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The Christmas season is one of the most competitive times for any type of online advertising. Every business, from mom and pop stores to big-box retailers will be fighting over the public’s attention on Facebook. Does that mean you shouldn’t advertise? No! A study from Shop.org showed that mobile influenced 56% of in-store sales. It’s even more important than before to get your brand in front of your customers.
Note that these steps aren’t exclusive to JUST Christmas. If you can, try to follow our guide for every Facebook advertising campaign you run.
1. Plan Out your Target Market
Every business should have a good idea of who their target market is, but it’s important to really drill down here. Facebook has a lot of powerful tools that will help reach just about anyone, but you still have to tell it where to target.
A good way for your business to start is to look at what your customers have in common. Are they mostly 60+ women? Are they B2B companies with over 100 employees? Write down as many different segments as you can think of. The more accurate your market, the more relevant all your ads become.
Note: Facebook can target by age, gender, ethnicity (to an extent), geography, and interest.
2. Design Multiple Ads for each Market
It’s hard work to design a good ad, so trying to go above that and create several can appear daunting. However, it’s crucial to match your advertising to your segment. The same ad that appeals to a grandmother will probably not be very relevant to a 45-year-old man.
For each of the target market segments you created in the first step, design a different ad specifically for them. We would recommend changing the copy for sure, and changing the image if you think it would make sense.
3. Split Test your Ads against each other
One of the great things about Facebook is how easily you can split test your ads. Underperforming ads will automatically be assigned less money compared to the ones that do well. A little bit of survival of the fittest will go a long way to maximizing your ROI.
It’s important to keep a close eye on your split tests. If some of your ads are doing very poorly, shut them off, tweak the copy or the image, and start testing them again. It’s unlikely you’ll nail the perfect ad on your first try without a lot of testing.
4. Use a Retargeting Pixel
If someone clicks on your ad, let’s say they have a 5% chance of actually buying something from your sales page. What happens to the other 95%? With a tracking pixel, you can target those who “bounce” off your sales page and show them your ads repeatedly. We’ve seen some huge success through retargeting, but it really depends on how well you defined your target market in Step #1. There’s no point showing someone the same ad a hundred times if they’re just not interested
In our experience, Facebook advertising has become incredibly effective and cost-efficient… as long as you know what you’re doing!
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