The world of digital advertising is evolving so fast that even agencies find it hard to keep up with all these changes. In just a few years, advertising has gone from traditional banner advertising and website promotions to an ever-increasing investment in social networks, mainly Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
The main advantage of advertising on a social network is its ability to target. Even though Google is the most widely used search tool, users are increasingly using social networks to find out about new product launches, follow their favorite brands, read comments from other customers and give their opinions. All this activity is recorded in each user profile and if we add the information that each user voluntarily provides, what we obtain is a tool with the capacity to segment in detail, which maximizes the effectiveness and efficiency of any advertising campaign. The price per click, fan, interaction, etc. that we get will depend on several elements, but mainly on the investment we make and the reach. Reach measures the number of potential users that the campaign has access to. In the case of Facebook it is about 22 million people, Twitter about seven and Instagram about nine.
What should we take into account before creating a Social Media campaign?
Before carrying out a campaign on Facebook or Instagram, it is necessary to consider what need we need to cover:
Recognition
Here the aim is to make the brand known, so that the user recognizes the product or service. To achieve this objective, the metric that we will have to take into account the most is the interactions or engagement.
Consideration
When we have a considerable number of followers and a community created (whether or not they are fans of our page), we can carry out campaigns with a consideration objective. At this point, we want users to reach our page, watch our video or share our publications. The main idea is that they consider consuming what we offer thanks to our campaigns.
Conversion
Once we have the community and the recognition of our brand and product we can focus on conversion campaigns. The goal here is that the user performs a specific action: buy, download an application, sign up for our newsletter, etc.
After choosing the objective of our campaign, we must think carefully about the audience we want to target, investigate what type of people will be most comfortable with our content and segment it appropriately.
Facebook segmentation
These are the main elements that make up Facebook targeting:
Placement
The place where our ads will be launched. Desktop (desktop version of Facebook), Mobile (cell phones and tablets) and Instagram (only on this social network).
Location
The place to be segmented. It can be a city, a country, a complete territory or even a place with specific coordinates. It allows to exclude areas that do not interest us.
Age
The age range we want to target (from 14 to 65 years old).
Interests
What does the user like or what has he/she shown interest in during the last months? Here we can specify what type of person we want to reach. Vegetarians, fans of a soccer team, bullfighting fans, cyclists… You can combine several types of interest to increase your reach. There are more segmentation options to further refine our target audience, but in most cases these elements will be enough.
Choose our objective: what do we want to achieve?
The first step is to be clear about what we want to achieve with the campaign. That people watch our video, that users visit our website… Once we have this point clear, we just have to choose the objective that best suits our needs:
Clicks to the web
It is the most traditional and remains one of the most popular. The goal is to take users from the ad posted on Facebook to the landing page of our website. With this we get an increase in visits and therefore the chances of that user to make a purchase on our site. It also has other very interesting advantages, such as the use of pixels (tracking codes) that ‘mark’ that user with the aim of performing a retargeting campaign on it later. It is only necessary to implement the Facebook pixel on the website and create the corresponding audience on the platform. This audience can then be used with the rest of the usual segmentation in our next retargeting campaign.
Interactions with the publication
If what we are looking for is that people share and spread our publication, the most convenient thing to do is to carry out an engagement campaign. Facebook will optimize the campaign so that as many people as possible perform some kind of action with our post, whether it is watching the video, clicking, sharing, commenting, etc. Campaigns can be carried out with exclusively promoted posts or with organic posts already published to which you want to give a boost.
Video views
If the main element of the post is a video, it is convenient to use the video display objective. Video is a format that works better than image on Facebook and with which it is easy to achieve good results in campaigns. Remember that the video should be short and the message should be understood without sound.
Lead acquisition
Leads or potential customer registrations are a highly valued asset for advertisers. This type of campaigns are optimized so that the user can register in a very simple way. The process is done within Facebook so it is not necessary to enter the data by hand in most cases, which makes it an extremely effective channel to get leads.
Fan acquisition
The basis of a good Facebook page is its content, but the most valuable thing is its users. Having a high number of users allows us to achieve a very high reach of our publications, a higher probability that they will be shared and a greater chance of increasing our sales. However, direct fan acquisition is an objective that is less and less used because a fan ‘captured’ through this type of campaign is not as ‘authentic’ as one generated in a ‘natural’ way, that is, through the page’s own publications, without forcing. That is why most advertisers are betting on attracting users through good content and not through fan campaigns.
Scope and Frequency
What if what I need is to ensure a certain reach? If necessary, Facebook allows you to impact a given number of users. For example, if I want my ad to be seen by 100,000 people in a week, I can calculate how much investment I will need to reach them. It also allows me to control the frequency with which my ad is shown, that is, the number of times my post will be shown to a user. It is useful to avoid saturating people with the same ad over and over again.
The importance of mobile in digital advertising
More than 90% of Facebook ad interactions are achieved through mobile devices. That is why it is essential that our creatives (images, videos, etc.) are adapted to these devices. Websites must also be built to look perfect on smartphones. Without the mobile part under control, it’s not even worth launching a campaign on Facebook or Instagram. If your website is not yet ready, it’s time to change it.
