I know I don’t need to tell you how Facebook has become such an important part of marketing your fitness or sports business.
Therefore it is only logical that Facebook advertising also plays an important role in your marketing to increase your brand name, generate leads and increase sales.
But let me tell you there are a lot of things you can do that can make the difference between your ad getting the results you want or falling flat. Some ideas are only small little changes and others may take a bit more work but if you follow these tips, I guarantee you will see an improvement on the return on your Facebook ads.
So here are my first top 10 tips (look for the next top 10 next month):
1. Work out what you want to achieve
When setting up Facebook ads, first decide what you want people to do when they see your ads – click to your Web page, like your page, increase the awareness in your local community, generate leads, attend an event or get more people to watch your video. Think carefully as to what exactly you want your ad to achieve as this will give you you direction in how to craft your ad.
2. Great pictures or better yet, great videos!
This is usually the first thing people look at when they see you ad. I cannot stress the importance of having a great image. Use people, smiling, looking into the camera (and remember, pictures of females resonate the best with both males and females). Try not to use stock standard images and typical models – make it realistic – use actual members of your club instead. Making the images more realistic will make it easier for people to relate to.
Videos will always give you greater engagement with your audience than using pictures. Successful videos get to the point right away – catch the attention of your audience in the first 5 seconds. Try to keep your videos short, no more than 30 seconds. Combine visuals, voiceover and music for maximum impact.
3. Know your target audience really, really well
Now this is a big advantage of Facebook advertising – you can really finely define your target audience. First ask yourself questions like:
- How old is my ideal prospect?
- Where does my ideal prospect live?
- What fan pages have my prospects already liked?
- How can I create my ad so it speaks specifically to my target demographic?
- What kind of a free offer can I use to capture leads?
The more specific you define your target audience the more clicks your ad will receive.
Facebook has a wide range of options to choose from such as:
- Location – reach people in the areas where they live or where they do business with you. Target adverts by suburbs, postcodes or even the area around your business.
- Demographics – Choose the audiences that should see your adverts by age, gender, job title or income.
- Interests – choose from hundreds of categories such as music, films, sport, games, shopping and so much more to help you find just the right people.
- Behaviours – you know your customers best and you can find them based on the things they do – such as shopping behaviour, the type of phone they use or if they’re looking to buy a car or house.
- Connections – reach the people who like your page or your app – and reach their friends, too. It’s an easy way to find even more people who may be interested in your business.
An insider’s tip, when defining your audience for Facebook ads, choose “Detailed Targeting”, then select “Interests” and select “Fitness and Wellness” or “Sports and Outdoors” – people who have these interests should be more receptive to your ads.
4. Use Custom Audiences
Did you know you can target Facebook ads to your own database of customers, prospects or leads?
Facebook Custom Audiences enable you to connect on Facebook with your existing contacts. This reinforces your brand and gives you the opportunity to increase lifetime customer value, order frequency, and loyalty.
Custom Audiences are created by uploading your customer phone list or email list. You can also create a Custom Audience based on your Web site visitors (and specific pages visited on your site), or on specific actions taken within your app. Look to using your leads list as these people already have had some interest with your business and would be more likely to take the next step as opposed to someone who has had no previous connection to your business.
5. And also try Lookalike audiences
When you have defined your own audience, you can then create a lookalike audience – this is basically new contacts who share similar characteristics to your target audience or fan base.
Facebook will look at all the profile data of the people in your custom audience and create a new list of Facebook users that share similar interests and demographics. This is a huge shortcut and a ‘safe option’ when it comes to optimising campaign targeting.
6. Seperate ads campaigns for desktop and mobile
Use separate ad sets for mobile and desktop – now there are several reasons for this, images used for one device will not look as good on other devices. Users are more likely to watch a long video on a desktop, while preferring shorter videos on phone and tablets. Users react to mobile and desktop ads differently so your content and call to action should match which device the person is using.
For example:
- Desktop ads in the newsfeed: Great for engagement and generating sales & leads. Supports longer copy and link description.
- Desktop ads in the right side column: Less effective but cheaper. Images are smaller and text less readable. Works well for retargeting users who already know your brand. Use an image they’ll recognise to catch their eye.
- Mobile Newsfeed: Great for engagement & mobile app installs. Mobile users tend to click “Like” a lot. Copy is shorter, so get to the point fast. While conversion rates on mobile are often deceptive, mobile is great for discovery. Users will discover your product on their phones and then look for more the next day on their desktop.
Oh and another insider’s tip, there is a clear trend in social media towards mobile and there are indications that advertising on mobile devices offers the best return on investment overall so you may want to put more of your Facebook marketing dollars towards mobile ads than desktop ads.
7. Create different ads for different audiences
If you were marketing your gym to Mums, corporate workers and uni students, your message, images and offer may be very different so make sure you create different ad sets and different ads for each audience. Create a different ad set for each target market – again this will greatly increase the success of your ad if you speak the same language as your target audience.
8. Test different images and keep testing
Images are the most important element of your ads and the number-one factor when people decide whether to click a post. Test out different images and find the ones that maximise your click-through rate and conversions.
Once you identify the best images, find more of the same style and keep testing.
9. Have a strong call to action
The call-to-action (CTA) on a Facebook Ad (in the sidebar) is the “Title” text in blue at the top of your ad. It’s the most important element of your ad to convince people to click. If you have a good image, it will draw people’s attention. But the CTA is where people will make their decision to actually stop and click. The description text can help, but the majority of people will have already made their decision to click before they read it.
Keep your CTA to the point – you have microseconds of people’s attention to get them to understand and click on your ad so make it something that a person can understand at just a glance.
10. Use a Pixel code
Now this is where we get a bit technical but stay with me as this is really important. A Facebook pixel is a snippet of code provided by Facebook which you add to the pages of your Web site. This one pixel (now you only have the one pixel code for all your ads which makes life easier) will allow you to track people coming to your website and landing pages and also tracks conversions.
The Facebook pixel is used for two main functions:
- Building custom audiences from your website for re-marketing. Now this means targeting your ads to people who have visited your website, or who have visited your opt-in page but didn’t opt-in or who have visited your sales page but didn’t make a purchase or to find new Facebook users to target your ads to who are similar to people who visit your website,
- Tracking conversions and attributing them back to your ads – and here is a big tip, if you’re measuring leads, conversions, registrations or checkouts, the Facebook pixel code PLUS the standard event code (which Facebook provides and is based on the action you want the user to take such as making a purchase, a lead, completing a registration etc) should be placed on the page that a person lands on after your landing page (such as a “thank you” page) and not on the landing page itself.
When you track conversions from your Facebook ads, you’ll see a much clearer benefit to using ads for leads and sales. You can also improve your ad strategy to decrease your cost per conversion by split testing your ads and optimising your budget to focus on the ads that are actually working for you.
Look out for part two next month.