Facebook is a pay-to-play model at this point, with players vying for eyeballs in an increasingly noisy space. If you do not already have a thriving community on Facebook, then you need to take a look at your Facebook goals and tactics.
If you are looking for increased sales and opt-ins to your email list, consider budgeting for a Facebook advertising campaign. Don’t despair. Facebook is still relatively inexpensive compared to most forms of traditional advertising. Once you set aside a budget, here are a few things to consider to maximize your ROI.
- Define and focus on your end goal. Facebook organic reach is very low, even with good content, so if you are trying to reach people with a special offer or a coupon, your advertising goal should not necessarily be to increase “likes” to the page. Your goal should be to drive traffic to the offer website conversion.
- Include a strong visual with the offer to grab visitors’ attention. Include text within the image since many people won’t bother to read the underlying text while scrolling down their feed.
- Consider retargeting your Facebook ads. Using custom audiences, you can actually target the ad to show up in the feed of people that have visited your website. Since most people don’t buy from you the first time they visit your site, this allows you to stay top of mind for when they are ready to buy. (Note: You must set this up on your website before you run your ad.) You may also run ads that create “lookalike audiences” that match your current customer email list, as well as the demographics of your page.
- Why not run ads specifically to your existing Facebook fans? This is a great inexpensive option to remind them that you are there to help them with their next seasonal projects.
- Mobile optimization. Consumers are increasingly accessing Facebook through mobile, so you want to make sure that your Facebook ads and landing pages are optimized to be mobile friendly.
