Today I’m going to share with you three things that I don’t think a whole lot of people are telling you about when it comes to Facebook ads.
Tip number one: run awareness campaigns. What do I mean by that? Well, I think a lot of times when it comes to Facebook ads, what I see a lot of folks doing, whether they’re in real estate, whether they’re entrepreneurs, or small business owners is they are running conversion ads. There’s nothing wrong with running a conversion ad. But the challenge is, if you are running an ad where your main goal is to convert that person into a lead, if they don’t know who you are they are way less likely to convert into a lead. That’s why you might be spending a lot of money when it comes to ads that are solely focused on conversion.
Now that doesn’t mean we should just throw our money away and start boosting everything. But there is a lot of value in running ads where the sole purpose is for people to become more aware of you. So those ads are things like video ads, where you’re creating video, like this. You’re uploading that video into a Facebook ad, and you’re running ads to people that you want to just have them get to know who you are, right?
So, these are not ads that you’re necessarily running to your database. Because probably those folks in your database already know you. But these are ads that you might be running to a newer audience. Let’s say that you want to target people of a certain age, of a certain demographic. Maybe you’re running look alike audience ads. A lot of times they have no idea who you are, and if you’re asking for their name, their email or anything like that, they are less likely to convert.
So, video ads are great to really get people aware of who you are. In fact, video ads are fantastic because they can hear you, and see you, especially if you’re running ads with captions along the bottom. That can make a really big difference. So when you’re running your ads, clicking that video views option as well as the option for reach, reach can also a great one. And we do a lot of that, where we’re running ads solely for the purpose of awareness. That brand awareness, because you know I come from a background of marketing and digital marketing, before I ever got into social media. When it comes to marketing, we’re leaving these little digital bread crumbs, right? And people have to see you over and over again really, to help build that know, like, and trust factor.
So that’s tip number one. Make sure that you’re running some awareness campaigns. When you’re thinking about all of your Facebook ads that you’re running. You might be running some ads that really focus on conversion and lead conversion, which is great. But don’t forget about that sort of, top of the funnel awareness campaign, which I think is really, really important.
Tip number two: if you’re going to boost a post, boost your post from your computer. From your desktop or your laptop. This is something that I think a lot of people don’t realize. I hear a lot of times people saying, “Don’t boost posts.” There’s nothing wrong with boosting a post. But the value of boosting a post on your computer or your desktop, is that you can choose multiple options. This is actually something fairly new that Facebook has rolled out with.
If you just boost a post on your phone or your mobile device, you can only pick one audience. But if you do it on your computer, you can pick multiple audiences, which is really, really beneficial. So, if you’re going to boost a post, ideally do it from your desktop, do it from your laptop. That way you can actually target multiple audiences, which is really the name of the game.
Which leads me to tip number three, and tip number three has to do with creating custom audiences. And I think this is a really important thing. You know a lot of you may or may not be focused on email marketing, maybe you’ve got a database, maybe you don’t. But you know, email marketing is like the kissing cousin when it comes to social media. So having a strong email list, having a strong database is really key for a number of reasons. But especially when it comes to Facebook ads, because you can download that database, put that back up into Facebook and then run ads to people who are on your database.
Now to take that a step further, I really recommend segmenting your lists. So we’ve been running ads from our database for a long time, and what we’ve found is that when we can segment our list and just run ads specifically to specific people on that list, it can make a big, big difference. And I realize this is a little bit more of an advanced tip, but as you start to use different tools with your email marketing software. Maybe you’re using MailChimp, or Constant Contact, or there’s lots of great tools that are out there, we’re using InfusionSoft, you can really start to track what are people clicking on? And if you’re not sure you can always send an email out to your list saying, you know, “What are some of the things you’d like to hear from me the most? Is it tips for buying? Is it tips for selling? Is it community information?” You could send an email out and have people sort of self select and self segment themselves, and then you can run ads to those folks with that type of content that they’re most interested in. Because that’s really the name of the game.
Now by the way, if you don’t have an email list, if you haven’t really been focused on building your email list, I actually have a great video. I did a whole session at Inman Connect last year about how to create a lead magnet, and how we’ve done that really successfully to build our email list, our database into the tens of thousands.
We also have a really robust Facebook ads course, with more than 20 videos and resources on everything to do with Facebook ads, especially for real estate. So if you’re one of my real estate friends, be sure to check that out!
I would love to hear from you! What are your burning Facebook ad questions? Put your Facebook ad questions in the comments below.
