This article offers a concise guide on optimizing Facebook ad budgets for successful campaigns. It emphasizes clear objectives, understanding the target audience, calculating Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), setting realistic Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) goals, and using Facebook’s tools for effective targeting. Testing, monitoring, and adapting budgets are crucial for achieving desired outcomes in a dynamic market. Let’s get started. 

Some Keywords to Understand: 

• To help you get a hang of the budgeting aspect, here’s a list of some important words (concepts) to look out for. 
• Budget: This is the overall amount you want to spend on ads. From $5, to $50,000, the choice is up to you. For small business and startups, it is recommended that you start with $5 a day to test waters and figure out the quality of results. Once you’re satisfied and confident that your strategy is yielding maximum returns, you can then gradually increase your ad spend to $500, $1,000 and above. If you’re a beginner to Facebook ads, it is recommended that you always start with the lowest ad spending to see how the ads perform. Once you get the hang of measuring results and achieving a goal, you can then scale up your advertising budget. Remember, there is no fixed formula or budget for ad spend. Each business is unique in terms of its offerings, budget, costs etc so it’s all up to you and how much you’re willing to invest in FB ads. 
• Bids & Bidding: With thousands of businesses competing for user attention, it’s almost impossible for FB to place every ad out there, so what they do is put your ad in an ad auction where those with the highest bids get their ads displayed across the network. The bid is the amount you’re willing to pay to get your ads to reach a specific action. So for example, it costs $10 to reach 10,000 people. You bid for $10, your competitor bids for $11 and some more bid for $7, $8 etc. Now, Facebook will not make you pay $10 to get 10,000 impressions. It’s the amount that you’re willing to pay, but the amount that will actually be quoted is $1 (the difference between your bid and the competitor’s bid). Although this sounds simple, the actual process is complex with thousands of businesses competing against each other. If you bid too low, you’ll get zero impressions. You can always bid higher because the actual amount that will be deducted will always be the lowest amount because according to Facebook, ‘you’re often charged less than your actual bid.’
• Impressions: When your ad is displayed across the network, it is displayed on people’s newsfeed. So one person view is 1 impression. Now if the person’s friend shares the same ad and is viewed by the person a second time, then that’s two impressions. Remember, impressions are not clicks. They are just views and one person may view your ad multiple times. 
• Reach: The number of people who will see your content. 
• Cost Per Click: The cost of acquiring one click. The average is $1.72 CPC.

So How Much Should I Spend?

Truth is, there is no absolute answer or formula to how much you need to spend. The reason is it’s largely dependent on your budget, audience size and your objectives. 

That being said, for anyone who’s new to Facebook ads, the standard expenditure is $500 for you to see some reasonable activity. With Facebook ads becoming expensive, do remember that you’ll have to spend significantly more to see high ROI. 

This is why it’s essential to use audience optimization strategies (which we’ll cover in the coming blog posts) to make maximum use of your ad spend. 

Entering Your Budget Numbers

When your ad campaign is ready, you are required to enter your budget for the ad to start running. 

There are two options to choose from: 

1. Daily Budget 

You can enter how much you want to spend X amount of days. For example, you want to spend $10 for the next 10 days, so Facebook will charge you $10 on a daily basis. However, on some days, the algorithm will determine that you have higher opportunities of getting views so it might overspend your budget by $2 or $3. You can choose to control this if you’re not comfortable with it. 

2. Lifetime Budget: 

This is a one-time budget that you enter and direct Facebook to spend it for a set amount of days. This will function just like your Daily Budget with the only difference that you won’t be charged every day. 

Scheduling Ads

Other important sections of the ad budget window are the Ad Spend Limits and the Schedule option. 

When you’re prompted to fill in the Ad Spend Limit, be sure to fill in the minimum and maximum amount you want FB to use on a daily or monthly basis. This is part of what is called a budget optimization and helps you remain in control of your spending. 

