How to Design a Streamlined Facebook Ads Campaign
The first step to having a streamlined Facebook ads campaign is to use the STP framework. Rather than focusing on a broad audience and actively alienating your customers, STP focuses on specific segments to ensure your message resonates.
To help guide you we’ve curated an article that provides direction on how to design a streamlined Facebook ads campaign:
Segmentation
Segmentation is the first step in the STP framework.
Segmentation involves dividing the market into smaller segments or sub-groups of customers who share similar characteristics. Rather than targeting a broad market, by segmenting, you define the customers that you are trying to reach. As such, combining segmentation with Facebook’s advanced digital targeting can lead to better response rates and lower acquisition costs.
According to a study by Bain & Co., 81% of executives found that segmentation was crucial for growing profits. This number alone demonstrates the power of segmentation. To maximize the advantages of segmentation, it’s important to know how to do it effectively.
- Research – get to know your customers first by conducting surveys with open-ended questions
- Segmentation categories – decide which category they fall under (demographic, geographic, psychographic, behaviouristic)
- Create the segments -analyze your responses either manually or with statistical software
- Test – evaluate your segments
Now that you know how to determine your segments, here’s how to use the segmentation tool available on Facebook.
- Click the Advertising link at the bottom of the Facebook page after logging in.
- Click the Create an Ad button in the upper-right corner.
- Skip the ‘Design Your Ad’ section
- Scroll to section 2, Targeting.
- Select the attributes that you think match your audience using the research conducted in the steps outlined above.
- Look at the ‘Estimated Reach’ number on the right-hand side of the page. That’s the size of your prospective audience.
Targetting Your Audience
Targeting is the second step of STP. It involves determining which segment is the most attractive using a mix of marketing strategies (Pricing, Products, Promotion and Placement).
Once identified, the next step is to target them. By targeting specific segments, your messages are more likely to resonate with your audience. Messages created for broad audiences struggle to resonate with the audience, whereas when your message speaks to a defined audience, they are more likely to resonate with the message when they can relate to it directly.
To learn more about your target audience, use Facebook insights. There are two types of insights offered, audience insights and page insights. Audience insights look at trends about your current or potential customers across Facebook, whereas page insights looks at the interactions with your page such as likes, comments, and shares.
Effective targeting involves creating content that focuses on your audience’s unique interests and needs. Improve your Facebook advertising by developing content that targets their specific needs.
Positioning
The third step of the STP framework is to position your product or service. It involves influencing the customers’ perception of your product or service. For example, a Louis Vuitton designer bag is positioned as an expensive, high-class item, in its advertisements. Your product or service should do the same by associating what you sell with what aligns best with its purpose/selling point.
To develop a positioning strategy, a great first step can be to create a brand positioning map. This tool is used to show consumer perception of certain brands within your industry. The map thus helps you identify your positioning in the industry and to identify opportunities in the marketplace.
Here are the steps to creating an effective marketing positioning strategy
- Determine company uniqueness in comparison to competitors: What makes your brand unique and what value does it offer? This is exactly what you need to address from the beginning.
- Identify current marketing position: Using the map, identify where you stand relative to your competitors and how you aim to differentiate yourself. You can also use Facebook Insights to gain a better understanding of where you stand using statistics.
- Analyze your competitors: Identify the conditions within the marketplace and the influence your competitors have on one another
- Develop a positioning strategy: Identify what you want to achieve and how.
Geo-fencing
Another tool on Facebook that you can take advantage of is Geofencing, which allows you to get even more specific with your target audience. Geofencing allows your ads to be localised as specific as a 1-mile radius. This means you can place your targeted ad directly in front of the right customer. To further utilise this geofencing feature, you can use local language or statistics in your ad campaigns. This makes locals feel connected with the business and improves response rates.
Geo-fencing takes personalisation and targeting a step further and helps to deepen the relationship customers have with your brand. Instead of serving a generic message, by adopting local colloquialism, you tailor your message specifically for the audience. The importance of targeted messages is demonstrated by 71% of customers who say they are more likely to buy something if it’s tailored just for them, according to Facebook for Partners.
Organic Reach
With 70% of marketers using Facebook to gain new customers, it’s obvious why you should too. Organic reach is the number of people who have seen your post through unpaid distribution. You can do this by publishing posts on your page for free, such as links to your website alongside aesthetic graphics or promoting your events. This is a great way of creating organic reach which promotes your brand for free! The difference between this strategy and paid advertising is that paid ads allow you to target people who have not liked your page yet but may have similar interests whereas organic posts only get shown to people who are already your Facebook fans.
Automate Your Ads
One of the best ways to minimize costs and resources spent on an ad campaign is to streamline your working day with automated ad production systems. You can implement this into any ad campaign strategy, and save a lot of time and effort.
Target a Specific Audience
By targeting a specific audience, you reduce the size of the competition who would be running ads to the same audience. Instead, you bid on a narrower audience – the ones you really want to reach. This increases the chance of your content resonating with your audience, and thus increasing conversion rates, giving you the best chance at gaining clicks and increasing conversion rate. This reduces costs as generally ad cost is high and inventory is low when you are going after an audience that many other advertisers want, said Timothy Masek, senior growth strategist at growth marketing agency Ladder Digital.
Run Multiple Ads At The Same Time
Another advantage of Facebook is that it lets you run multiple ads concurrently with the same budget. This gives you the opportunity to run similar ads with tiny nuances that enhance segmentation. By using different combinations of text and images, you’ll be able to spot trends in the advert’s performances. Take the best elements from the better-performing ads and get rid of the worst ones. This utilizes the experimentation approach where instead of spending too much time and resources on product development, you’re instead pushing out your ideas and testing them with real customer feedback. Facebook Ads coach Monica Louie says, “It’s fascinating how just changing the image can have a dramatic effect on the costs, all of these are done in this specific order to keep costs down and increase conversions.”
In summary, by using the STP framework with your Facebook ad campaign, you can better target your desired market and create a deeper connection with your target audience. There are many great tools available on Facebook such as Facebook insights, geofencing, and segmentation tools, which can help in streamlining your campaign. By taking advantage of what’s at your disposal and adopting the STP framework, you will have streamlined your campaign.
