How To Guides
Rachel Rivers • January 24,2024
Are You Getting The Most Out of Your Paid Facebook Campaigns?
by Jason Gulbis
It’s no secret that Facebook has risen to become one of the leading PPC platforms in the world of Digital Marketing. Dealerships particularly can benefit from the dynamic that Facebook provides as an advertising platform. However, the road to an effective Facebook campaign considers several different key factors in determining an ad’s success. What makes a great Facebook ad?
Identifying Campaign Goals
The first step that goes into creating an effective Facebook ad campaign is determining and designating your campaign goals to align with one of Facebook’s pre-determined campaign objectives. If you are looking for leads and website actions, a Leads campaign would be a good focus. If you are focusing on generating messages, you should create an Engagement ad, etc.
Creating Eye-Catching Appeal
Having compelling visual creative is essential for ads because it immediately grabs the viewer’s attention and conveys the message more effectively than text alone. Well-crafted visuals not only engage the audience but also leave a lasting impression, increasing the likelihood of a positive response to the ad.
Facebook Catalog Ads
Utilizing an inventory catalog through Facebook is a great way to enhance your visual and increase engagement on your advertisement. Some service providers, like TrailerCentral, can dynamically update your catalog as your live inventory changes. Catalogs update your advertisement to highlight units from your inventory. This makes for a great option when pairing with the carousel format that allows potential customers to get a preview of your inventory before going to the website or messaging.
Custom Visual Creative
You can also manually upload your own images to Facebook. Ads like the one pictured are great for highlighting specific events or sales. Although these advertisements are not dynamically updating with units from your inventory, they do have the benefit of full control over what is being displayed.
Compelling Copy
Effective ad copy is crucial, working hand-in-hand with visuals to guide your audience toward taking your desired action. Well-crafted text grabs attention, communicates value, and ultimately convinces potential customers to engage with your ad’s message or offering.
The copy in your advertisement should always reflect the initial campaign goal that you chose. For example, if you are trying to get Facebook messages, it would be important to have a call to action promoting messaging. This will help reinforce and guide the audience on what action to take next.
It is also important to note that with all advertisements, you should match the call to action button on the ad to reflect your campaign goals.
Reaching The Right Audience
Even if you’ve crafted the perfect Facebook ad, it will not perform properly unless you are talking to the right audience. There are multiple factors that Facebook brings into consideration when creating a targeting strategy for ads.
Location
The first of these factors is location. Facebook allows you to create a radius to target pertaining to a specific location, or you could target other things as well such as an entire state, or metropolitan area. Assess your campaign goals and budget to help determine what location targeting option would be the most effective for you. The larger your targeted area is and the more people being targeted, the higher your budget would need to be to compete against other bids for the same products.
Demographics
Facebook also offers demographic targeting options that can help narrow down your target audience even more, with information like age, gender, interests, and behaviors. If you know your target audience, this is a great way to maximize your return on investment by getting your ads in front of the most likely buyers.
Evaluating Results
Once your ads have gathered some data, you’ll want to review the results to determine if you want to make any tweaks to the ad copy, graphics, or targeting to improve your return. Depending on your goals, you may want to consider the following Key Performance Indicators
- Reach – The number of unique users who saw your ad.
- Impressions – These are the number of times that your ad was seen. Think of it as the digital version of the exposure you might get from a billboard or a radio ad.
- Results – This is the number of engagements from your ads. Depending on your Calll To Action settings, these can be activities like starting a Facebook Message, or browsing your website. If you’re directing users to browse your website, you’ll want to make sure you’ve set up your Facebook Pixel to measure those results.
- Cost per result – Super simple, this is the amount spent divided by the number of results. You’ll want to do further data collection and analysis to evaluate your offline results (such as buyers who saw your ads and then came to the store) and the quality of your results (the ratio of leads you generated that resulted in a desired outcome, like a sale).
Get A Second Opinion
Even if you’re an old hand at creating Facebook ads, it’s beneficial to get a second opinion from time to time to make sure you’re still using the most effective techniques. Facebook releases updates every 2 weeks, including new ads features as well as changes to how your ads content is displayed. It’s a lot to keep up with! The TrailerCentral marketing team has dedicated implementation specialists who can review your ads performance, as well as your overall marketing mix, and give you advice tailored to your goals. Set up your free 30-minute consultation today!
