The Social Mediums were recently allocated a budget to advertise for our respective GC departments on social media, with a current focus on Facebook. Although there are some ethical concerns to consider about interacting with Facebook’s paid advertising platform, such as issues of data collection, we came to the conclusion that as long as we are using Facebook as a tool to disseminate information, we might as well maximize our returns. And this new strategy has proven fruitful: we have seen a tremendous increase in post engagement and page likes since reinstating paid advertisement. This post will talk about some strategies for effectively targeting your desired audience on Facebook ad posts.
— The Social Mediums
One of our favorite social media aggregators Hootsuite created a comprehensive guide to advertising on Facebook, which can be found here: Hootsuite: “How to Advertise on Facebook.” Since they did such a great job outlining the process, we will just highlight a few of the important takeaways in this blog, and leave it up to you to peruse their exhaustive manuals.
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
Facebook’s advertising has become more sophisticated with time, and now, users are able to manipulate numerous variables when setting up an ad to be published.
Advertisers can control the age, interests, region, language, social media habits and more of their desired publication, so be sure to do some demographic research on who is most likely to be interested in your page/business.
KNOW YOUR MISSION
Facebook does a lot of the work for you in letting you select what type of interaction you want to prioritize in your advertising: brand awareness, reach, traffic, engagement, app installs, video views, lead generation, messages, conversions, catalog sales, and store visits are some of the options available to you when setting up an ad.
ALWAYS CREATE QUALITY CONTENT
No matter your audience or message, higher resolution photos or videos will outperform lower quality media.
REMEMBER: there is no single solution to creating a successful ad campaign, so the best way to figure out how to target your ideal audience is by getting out there and trying different tactics! If you want some outside help, give A/B testing a try.
Good luck!
