Ah, the world of Facebook ad targeting. It can be extremely confusing to know if your audience is optimal. There are a lot of tips and tricks out there for optimizing these ads. Kayla hopped on a live Q&A with Cyber PR team member Matt Pelosi who worked at a major social media promotions firm before coming to collaborate with us. We dished out some golden rules to follow.
“[Facebook is] the most used social platform with nearly 2.45 billion monthly active users. Knowing who’s using the platform and how they are using it can make a difference when crafting a Facebook marketing strategy. – Sprout Social
Matt is Cyber PR’s newest team member. Matt handles social media ad strategy, community management, and growth and video editing. Matt first came to Cyber PR as a client and he loved the process and team so much he asked to join us. He has a skill set that makes him perfect for the position – musician, producer, and expert digital strategist combined. He studied music production at The Musicians Institute in Hollywood and worked at Warner Music Group as a studio assistant. Most recently was a senior account manager at a digital marketing agency. There, he gained vast experience running Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Google advertising and boost campaigns.
He also continues to produce and make music. Matt has a deep passion for supporting and growing creatives and artists with an organic approach. In this Q&A Matt and Kayla break down a few tricks that Facebook won’t tell you. They answered any questions about pixels, boosting and making the most of a $5 ad spend.
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Matt Pelosi and Kayla Coughlan of the social media team at Cyber PR unpacked all of your burning questions about advertising via Facebook Business Manager on their latest Instagram Live. Successful advertising is a process, and involves so much more than meets the eye — luckily, the two were able to provide some guidance on the subject to get you started on your next ad campaign.
Do Your Research
First and foremost, Kayla and Matt emphasized time and time again the importance of DOING YOUR RESEARCH. Successful ads are a result of successful audience targeting and strategy. For one, know your audience. Be sure to research what artists are most similar to you and direct followers of their page towards yours. You can use Google Analytics or Twitter/Instagram/Facebook interaction data to similarly determine the most common age range, gender, and location of your fans.
Test Your Ads
After getting a sense of your current following and where you want to direct your ad, before you put any money into it, be sure to test your ads. Kayla and Matt recommended running a short, 2-day campaign with very little monetary input for 3-5 different variations of text/imagery and target audience. At the end of the 2 days, examine the interactions to determine which style of ad and audience was most engaged with your product.
Ad Stages
Once you’ve accomplished the research portion of the job, it’s important to set up your ad campaign in multiple stages. Matt explains that you should have about 3 ads running in succession — and by that he means the following: the first ad is the product you’re trying to sell and get out there. Once people interact with that ad, the follow-up splits into two pathways. For people that engaged with the ad and bought the product/signed up for the email list/followed the call to action, there should be another ad that further engages them with your content that they already clearly enjoy. However, for people that engaged with the ad but exited before accomplishing the call to action, there should be an ad that pulls them back towards your product.
Facebook Pixel
This is where pixel comes in — a line of code that tracks user engagement with your advertisement. Matt notes that there is a learning curve to understanding pixel BUT it is extremely important that you utilize the code to track how your ad is being interacted with. In the IG Live, Kayla and Matt give many more details as to how to pull the code from a Facebook Business Manager page and properly analyze the data that it results in.
In the rest of the live, Matt and Kayla also touch on the importance of boosts, SEO, and growing your network naturally through ad campaigns. The two dove into some complex content, but you will surely find their explanations of how to strategize with ads highly informative and accessible.
In this video Kayla and Matt discuss:
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How to go narrow down your audience
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The difference between a boosted post and a Facebook ad
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Running split test campaigns
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Budgeting your money for ads
