paid digital advertising for business owners.
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As the importance of the internet grows each year, some businesses are starting to struggle to keep up. One of the key areas businesses lack knowledge in is the “secret” world of paid digital advertising. Although a huge 90 million businesses in the U.S. already use Facebook as part of their digital marketing strategy, I consistently see businesses that could thrive using paid digital advertising just not utilizing this tool.
We’ve continued to watch the steady decline of “traditional” advertising techniques for around ten years and the rapid incline of “modern techniques” for around five. From 2018 to 2021, the global digital advertising spend has increased by just over $140 billion, with it estimated to total $517.51 billion by 2023.
For now, we’ll begin by looking at Facebook. The most popular social networking site of all time has now acquired an incredible 1.84 billion daily active users and an average of $7.34 CPM and firmly holds the crown of the cheapest most effective advertising tool ever.
So why are some businesses still completely staying away from paid digital advertising?
I’ll tell you why. The common things I’ve found when asking companies, “Why don’t you run Facebook Ads?”:
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• I’m not clued up about technology.
• My audience won’t see my ads because they don’t use Facebook.
• It takes up way too much time.
• I tried using them once and didn’t get any results.
All, I suppose, fair assumptions to make, the keyword here being “assumptions,” but it’s crucial that business owners start swapping this thought process to something a little more contemporary.
What a lot of people aren’t aware of is that a tool like Facebook will do a lot of what I would call “heavy lifting.” The site will automatically show your ads to the people who are likely to find them relevant; your job is to help the software be even more accurate. When equipped with the right knowledge, you can see a great return on investment (ROI); for example, my company has helped some businesses achieve 17 times ROI.
Because let’s be honest, what’s the point in having access to such a huge pool of potential customers if you can’t reach them?
Focus On Problem Solving
What problem does your product or service solve? Once you’ve got this nailed down, working out what messaging and image and who to show it to will quickly follow suit.
Key Is In The Copy
With most people now having an average attention span of eight seconds, the copy should always be precise, valuable, high-quality and get to the point fast. Copy, when written correctly, can be more compelling than imagery.
Fine-Tooth-Comb Your Data
The data that you can receive from your ads is crucial, and Facebook will do a great job of sorting through it, but make sure you take the time to read it, make note of your findings and apply it to your next ad.
Attractive Creatives
The “creatives” refers to how your ad looks on the screen. Make sure you check for blurry images, poorly cropped art and a clashing color palette. Imagery goes a long way for online users, so if design isn’t a notch you have in your belt, then look at outsourcing this; it’s well worth the additional cost.
Wait!
Don’t kill ads too quickly. It’s crucial to allow your ads some time to start seeing a return. According to Facebook, the company attributes a sale to your ad if a person purchases within 28 days of viewing it, so be patient.
Test, Test, Test
Finding the most profitable ads won’t necessarily come straightaway; the key is to test different audiences to figure out which convert the best. One way to do this efficiently is to launch an ad for around three days then analyze the results.
Start Targetting By Interests
This simply means targeting your ads to people who have an interest in the product or service you’re selling. For example, if you’re selling hairbrushes, target people who show an interest in hair. Sounds simple, but trust me, people forget.
Follow The Rules
The first thing you should always do before making any ad live is to triple-check that it meets the ad policy guidelines. If you don’t follow the rules, you’re running the risk of receiving an IP ban.
This is just a handful of the knowledge you need to run successful campaigns. Search online to keep expanding your knowledge.