Finally, in the Schedule option (which is really very beneficial), you can choose the time of the day you want to display the ad to the audience. FB automatically shows you the time when your audience is the most active, so all you got to do is choose the right option and it will handle the rest. 

To make your ads more effective, you have to have a very clear idea of who you want to target. The better you segmentize your audience, the higher the chances of your ads being effective. 

You May Also Read:

Facebook Ads For Crowdfunding
Kickstarter vs. Indiegogo

What Does Ads Placement Mean?

When you create an ad on Facebook, you get to choose where you want the ad to be visible. 

When FB ads were still in its formative stages years ago, ads would only be displayed in the user’s newsfeed. Now, however, FB ads are spread across a wide network that consists of platforms like Instagram and Messenger. 

So when you create an ad, you are asked where you want to place your ads. Facebook has done the hard work for you here and has created an automatic ad placement option which means that it automatically displays your ads across all channels using the lowest cost. 

The automatic option helps you control costs and ensures that you are getting the maximum value out of your budget. For beginners, using the automatic option is best unless you have a very clear idea (and experience) of knowing which platform serves you best. 

Ads are placed in: 

• Feeds: This is the main placement area, your customer’s feed on Instagram and Facebook. Your ads will be placed on Facebook, Instagram, Facebook marketplace, Facebook suggested video and Facebook right column. 
• Stories: Your content will be placed on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger Stories. 
• Messenger: These are placed in messenger inbox and messenger sponsored messages. 
• Audience Network: This is an, off-Facebook, in-app advertising that uses apps and networks other than Facebook. Why do you need the audience network if it is not on the main platforms itself? Simply because you benefit from extended reach. 

Measuring Ad Performance

So now that you’ve created your campaign, got your audience, created your ad set, and have also successfully run the ads, what’s next? How do you make sure that your ad converts and what kind of reporting metrics should you be looking at? 

When you’re running your campaign, it’s mandatory to measure metrics every day the campaign is running. Facebook’s Ad Manager has all the metrics you need to identify the performance of your campaigns. Here, you can filter your campaigns by dates, objectives, etc. and “zoom in” any campaign to measure the performance of every single ad set or ad. 

You can see metrics for: 

• Cost-per-click: The total cost of each click. Say you’re running an ad for $10 and it’s clicked by 100, then your cost per click is $10 (total cost)/(100 total clicks) = $0.1/click. 
• Cost-per-conversion: The total cost for each conversion regardless of the clicks. 
• Impressions: The total number of times your ad has been viewed. 
• Unique Link Clicks: The total number of unique clicks on your ad. 

Facebook’s reporting feature is pretty extensive and provides you with figures for important metrics such as reach, relevant score, CTR, cost per result etc. You can customize the kind of reports you want to see on your dashboard and select only those elements that are important to you. Some of the most important metrics you want to cover could be: 

• Ad performance: Results, Impressions, Reach etc are all types of metrics relevant to ad performance. You’ll need these data sets to understand how your campaigns are performing. 
• Engagement: This is important to measure the engagement rate with your audience. How many likes, shares and comments are you receiving using the Engagement part. 
• Website conversions: If you’re leading your audience to your website or landing page, it’s important to measure website conversions, signups, cost per website conversion, etc. 

Finally, you can also choose to have daily or weekly reports delivered to your inbox for free. Once you’ve created a report based on your preferred metrics, you can save the report and have it emailed to you. 

So there you go folks! You now know how to budget your ads. For maximum results though, do try to study the information that Facebook provides for each term used on the ad page. You’ll see a small ℹ️at the end of every term. Make sure you read the information carefully and be informed of every item on the dashboard.

You May Also Like to Read:

A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Custom and Lookalike Audience Sets
A/B Testing – What is it and How Do You Use it? – Samit Patel

Remember, although Facebook ads may look pretty simple, they are in reality quite complicated and require smart strategies to be effective. 

