This is Facebook Advertising to a Special Audience

Facebook advertising, a combination of 3 parameters

Facebook advertisingTo succeed in Facebook advertising, you must have:

    • The right targeting
    • A great image or video
    • Compelling copy.

Targeting

With the right combination of interests, behaviours & location, you can drill down to as low as one person in your target audience.

What you see to the right is part of an infographic called All of Facebook’s Ad Targeting Options. View it here.

Targeting is such a complex concept that you will likely lose money with Facebook advertising if you don’t understand it.

In my case, I want to make a sponsored post in my news feed. It will be targeted towards restaurant managers in Canada.

There were 22,317 people in Canada who had registered “restaurant general manager” as their occupation in their Facebook profiles.

I assumed that the most likely person to be interested in the e-book would be the manager of a restaurant. I also assumed that managers of very small restaurants such as what you’d see in a mall food court would not be interested. So, I tried to exclude people who are interested in fast food.

Note that targeting audiences is not an exact science. Facebook is not able to obtain all of the correct data. So, targeting involves a certain amount of guess work.

Below is how I set up my targeting aimed at people who are most likely to buy an e-book about how to serve people with disabilities.

Sample ad creation with a target market

Facebook advertising

          1. Facebook advertisingI opened Facebook and went to Create > Ad near the lower left-hand corner.
          2. For marketing objective I chose Conversions.
          3. Bottom of page: I named my campaign Conversion to Buy E-book.
          4. For Website I entered URL of page that has the pertinent quiz plus Add to Cart buttons.
          5. Left the Languages box blank unless I would have wanted a language other than English.
          6. Facebook advertisingUnder Detailed Targeting, I typed in restaurant manager. That gave me 3 options. I clicked on Restaurant General Manager. For reasons that seem illogical to me, that restricted my potential reach too much. So, I had to add another option.
          7. In the next box (and MUST also match…), I clicked on Suggestions and then Restaurant Management. That increased my potential reach by a huge amount.
          8. Then, still in the Include section, I clicked Suggestions. Then I selected more examples. If the Potential Reach went down and the Daily Reach went up, I would keep it. Otherwise I would delete the selection.
          9. Facebook advertisingBy including more categories, you increase your potential audience. By excluding, you make it more specific. It is best to keep your targeting narrow rather than being broad. Narrower audiences are often easier to reach on a limited budget and are more likely to convert into sales. However, in my case, I could not find a good reason to logically exclude more potental buyers.
          10. In this section you can also look at your target audience’sinterests. This can be as finely targeted as the type of pages they “liked”.
          11. Also, try to find when they are researching on how to increase customer base.
          12. Clicked Save This Audience.

Budget & daily reach

Up to a point, the more you spend per day, the more people will see your add each day. For instance, my ad could potentially be seen by 71,000 people. With a $2/day budget, an estimated 88 – 460 people per day would see the ad. With a $4/day budget, an estimated 170 – 860 people per day would see the ad.

including & excluding

For my ad, I entered Canada for the location. For what to include in the Detailed Category, I typed in “restaurant manager”. I was presented with 3 choices and I chose “restaurant general manager”. As long as they are the general manager, I am not concerned about their age or gender.

Facebook advertisingThere are other categories that you could include or exclude for your audience. To decide what to do, hover over the letter i. (See graphic above.) That will give you a definition of the category. Use that knowledge to help you decide whether to include or exclude people in that category.

For the Interests category, I excluded people who are interested in Fast Food. My assumption is that most fast food restaurant managers would not be interested in buying our e-book.

A great image

Facebook advertisingA mediocre image will not do. You have to get a picture that tells a story.

There are plenty of free image websites out there. I went to freeimages.com and entered “restaurant wheelchair” into the search box.

There was no free image that was good enough. So, I clicked the Related Images from iStock button and paid $36 USD for it.

A Facebook ad photo should be 1200 x 628 pixels. So,I used the Eyedropper tool to grab some light red from the man’s shirt and resized my photo with two bars.

Compelling copy

When writing your copy, imagine you are writing to one person and one person alone. That will be the person you have found with your target market.

