Facebook Advertising Strategy: Make Your Dollars Work Efficiently

Have you tried Facebook advertising and failed? I sure have.

Understanding the basics is your first step to making it succeed for you.

These steps will help you solve the problem of making Facebook advertising work more effectively for you.

The problem with Facebook advertising seems not to be having an ad that’s clicked but rather having an ad that people take action on. You’ll read a lot of how to posts that say with proper targeting and a great offer, Facebook advertising is a gold mine for business.

If only it were that simple.

Facebook advertising often involves a lot more work than just a great offer and proper targeting. There’s some work to be done before you even get to the 3 steps of Facebook advertising strategy. After that, the 3 steps will help you effectively spend your advertising dollars.

Your first step to effectively take advantage of Facebook is one there is no way around. You must establish your Facebook page which means setting it up properly and posting regularly.

Establish Your Facebook Page

Before you spend any money on Facebook, your business Facebook page should be well established. That means you’ve set up the basic information and had some time to make revisions.

That means you have great images that add to your overall page representing your brand. People should have an easy time understanding what your business does.

Creating a Facebook page doesn’t mean it’s established, though. Your posts are also an important part to ensuring your profile appears trustworthy and established to visitors. A posting schedule will help you keep your page updated and relevant.

Your Facebook advertising strategy relies on having a well established Facebook page. The strategy depends on a well set up foundation. Once you’ve posted regularly for a while, have a few likes, and people like what you’re posting it’s time to move forward into growing your followers.

1. Grow Brand Awareness

The first step in reaching people who are interesting in what your company does is to grow your brand awareness. That means you’re in the seeking phase for people who are interesting in what you do.

Facebook has reorganized their advertising dashboard which makes each step in this process easier. You have to be aware of how they’ve organized it, though.

The first step you’ll have to take is to grow brand awareness. Don’t make the mistake of thinking the grid Facebook provides is just all the options you have. It’s a process that should be done one step at a time.

The goal here is to do the best you can targeting an audience who will be interested in your company. While the goal is to find an audience that likes what you do, you’ll only know it’s happening when you see they’re liking your page.

Yup, you just want people to like your Facebook page.

That’s it.

Most of those people who like your Facebook page will probably never see your posts (we take care of that in step 2). They aren’t going to immediately benefit you and may never find any benefit in you until you do the next step.

Even though you don’t get anything from this step, though, it’s the most important. You can’t jump ahead to any of the next steps without doing a great job at this. That means you need to work hard to find the right audience and get as many page likes as you can.

Importance Lies Here

Facebook will help you along by showing your ad to the best people but it can only do so much. Most problems that people have with Facebook advertising is because they skip this step. You will just be throwing money in the trash without this step so don’t skip it.

Spend a good amount of time and money on growing your brand’s awareness. Most of your advertising budget should be spent on this step alone. The other steps are important but this is where you’re building your advertising foundation.

Even with a great foundation built, you can’t just start selling something to your audience. It’s time to build trust and offer something awesome for those who like your Facebook page.

2. Take Time, Build Trust

This step will help you build the trust you need to someday get the conversion you need. You’ll have a good audience to build trust with especially if they already like your Facebook page.

This part of your Facebook advertising strategy connects you with your audience. Building trust is hard work because you must have something compelling for people to care about.

Nobody is going to visit your product page and buy something. They don’t know about your business and don’t trust you yet. Even something free is a hard sell, it has to be something really good.

You can do this step with a mix of organic Facebook posts and advertising. Facebook gives you some guidance on what you can do in this step. They call it the consideration step but it’s really about building trust with your audience.

You have to share interesting information that people like. That or you have to give them something free like an eBook or white paper especially if you use the traffic option.

If you’re sending people to your website then you need a great landing page set up that doesn’t ask for much and offers a lot. Asking a Facebook user to click way from their normal Facebook page AND give you their email address is a lot to ask.

A Facebook State of Mind

Keep in mind Facebook users aren’t thinking about buying, they’re browsing family posts, reading news, and watching funny videos. The last thing they want to do is be sold on something or have their time wasted on something uninteresting.

Keep up your posting and take some time to build trust with people who have liked your page. You can’t force this step with one ad. It takes time and sometimes multiple views before someone will take action.

The next step is to either go for the conversion which means your audience buys something or signs up for your email list. You want the relationship you’ve paid money to grow end in something valuable to you.

3. Make It Convert

Now it’s the time to show your audience your good stuff. Whether it’s a free offer you’d like them to take or you’re giving them an amazing discount, don’t hold back.

The last step of the process will either convert your audience into one of your customers or it will allow them to show just how much of a fan they’ve become of your business.

A business with small ticket items that cost little money might make a direct sales conversion. Think eCommerce store selling products that cost about $50. That’s not as hard of a sale as a business whose product can cost clients upwards of $2000, that’s a hard sell right away.

If you are trying to get interested clients to convert for a high cost item, your first conversion will probably be into your email list. It’s expensive to keep reaching them on Facebook but if you can get them to convert to your email list, that’s almost free advertising for you.

Whether you’re a local business hoping to have someone come into the store or buy something on your online store, this is the step to do it. You’ve built trust with your audience on Facebook and it’s time to make it all pay off.

Constant Flow

It sounds easier than it is but eventually you’ll have people come around. Eventually you might even have people in each step of this process at any given time. Don’t try to do each step then move on and forget about prior steps.

You’ll start with step 1 first and build a good audience. After you’ve built your audience you can move to step 2 while also keeping step 1 going. Each step builds on the next but don’t stop each one as you move to the next.

You’ll have multiple ads going at once.

With each step you’ll have a better chance of success for converting your Facebook audience into a customer. The end goal of this will of course be to grow your business.

Grow Your Business

You can grow your business by using Facebook only but you may not want to always pay to reach your audience. Facebook doesn’t make it cheap to reach them organically. That means even if someone has liked your page, you have to pay for your post to reach that same person.

An easier way reach your Facebook audience without always paying for it is to convert them to your email list. You don’t need a website and you can do it for free.

At the last step of the Facebook advertising strategy is conversion. Rather than trying to convert them directly into a sale which is less likely to succeed, convert them into an email list subscriber.

With a compelling offer you can convert your Facebook audience into an email subscriber then reach them when you want for free.

Download the free eBook that will help you grow your email list without even having a website. You can use Facebook advertising to grow so you don’t always have to pay Facebook to reach your audience.