5 effective tricks for Facebook marketing that deliver real results, helping you boost engagement, visibility, and sales through targeted ads.
Thomas Haurum
Is your business completely new to Meta (formerly Facebook), and perhaps you have never set up a Meta (formerly Facebook) ad before? The very first thing you should do, before you get started, is to determine whether it is actually the right choice for your business – you can read more about that here.
If you have decided that Meta (formerly Facebook) advertising should be part of your marketing efforts, or if you are already running Meta (formerly Facebook) ads, this post is for you. Here, I will go through 5 effective tricks to supercharge your online marketing on Meta (formerly Facebook). You can use this article as a simple guide to some essential tools and ad formats that work in practice.
This guide is primarily aimed at those who have worked with Meta’s (formerly Facebook) Ads Manager before. But if you are about to set up your first ad, you will also benefit from following this guide to help ensure success from the start.
In this article, I cover the following:
A pixel is a tracking script that you install on your website or webshop to track conversions and create retargeting ads for potential customers who may have left your site without making a purchase.
Let’s say you are the proud owner of a webshop selling coffee beans, and I have visited your site and looked at your Ethiopian coffee beans. I then leave your site without buying anything and later go on Meta (formerly Facebook). As I scroll down my feed, I see your ad for Ethiopian coffee beans, reminding me to make a purchase.
That is all thanks to a Meta (formerly Facebook) pixel!
The pixel is installed in the code on your website, tracking what I have viewed and whether I added something to my basket without buying. You can use this tracking for segmentation when setting up your Meta (formerly Facebook) ads, allowing you to target ads to me based on what I have already shown interest in.
In addition to being key for retargeting ads on Meta (formerly Facebook), a pixel also tracks your conversions. This is useful because you can see if your ad spend is generating results. You can measure which ads perform best and adjust your ads continuously based on what works and what to avoid.
If you don’t yet have a pixel on your site, Jannick has made it easy for you here.
I also recommend downloading the Chrome extension: Meta (formerly Facebook) Pixel Helper here. It is a troubleshooting tool that helps you check your implementation.
You’ve created an excellent post on Meta (formerly Facebook) and followed all of Jannick’s advice from his blog post on 4 tips for higher organic reach on Meta (formerly Facebook).
But you still feel your post isn’t reaching enough potential customers. This is where boosting comes into play. On Meta (formerly Facebook), you have the option to pay for greater reach in a relatively simple way.
To boost your posts, you must either own the page or have been assigned a page role that allows you to advertise. However, I recommend setting up a Meta (formerly Facebook) Business Manager ad account and adding your payment details to Business Manager.
When you have published or scheduled your post, you get the option to boost it by clicking the “Boost” button beneath the post.
When you boost your post, you can set your objective – for example, to get more people to interact with your post or to click on a link. Alternatively, you can choose to connect and chat with potential customers. Once you have selected your objective, you can also decide whether to add a button to your post. The button is optional, but you can choose between “Buy Now”, “Book Now”, “Learn More”, “Sign Up”, “Get Directions”, and “Send Message”.
Next, you need to choose your audience. Normally, you can select between a custom audience, a saved audience, or duplicating an audience when creating an ad in Ads Manager. But when boosting a post, you can only use saved audiences. If you know you already have some saved audiences that do not appear when boosting, it may be because you need to scroll down and select your ad account. That’s because your audiences are connected to your ad account, not the Meta (formerly Facebook) page you are boosting the post from. In short, a saved audience allows you to target based on geographic, demographic, and behavioural data from Meta (formerly Facebook).
Then you can choose whether to use automatic placements for your boost. After that, you select the duration and budget for your boost – in other words, how long the post will be shown and how much you want to spend. The more you pay, the more people your post will reach. Lastly, you need to select your ad account, but as I mentioned earlier, it is a good idea to scroll down and select your ad account first, to be able to choose your audience.
Once you have boosted your post, you can find it in Ads Manager. There, you can edit additional parameters not available in the simpler boost tool.
If you want to know more about boosts, Ads Manager & Power Editor, you can read Jannick’s excellent article here.
DPA is a fantastic ad format if you have a website or webshop where you sell products directly. Dynamic Product Ads are an ideal retargeting tool as, as the name suggests, they are dynamic and allow you to display multiple products at once. DPA ads adapt automatically based on what the customer has viewed on your website or webshop.
To set up DPA ads, you must have a Pixel installed on your webshop or website and have created a product catalogue on Meta (formerly Facebook).
But there is hope. My talented colleague Anders has written a blog post on how to optimise your DPA ads. Read the article here.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that you can create even greater relevance – and therefore more value and return from your advertising – if you split your ad sets. That is, categorise them so ad set “A” is shown to the audience interested in “A”, and ad set “B” is shown to people who have viewed “B”, instead of having just one standard DPA ad shown to everyone who has visited your site. By splitting your ad sets, you increase the relevance of your ads and, in turn, your overall return.
In general, using videos in your marketing is highly valuable, as Meta’s (formerly Facebook) algorithm prioritises videos, giving them greater organic reach. In addition, users typically engage more with video than with image or text-only posts.
There are many ways to approach video advertising depending on your objective and available resources. If you want to create animated videos, I highly recommend using Adobe After Effects.
However, you do not necessarily need the latest, top-end equipment. If you have a phone that can record and a good idea, you are already off to a great start. If you also have access to a video editing programme like Adobe Premiere Pro, that’s a bonus. If not, you can edit on your phone. For just £4.99, you can use an app called PowerDirector on Android, and if you have an iPhone, you can use iMovie, which is free. You can also see what Meta (formerly Facebook) recommends in their Mobile Studio.
The goal of lead-generating ads is to collect email addresses and sometimes additional information about potential customers, such as name, age, etc.
When creating a Lead Ad on Meta (formerly Facebook), you select “Lead Generation” as your objective in Ads Manager. Once you have chosen lead generation, a new tab called “Instant Form” appears in the ad setup. This is where you create your form to collect the customer information you are interested in. Usually, this will be emails, but you can add more questions if needed. You can also use conditional answers. For example, if one of your questions is: “Do you have a job?”, the possible answers are yes or no. If no is selected, nothing happens, but if yes is selected, a new question appears, such as: “What is your job?” and a text box to enter the answer.
The first and perhaps most important tip I can give about Lead Ads is: the shorter, the better. The more questions you add to your form, the less likely people are to complete it. So if your goal is to get as many leads as possible, I recommend keeping your form as short as possible.
People are rarely willing to complete your lead form unless you offer an incentive. Here are 7 options you can use.
Now you know the 7 incentives, but the advantage is that you can combine them – for example, requiring users to submit their email address to enter a competition for a limited number of discount codes.
I hope you now have a better understanding of how to get more out of your Meta (formerly Facebook) advertising. If you need advice or help with the setup and management of your Meta (formerly Facebook) ads, we are always here to assist.
Contact us on tel.: 70 44 42 90 or fill out the form here – and we will have a no-obligation chat about the opportunities for your business.
At WeMarket, we offer businesses a benchmark report that compares their marketing efforts with their key competitors. You decide which competitors we should compare against.
We specialise in selling physical goods online and growing webshops – and now you can benefit from this expertise, even if you’re not already a client.
It’s completely free.