      • Focus all of your attention on that one person and his/her needs.
      • Make sure your text and your image have the same theme.
      • Write text in a grade 5 or so level.
      • Have a clear goal.
      • Have a clear CTA (call to action).
      • Keep it short. Let them know how we can help them solve a problem in a clear, concise manner. When they read it, they should know:
        • What you are offering.
        • How it will benefit them.
        • What they should do next.
      • Go to your Facebook feed and read a bunch of ads for ideas.
      • Run 2 Facebook ads that are identical except for minor changes in text. See which one converts better.

Placement

Budget of $1 or $2/day

Look at case study #4 in the web page of 13 case studies. For $30/month, it cost the company $0.25 to reach each 1000 customers using Facebook advertising. Compare that to $0.75 for LinkedIn and $2.75 for Google AdWords.

In the Placement section of the Facebook Ad Creation page I selected:

      • Automatic Placements
      • A budget of $2 CAD/day. This will rise as I am tweaking the ad.
      • I set the dates to be starting we expect to have the e-book finished. It is set to run for a month. (I will not finish the ad until the e-book actually has been finished.)
      • Bid strategy is Lowest Cost.

Facebook advertising numbers

      • You can have: One image plus text
      • Ad image sizes: 1200 x 628 pixels
      • Text limit: 90 characters
      • Headline text limit: 25 characters
      • Link description limit: 30 characters
      • Maximum amount of text overlay: Less than 20 percent of image.
      • Video aspect ratio: 16:9 (full landscape) or 1:1 (square) (other aspect ratios available for specific campaign types)
      • Maximum video length: 120 minutes

To find the numbers for the less common types of ads, go to the Complete Guide, select the page and Cmd F to search for “slideshow”.

Facebook advertisingIf your image size is not 1200 x 628 px, it will get cropped. So, I resized my photo with two bars.

The link URL was greater than 30 characters. So, I changed it to bit.ly/disabledpatrons.

Analyzing for ROI

To help figure out your Facebook advertising ROI (return on investment), use a Facebook pixel. That is a small piece of Javascript code that you paste into the head section of your key pages. It will tell you how many people take action on your ad and which ad leads to a conversion.

The above does not give enough information. So, read more at Measure Conversions.

Sample Facebook pixel

<!– Facebook Pixel Code –>
<script>
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘322497177900987’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘AddToCart’);
</script>
<noscript><img height=”1″ width=”1″ style=”display:none”
src=”https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=322497177900987&ev=PageView&noscript=1″
/></noscript>
<!– End Facebook Pixel Code –>

Note that the code snippet in orange does not come with your Facebook pixel code. It is one of  nine different standard event codes that is added just before the ending script code (</script>).

This particular standard event code tracks when items are added to a shopping cart. Learn more about standard event codes.

Learn much more about Facebook pixels.

If you are having trouble pasting the code snippet into your head section, read over this Header FAQ.  If Facebook advertisingyou are confused when it talks about “child theme”, enter
“child theme” into the search box and press Enter.

Misc. valuable information about Facebook advertising

  • The higher the relevance score, the lower the cost per click (CPC).
  • If you fail to place the right ad bids, two things might happen:
    • You’ll pay too much for your ad results or
    • Your ads will not get delivered due to low bids.
  • Never assume your advertising strategy is perfect from the beginning. Start with a low dollar amount. Never assume anything. Always test everything.
  • Average cost per click is $0.20 USD in Canada and $0.26 USD in the USA. source
  • Run your Facebook ad campaigns with automatic placements for some time. After you’ve got some results, you can exclude the placements where costs are highest.
    • After you’ve got some results, you can exclude the placements where costs are highest.

The above ad on Facebook was our very first quiz ad. Among other things, that page has the same Add to Cart buttons that you see in the upper right-hand corner of this page.

Figuring out your ROI (return on investment)

 

Go to the Build Your URL page.

 

The information you just read only scratches the Facebook advertising surface. To learn more, read some of the related pages below.

Related pages

5 Ridiculously Powerful Facebook Ad Targeting Strategies
Aspect ratios for Facebook ads
How AdWords Life Events Targeting Lifts Brand Interest 175%
All of Facebook’s Ad Targeting Options
9 Tips to Write the Best Facebook Ads Ever
How refined your targeting can get
Complete guide to advertising on Facebook
4 steps for successful advertising on Facebook
How to target specialized audiences with Facebook ads
Facebook pixel for conversion optimization & tracking
Facebook ad bidding
Creating a campaign using video views objective
Facebook relevance score
Checklist of what to include in your ad