10 Surprising Ways to Use Facebook Ads

Facebook still touts some of the highest conversion rates of social media – it’s clear that although there are often the articles that wonder “The Death of Facebook?”, Facebook is still going strong right now. So if you aren’t doing all you can to take advantage of Facebook Ads, you’re missing out on potential great conversion or great engagement. Here are some lesser known ideas to play around with.

1. Microtargeting

There are so many fun ways to explore targeting that only the seasoned pros are playing with, and that’s just a shame. In this case, microtargeting refers to the ability to target your ads to a very small, highly customized niche group that your ad is highly relevant to. Particularly for retail, you’re getting the opportunity to reach people at very specific points of their life that your product can reach on a psychographic level. Some great examples :

• people just back from a trip
• people in a new relationship
• people who just got out of a relationship
• recent grads
• those new to a city

To do this, check out your “audience” section when setting up your ads. 2. Use your email list If you have an email list from a previous or current campaign, use the advanced settings on your ads to specifically target those who have already opted into your business for an increased chance for conversion and for engagement on your post, since these are the guys that are already into it. To do this, go to your ads manager, select “Audience”, and then select “Custom Audience”. You’ll get the opportunity to upload straight from MailChimp or from a data file. Usually CSV files work best here, so create a CSV file from Excel. 3. Facebook Offers redeemed in-store Local is getting more attention than ever now that it is pretty much guaranteed that 2015 is the year that mobile Facebook use tops desktop use. Knowing this, its local’s job to seize the moment. Using mobile feed ads to make offers that are only available redeemed in store are a great opportunity to reach local potential customers. Local Awareness Ads, launched in 2014, allows for a call to action button of “Get Directions”, which accesses the most recent location information they share on Facebook. You can even microtarget to those only within a mile (or even less) than your business. Goes to show, even if you aren’t in the ecommerce biz, it doesn’t mean that Facebook Ads aren’t for you. Offers even allow you to send them a reminder to take advantage of the offer, and features a button that gets them to tell their friends. 4. Check out Olapic Olapic actually pulls publicly available images from Instagram, Twitter, and a number of other social media to try to aim for the type of photo that will do the best with audiences by tracking the interaction on that social site. Cut the need to do your own A/B testing on best photos, these guys will do it for you. Check out Olapic’s stats page for some amazement. 41,667 Instagram photos, on average, are uploaded to Instagram every day. 5. Target Fans to Get More Engagement Particularly with the Facebook News Feed, you get the opportunity to look real spammy very fast. Because of it, I recommend people target their own fans with page post ads that are featured on the newsfeed. Also, this makes more of an effort to get some engagement going on your page. What people don’t tell you about those broad audience sweepstakes and giveaway post is that you get a lot of one time likes, which will initially boost your impressions and reach, but soon engagement will nosedive, because these people are only in it for that freebie. That low engagement will send your reach practically underground, which itself won’t help engagement. This is where uploading your own email list is going to come in handy. These guys are already into it. If your aim is to create brand awareness, then reaching out to people who have liked similar hobbies or topics is indeed a great way to go about it. But even here, a more targeted approach is going to work in your favor. 6 . Know if you Should Go Mobile or Desktop Or both. Mobile is going to give you a different group of people, and they are going to be seeing your ad in a different context. If you’re not local, you may not need to consider desktop. Mobile does have a higher rate of time spent on Facebook, but it is generally still accepted that desktop is better for brand awareness. However, if the aim is clicks then mobile is for you. BBC World New published a report that found around twice the success in mobile ads compared to desktop. However, if that isn’t complementary to your goal, it isn’t going to be worth it. Mobile also has its own specifications that it allows, from letting you pick the exact mobile device, wi-fi versus mobile, or even the specific OS versions. Facebook Ads has dramatically improved over the past years to now become an incredibly user-friendly, simple interface that even allows you to sort potential actions by goals of engagement conversion, clicks, and more. Do your own A/B testing and find some great uses for your own individual business strategy; there are undoubtedly plenty.