We highly recommend using a Facebook ad specialist or a reputable ad agency if you’re seriously considering using Facebook ads to expand your business.

Also, Need help to boost your crowdfunding campaign? Hire our crowdfunding marketing agency today.

The post How Much Should I Spend on Facebook Ads – Our Guide to Facebook Ad Budgeting appeared first on samitpatel.

Let’s dive in! 

How to Create Your First Facebook Ad

Now that you have a Facebook page and have a fair idea of what kind of ad format to use (again, for beginners, I recommend the Promote Page or the Post Engagement ad), let’s start with the process itself.

Step 1: 

Go to the ad center. Click on Create Ad

Step 2: 

Choose your objective:  

This is where having a clear objective is important. You will be prompted to choose your objective of creating an ad. Depending on your page analytics, Facebook also gives recommendations. In the case of this page, Facebook has recommended more website visitors as the objectives, however, that is not our fundamental goal at the moment. If you’re new to FB, you might want to promote your page instead. 

Step 3: 

Select your audience: Remember the point about being specific with your target audience demographics in the planning phase. Well, this is where you will need them. Facebook displays ads only to the audience demographics you choose. For example, if your audience are male millennials in UK speaking English, you will enter that information to the audience segment. Your ads will be displayed to this specific audience. The narrower you can go with your locations (for example a specific location in UK), the better your results. 

Step 4: 

Set Up Budget and Ad Duration 

FB ads start at $5. You can place limits on your ad spending, for example, $10 every day for the next 10 days. You will not be charged more than $10 and once the 10 days are over, you can choose to increase your spending or cut it off. The amount of money you spend determines your reach – the more you spend, the more your reach. For beginners, I wouldn’t recommend spending more than $200 – $300 just to understand the platform and the results. During this time, you’ll need to monitor your campaign and see what works for you. 

Step 5. 

Pick Format: From the eleven formats above, choose the one you’re most comfortable with. Do make sure though that images and videos are of good quality. Poor quality media will ruin your ad efforts! Do remember to write a convincing copy/caption along with each ad. 

Step 6.

Submit: Submit your ad and watch as FB displays the ads to the right people. 

Step 7.

Monitor: Track your ad performance. FB automatically displays data for total post engagement, the number of people reached, the cost per post engagement, number of photo and links clicked, page likes and shares. You will also get information on how many percentages were men or women and where the ads were placed (mobile or desktop). 

Choosing Between Boosting a Post and Running an Ad

If you’re new to Facebook page ads, you’re probably confused by the Boost and Promote option. 

In a nutshell, the Promote option allows you to promote your page to a broad audience demographics. If you’ve just created a Facebook page and are planning on increasing your reach, you can use the Promote option. 

The Boost Post option is a feature that lets you advertise (or boost) a specific post on your page. The purpose of Boost post is to get your audience’s attention for that specific post instead of the whole page. 

So for example, if you already have a post that has higher engagement than the others, you could boost the post to make it go viral. The downside is that boost posts can become expensive and are beneficial only until you’re paying for it. The moment you stop paying, your traffic will go down. It’s not long-term.

A boosted ad will look just like a post, with the only difference that the audience can see a, Sponsored label in the top left-hand corner with a call-to-action in the bottom right-hand.

You May Also Like to Read:

How to Use Facebook Marketing to Boost Your Indiegogo Campaign – A Beginner’s Guide, Part 1
How to Use Facebook Marketing to Boost Your Crowdfunding Campaign – A Beginner’s Guide, Part 2

Collection, Carousel & Slideshow Ads

Apart from a single image and video ads, you can also use carousel and collection ads. These ads are available if you choose the ‘website traffic’ objective. For the promote page app, you can still use a collection of slideshows but you can’t add a web link to it.

Here’s how you should use each of them.

