Facebook Marketing – more than just ads

Almost every internet user interacts with Facebook Marketing daily – through ads on Instagram or Facebook. But Facebook Marketing is more than just advertising. It's about having a marketing strategy that allows you to reach your potential customers at the right moment.

Fig.1 Facebook Login Screen

In the following article, we will show you how to set up effective Facebook Marketing.

Facebook has officially been around since 2004 and was originally just an internal network for Harvard University. Starting in 2008, Facebook began to reach more users worldwide and gained significant relevance. This is often forgotten considering there are now more than 2 billion active Facebook users. Facebook has become an integral part of everyday life for many and offers advertisers a vast array of opportunities to accurately target their audience from a large user base.

Facebook is not a passing trend to engage in simply because everyone else is doing it. However, the competition on the social media platform is now very high, so it is advisable to invest a lot of time and effort to be truly successful with ad campaigns. For this, you should ask yourself the following question:

What do I want to achieve with my channel? 

Without a well-constructed concept, you won't achieve the desired success. There are too many advertisers on Facebook and too much poor content. It's about standing out from the other advertisers.

Set Up a Facebook Page

With this in mind, you should also set up your Facebook page. Here, you interact with your fans. Your Facebook page is your digital storefront for your business. Set up your page appealingly, so the customer feels comfortable on your page and finds what they're looking for. Ideally, this leads to the customer not only returning on Facebook but also to your online shop. Give your potential target audience a compelling reason to return.

Converting Users to Customers/Fans through Facebook Marketing

Develop a USP (Unique Selling Point) that sets you apart from other companies. Ask yourself the question Why would someone want to be a fan of this page? What are you trying to convince them with: high quality, an information platform, strong discounts, or even all at once?

It's especially important to be authentic. Give your posts a personal touch and engage with your users. The larger the interaction rate, the better it is for your visibility. Try to respond to all contributions and increase customer satisfaction. Especially respond to critical contributions and offer these individuals alternatives. Never forget that everyone can see what's written on your page or what's NOT written.

In summary, some rules can be derived for creating and maintaining the Facebook page:

• Stand out – be different from the others and create added value. You can do this, for example, with special offers on your page.

• Take care of your customers – try to respond to as many contributions as possible.

• Personality pays off. Give your company a human side.

Creating an Ad – Finally Launching Facebook Ads

While the organic reach of posts on one’s Facebook page continues to decline within the network, ads are becoming increasingly important for communicating one's content. Ad creation requires taking into account several things.

This brings us back to the question – What do I want to achieve with my Facebook ads? 

The advertising goal should logically fit your business goals. These main goals are defined by Facebook as follows:

• Awareness: Objectives that generate interest in your products or services.

• Consideration: Objectives that encourage people to engage with your business and seek information about it.

• Conversions: Objectives that encourage people interested in your business to purchase your products or services.

The marketing goals are further broken down by Facebook, allowing one to choose from different subcategories. For a better overview, here is a screenshot from Facebook:

Fig.2 Facebook Advertising Goals

If you want to set up a video campaign for branding purposes, you should select the objective “Video Views.” The campaign is then optimized by a Facebook algorithm to generate more video views.

Audience Targeting – How Do I Avoid Wastage in Facebook Marketing?

Targeting is essential when creating the ad. You absolutely do not want to target users who are not interested in your ads. Pay careful attention to precise targeting to avoid wasting money on incorrect audience targeting. Check your analytics tool to see who most frequently interacts with your website. Often, the “perceived audience” differs from the actual active users on your website. Therefore, we always recommend checking this carefully again – who is actually buying on your website?Emulate these users on Facebook and try to reach these individuals through specifics such as age, gender, origin, interests, behavior, or job title .

You should always set up different target audiences and test them against each other, for example, in different age groups. To capture your audience as accurately as possible, you can combine different targeting options. Here is an example of what this might look like:

Fig.3 Audience Facebook

We have set the targeting in the screenshot so that people interested in handball and also the Füchse Berlin are addressed. This way, we can reduce wastage in our targeting and narrow down our Facebook audience very specifically.

Facebook Ads – Content is King

When creating your Facebook ads, make sure to communicate your message clearly and distinctly. Show your customers what you want from them and make it as easy as possible for them to convert. Work with clear call-to-actions accordingly. Should the user make a purchase, download, or watch a video? Make it quickly clear what your advertising intent is. Use appealing images with the CTA button integrated.

You want to offer your customers added value with the ad. Vary the advertising media you work with, let different ads run against each other, and test which banner works best for your customers. Continuously optimize your campaigns and pay special attention to the relevance of the ads. If your ad relevance drops below five, you should deactivate the ads, as they will then not achieve good performance metrics.

You can view ad relevance in the Power Editor or in the Ad Manager at the ad level. Further information on Facebook Best Practice can be found here.

Fig. 3: Ad Relevance Rating

Data is Everything - the Facebook Pixel

To measure the success of your campaign and set up Facebook Remarketing/Custom Audience campaigns, you need to implement the Facebook Pixel on your website. You can do this relatively easily via the Google Tag Manager. To do so, you need to implement the Facebook Pixel base code using a custom HTML tag on all pages of your website.

 Fig. 4: Facebook Pixel

If you want to track a conversion, such as a lead or a sale, you need to add another script to your site in addition to the Facebook base code.

With the help of the Facebook Pixel, you can create Facebook Remarketing Campaigns in addition to the normal targeting options. Users who have previously interacted with your website are “stored” via the Facebook Pixel and can now be addressed on Facebook. This allows you to reach people who already have an affinity for your brand. You offer your users another touchpoint with this.

Users in the B2B sector typically require around 12 touchpoints to convert. The likelihood of users converting, who have had prior contact with your website, is significantly higher than without any prior contact.

External Parameters – Tracking Through an Analytics Tool

To assign the traffic in your analytics tool to the corresponding Facebook campaigns, always tag your campaigns with parameters. This way, you can evaluate the performance not only in Facebook but also in your analytics tool. This way, you have all activities on your site marked and can compare the different marketing channels down to the ad level.

Facebook Marketing Guide Read – Now What?

To develop the perfect Facebook Marketing strategy, you need to integrate the Facebook channel into the overall marketing strategy. To what extent does Facebook play a role in achieving my goals? Is it about reaching new customers through Facebook and then pulling them to the site via Google? Or are sales supposed to be generated via Facebook?

The question, therefore, arises, how does the customer journey of your users look until they have converted, and to what extent is Facebook to be located here as a decision parameter in the purchase process? Analyze your initial campaigns and develop further ideas based on this data.

Check where most conversions were generated, how the audience is structured, and who you do not want on your Facebook page, as these people's interests potentially do not match your target audience.

What Can We Do For You?

As a full-service online marketing agency, we can create an online marketing strategy for your website with you. We can address all online marketing channels to design the best possible marketing mix for your site. Contact us.