Maximizing Facebook Advertising ROI

The customer acquisition system is the most critical component of any business.  Using Facebook advertising, you can create a system that will be predictable and scalable. In this episode, Mical Johnson,  a Navy and nearly two decade digital marketing veteran shares best practices to maximize the return on your Facebook advertising investment.  Whether your marketing objective is increased website traffic, more leads or higher conversion, you can begin applying his practical tips to improve the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns.

SCORE is proud to partner with Sarasota County Libraries and Historical Resources and the speaker to offer this program.

View Dennis Zink’s Herald-Tribune article on this subject here.

Maximizing your ROI on Facebook advertising

Published: Monday, April 24, 2017

According to Mical Johnson of Omen Interactive, having a customer-acquisition system is the most critical component of any business.

Using Facebook advertising, you can create such a system that is both predictable and scalable. In my podcast series, “Been There, Done That! with Dennis Zink,” Johnson, a digital marketing expert, shares best practices to maximize the return on your Facebook advertising investment.

Whether your marketing objective is increased website traffic, more leads or higher conversions, you can begin applying Mical’s practical tips to improve the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns. Here are some highlights from this podcast.

Your audience. You already have a custom audience. Use the email addresses and phone numbers of your customers and upload them as a file to Facebook. Facebook can find more people like your customers and target them. Generally, targeting your customers, especially on Facebook, will keep acquisition costs low. Target website visitors using the Facebook pixel and target them on Facebook. Most people are familiar with Google Analytics; you can also put Facebook Analytics on your website.

Other audiences. You can target fans of your page or your competitors’ pages. Using Audience Insights on the Facebook page itself gives you a breakdown of the demographics of people who are your fans. More people who “like” your page — especially if they’re your customers — can help you can get a good picture of their demographics. Use this information to build out your target profile and your advertising.

Within your advertising platform on Facebook, you can go to the Ads Manager, where one of the options in the menu is your pixel. Get the pixel and upload it onto your website. The big difference between the Facebook pixel and many of the other pixels you may have is that you only have to install it once. Then you can use the same pixel for everything, including the conversations, for leads and other marketing tasks.

Keep it simple when gathering data. Most people don’t want to provide lots of information on a form. You should be happy with an email address. When you ask for more information, your conversion number will go down and the number of people who respond will decrease. If you target your efforts, it won’t matter because the person who is interested in what you are offering is willing to give you that information. At the same time, you can exclude the tire kickers.

Proportionality matters. If you are paying $2.49 per lead and the product you are selling is $20,000, great. However, if you’re selling a $10 widget, then $2.49 per lead is not so good.

The four components of a newsfeed ad.

The top text is text that’s above the picture or the image. There’s the image itself, with the body copy underneath the headline. The headline is the larger text underneath the image.

The image and words must capture attention. You want to test the images. Facebook allows you to choose up to six images when you’re running your ads, and then they’ll split test them. In other words, rotate them. That’s a great strategy, in theory. It doesn’t work very well for a small business working in a geographic area like Sarasota.

What works better is to test multiple images: Clone or copy the ad and then change images. Run the two ads with the same audience and you can discover which one works better. Use images that convey emotion, make people smile and express your value proposition.

Keep headlines short — three to five words. AdEspresso analyzed 37,259 ads and found that the ads with the highest click-through rates had short headlines.

When it comes to colors, stay away from blues and grays unless it’s your logo’s colors. Advertising on Facebook tends to blend in with everything else.

Use colors that contrast well; yellow is a good choice.

You want clicks. The function of the ad is not to sell anything. You want clicks on your ad. Wherever you’re sending them, that’s where you introduce your sales process. The function of the ad is to get them to click on it.

Ad placement is where your ad is going to be shown. Use only one placement at a time. It’s fine to test different options. What works the best for most small business clients is using the newsfeed ads.

Most people are familiar with Google AdWords. Facebook doesn’t work that way. Facebook analyzes many data points, not just a keyword that somebody has typed in as part of a search.

The biggest benefits come from using the Facebook pixel. The conversion focused ones, the lead-focused ones and those that result in traffic to your website.

Don’t limit the audience with fine tuned demographic targeting. Let Facebook’s pixel do the job, and you will end up spending a lot less money.

Focus on things that are going to bring you the biggest ROI.