Collection Ads: These are catered for the mobile audience and work best if you have a cool video to go along. With collection ads, your video and images are placed in a grid with your video taking center stage and other items in your catalog displayed beneath the video. You can use this template when you want to show off your product catalog using rich videos and images. The purpose of collection ads is to make it easy for people to browse your products without leaving the platform. So if you’ve got a collection of fancy product images, use them in collection ads!

Carousel Ads: Previously known as canvas ads, carousel ads are available only on mobile. It may seem similar to collection ads, but it’s different in the sense that it lets you add links to each of the product you advertise, giving customers more options and increasing your click-through rate at the same time. Facebook also recommends using carousel ads to tell a story, showcase a process or display multiple features of a product – use it any way you want to!

Slideshow Ads: If you don’t have the budget to create a video, no problem! Slideshow ads collect your images and turns them into a video, so when you run the ad, the audience is actually watching a compiled video of your images! You have rich video editing tools and a collection of music to use when creating the ad. Slideshow ads use less data than an actual video and so you can easily use it to tell your story, show off your products or lead your customers through a process.

And this is the end of our third part guide! 

In our next part, we’ll get into details about setting your budget and how you can optimize it to achieve maximum results. 

Stay tuned!

Also, Need help to boost your crowdfunding campaign? Hire our crowdfunding marketing agency today.

The post How to Use Facebook Marketing to Boost Your Crowdfunding Campaign – A Beginner’s Guide, Part 3 appeared first on samitpatel.

Quick Post Overview Video ⤵️

It goes without saying that if you’re boosting an Indiegogo campaign for your business, you have to get started on Facebook and establish your reputation on the platform. But getting started on Facebook in 2019 is a daunting experience. It could also turn into a major disappointment if you don’t have a clear idea of your goals and of how to use the platform effectively to achieve those goals. 

Don’t worry though. Throughout my years of managing marketing for Indiegogo campaigns, I can understand your pain points and your frustration regarding Facebook. So whether you’re a complete newbie or someone who has given up on Facebook, this series is for you. At the end of the series, you will understand everything there is to Facebook for businesses or boosting your Indiegogo campaign. 

I do highly recommend that while you go through the series, follow the steps given and get hands-on experience. When it comes to digital marketing, it’s always necessary to practice as you go because reading or making notes is not enough. 

Ready? Let’s begin with Part 1 of the series! 

The Facebook of Today verses the Facebook of Yesterday

During its formative years, Facebook was merely a social platform that connected people. Gradually, it transformed into a platform that allowed people to interact with their favorite brands and businesses. Today, it’s more of a business driver than a mere social platform. 

When business owners think about Facebook marketing, they think of it as a social platform. They assume that they can simply upload cool pictures or videos, run a few page ads and they’ll find success with the channel. Unfortunately, that’s no longer how Facebook works. 

With millions of businesses competing against each other on the platform, it is now an expensive venture and one that requires well-planned strategies to see results. The platform’s refined algorithms, the focus on quality content, and the audience’s demand for authenticity from businesses have made it quite challenging for any new business to claim its spot. 

Does that mean you should not invest in Facebook marketing? Absolutely not. But if you really want it to work, you have to know three core things: your audience, your business goals & your objectives of using Facebook.

As you’ll see, these three core areas are tied to every aspect of Facebook marketing. And I don’t just mean theoretically… I mean it literally. Facebook categorizes its ads, its reach, its algorithm based on these three core things. 

So if you’re taking your first step into Facebook marketing to boost your Indiegogo campaign, you need to view it from a different pair of lens and everything you do must be tied to the three fundamental areas above. 

Creating a Strategy Unique to Your Business Nature and Goals

Businesses now understand the trick to being successful on social media, which is really nothing more than being customer-centric, creative, and smart. 

In the case of businesses that are dependent on crowdfunding and want to use Facebook to maximize their goals, you also have to ensure that factors as trust, reliability, transparency are depicted in your strategy. These can easily be achieved through efforts as a quick and timely response to queries, engagement with the audience on comments and reactions, and authentic content (facts, statistics, reports, etc).

