I recently had a long chat with a client about Facebook and her small business.
I was suggesting a small-scale ad campaign as a way to garner new followers for her page. She had attempted to run a Facebook campaign a few months before with practically no success and was hesitant to invest even a small amount of money in something she thought was pointless.
I told her there was one thing — one small but crucial thing — I would change to make her ads more effective.
Can you guess what it is?
One Thing You Must Remember When Using Facebook for Your Small Business
Before we get into that small change that will make a world of different for your Facebook ads, there’s one thing it’s important to keep in mind:
Facebook is ALSO a business. And its goal is to make money.
Every time I have someone ask me why their content isn’t reaching a bigger audience… why they only get a few likes per post… why their followers don’t see their giveaways and promos… there’s one answer.
Facebook isn’t there to do your business any favors. If you want your content to be seen, you generally have to pay for it.
Are there ways to increase your organic (i.e., unpaid) reach? Absolutely! Everything can be optimized. But to reach your whole audience, you need to promote your posts, and that means paying at least a small amount.
Should You Invest in Facebook Ads for Your Small Business?
Is it worth is? It definitely can be!
Like any social media platform, Facebook can be a great way to reach your audience if that’s where they hang out. If your customers are women in the US and UK ages 18-30, Facebook is not their social media platform of choice, so investing money in ads there isn’t going to get you must return for your money. But if you’re trying to reach, say, men and women between 35 and 55 with children at home, then putting a little money in Facebook ads is probably a good idea.
Which brings us back to…
The Small Change That Will Make a Big Impact on Your Facebook Ads
That conversation I had with my client? When I told her I could do one thing that would make her Facebook ads more than 100% more effective?
Here it is:
You need to split-test your images.
Images are HUGE on social media. Think about scrolling through a Facebook feed. What catches your eye first? It’s not tons of words. It’s the pictures. But how do you know which is the right image to pick?
You have to test them.
When I created my client’s Facebook ad (which was about pearl jewelry) I used these four different images that my client provided:
Which one do you think was the most successful?
I predicted image B or C because photos with people, as a general rule, are more popular online.
And guess what? I was wrong!
The most popular ad was the one which used image D — the simple string of multi-colored pearls. That ad was more than 12 times as effective as the next most popular image, which was image A (the box). The two images with the people were the least successful!
If I had just gone with my initial choice of images, I would have lost out on a huge amount of traffic.
By testing different images, I was able to find out which image my client’s audience responded to the most.
How to Test and Use Different Images
(Even If You’re Not a Facebook Marketer)
We all know there are tons of social media marketing blogs out there that have thousands of pages worth of information on them. If you have a lot of extra hours and want to invest in learning to be the best Facebook marketer you can be, that is awesome.
But I am guessing you don’t have time to do that — you have a business to run, after all, and you need to know how to make your Facebook ads more effective and drive more traffic to your products and services today. So here it is, in just a few easy steps.
Step 1. Create your base ad, writing out simple text and choosing your audience based on your ideal customer.
Step 2. Upload 3-5 different images that you want to test.
Step 3. Run all your test ads for 24-48 hours. This gives you your initial data.
Step 4. Use the response to those test ads to determine which image (or images) your audience responds to best. Facebook helpfully gives you all this information once your ad campaign ends! It will look something like this:
You see the columns with “Reach” and “Cost” for each row? That tells you which images had the best reach and which one delivered the lowest cost per click. Those are the ones you want to go with.
Step 5. Create a longer campaign using the most popular image (or images) from your test campaign.
Step 6. Repeat as necessary!
The Bottom Line
Testing different images for your Facebook ads takes a little time. But if you’re looking for one quick change that will make your ads hundreds of time more successful, it is definitely worthwhile.
You don’t have to be a professional marketer or a social media expert — you just need to make the time and check your analytics!
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Need a little more help with social media?
Check out Six Things You Can Do To Connect on Social Media Today + Is Your Small Business Making These Social Media Mistakes?
P.S. – You can also book a Real Advice session to get help tailored to your business! It’s a fast and easy way to make sense of all the social media (and other!) questions that are keeping your business from growing the way it deserves. Schedule your call today!
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