You May Also Like to Read:

How to Use Facebook Marketing to Boost Your Crowdfunding Campaign – A Beginner’s Guide, Part 2
How to Use Facebook Marketing to Boost Your Crowdfunding Campaign – A Beginner’s Guide, Part 3

Note: The guide in these series can be used by everyone and isn’t necessarily limited to Indiegogo campaigns, however, you might need to tweak goals and objectives based on your respective business nature. 

How to Create a Facebook Marketing Strategy?

Your Facebook marketing strategy for Indiegogo doesn’t have to be something very complicated. It can just be a few slides on a PPT or a simple document that outlines your goals, your approach, your campaign, your content, and a list of activities that you will carry out to achieve those goals.

Before you define your content and task list though, you need to ensure your strategy covers the following important segments: 

✔️Audience demographics: You’ll need this part when you run ad campaigns, so make sure you have your demographics carefully noted. Your audience demographics should be created based on actual audience research and not guesswork. You can use tools like surveys, forms, interviews, and customer journey maps to identify your core audience. Without understanding your audience, their motivations, and their social media behaviors, you cannot create an effective strategy. 

✔️Narrowed-down goals: The broader goal of every business investing in Facebook marketing is revenue, but this broad goal alone is not enough. You have to dig deeper and create narrowed-down, achievable goals. For example, getting your first 50 signups in a month or your first 50$ in donations are goals that you can set. It is based on these goals that you will create your ad budget and develop a targeted approach. 

✔️A well-planned editorial calendar: Without a social media calendar, you’ll be lost. As a rule of thumb, anyone starting with social media MUST have a social media editorial calendar that consists of content they want to post and when they want to post it. If you’re willing to go the extra mile, you can also add metrics, observations, conversions, etc to the sheet, making it a Master document of your social media strategy. 

✔️Campaigns: Facebook ads for crowdfunding are based on campaigns and each campaign has its own goals, deliverables, timeline, and expected results. For example, your first campaign could be an awareness campaign designed to introduce your business to your audience. You can create hashtags, content assets, ad sets, timelines, and measurable metrics all based on your campaign. The number of campaigns you create depends on your ad budget and business goals, however, startups and businesses generally create three to four campaigns in a time span of 6-months to a year leading to the final launch of their business. 

✔️Ad budget: FB’s algorithms make it hard for a brand to gain traction organically. If you want traction, you need to use FB ads which can cost you from anywhere between $200 to $500 a month, depending on your business goals, your audience reach and the results you’re expecting. If you’re completely new to FB ads, it is highly recommended that you go for the lowest budget option and measure your conversion rate (the cost of each conversion, calculated as $$ ad spent/number of conversions) before you spend more. 

✔️Content: Create a good mix of visual, textual, and video posts to keep your audience engaged. A good FB strategy should include content for five days a week, one posts a day. 

✔️Brand persona: Build a brand persona relevant to your business. The tone of your messages, the content, the brand colors, the content choice should all reflect your brand image. Think of yourself as a brand, having your own unique identity. Each social media post should reflect that identity. Remember, consistency in design is paramount to a pleasant user experience. 

You’ll be dealing with an extensive flow of data, so I recommend you use multiple tools to stay organized. Your strategy document, editorial calendar, metrics, and reports, etc should all be in one central folder (or preferably Google sheet). Use tools like EverNote and Monday.com to save interesting content or ideas and to keep track of your task list. 

Remember, Facebook marketing is expensive, complicated, and requires effort; but it is not impossible to see impressive results if you understand your audience and are willing to stand out from the crowd with high-quality content and a great strategy to back it!

Need help to boost Indiegogo campaign? Hire our crowdfunding marketing agency today.

The post How to Use Facebook Marketing to Boost Your Indiegogo Campaign – A Beginner’s Guide, Part 1 appeared first on samitpatel.