As it heads rapidly toward the 2 billion user mark, Facebook has become the undisputed world leader in social media and, consequently, a crucial resource for digital marketers wanting to grow their customer base. Nonetheless, the sheer vastness of the social network also means that there’s a lot of competition. Without a proper marketing strategy in place, your page will never make it into the limelight and your paid ads won’t be reaching the right people, so it’s essential that you are familiar with the core elements of a successful Facebook paid advertising campaign right from the outset.

#1. Audience: Reaching the Right People 

Of course, this rule applies to all forms of advertising. After all, there’s no point in wasting time and money on marketing to the wrong people. Clearly defining your target audience is the very first thing you should be doing, after which you should segment your audience by demographical and other attributes. By narrowing down your target audience and, if your brand targets a diverse range of people, segmenting it appropriately, you’ll be in a better position to offer relevant and personalized content to people. When creating a paid advertising campaign, Facebook allows you to segment your targeting by things like demographical attributes and hobbies. The goal is to get your audience numbers down so that it consists only of relevant people instead of random users.

#2. Content: Telling the Right Story 

You now have to appeal to your target audience by presenting an irresistible offer in the form of an ad they feel they have to click. Like most other online paid advertising platforms, you’ll have a very limited amount of space to work with, particularly with regard to text content. In no more than five words, you’ll need to create an eye-catching and relevant title and, even more importantly, provide a great image. Since there are few rules that apply across the board when it comes to creating a successful paid advertising campaign, you’ll need to be prepared to test multiple ad formats until you find something that works for your particular brand. However, any ad should be designed to evoke an emotional response by having a strong call to action. Impeccable spelling and grammar and relevant content are also crucial.

#3. Schedule: Getting Your Timing Right 

As is the case with unpaid, organic marketing on Facebook or any other social platform, getting your timing right is essential for making sure your ads get as much visibility as possible. Again, there are few rules that apply to all businesses here, since every business and target audience has different needs. The biggest difference is typically between weekends and weekdays; however, time of day also has an impact. Ultimately, you’ll need to figure out when your target audience is most likely to be online and active on social media. For some audiences, the best time might be the lunch break, while, for others, early evenings are optimal. Again, you’ll need to experiment to find what best works for you, but when it comes to pay-per-click advertising, it might be better to avoid this feature to begin with.

#4. Budget: Managing Paid Campaigns 

The beauty of pay-per-click advertising is that businesses can maintain control over their budgets. They only pay for results, although a click doesn’t, of course, guarantee any revenue, particularly if the ad isn’t relevant to the product or service it’s referring to. The budget you set will be largely dictated by your goals, whether that might be to get 1,000 app installs, 10,000 new followers or something else entirely. It typically costs around 50 cents to one dollar to obtain a single follower, email subscriber or app install, but you should bid as much as your business can reasonably afford to ensure your ads get the maximum reach. The Facebook advertising platform features minimum daily budgets for each type of campaign. For ads charged by number of clicks, for example, the minimum budget is $5 per day.

#5. Analytics: Measuring for Success 

Just like any other advertising strategy, you’ll need to measure your return on investment. Facebook provides a sophisticated platform in its Ads Manager tool that allows you to customize everything from date range to columns to graphs and tables. The tool collects a great deal of useful information, including both performance and engagement metrics that you can use to measure the success of your campaigns and adapt them as necessary. Among the most important metrics to track include impressions (the number of times your ads have been seen), the click-through rate, the conversion rate, the cost per click and the cost per conversion. While your conversion rate might seem like the most important metric to track, it’s important to remember that disappointingly low statistics further down the customer journey can point to a serious problem with your ad content, placement or targeting.

Facebook’s advertising platform isn’t at all difficult to get started with, but it’s still ultimately up to your digital marketing team to narrow down the right target audience and create ad copy that really sells. Nonetheless, Facebook’s user-friendly, goal-driven ad campaign creator doesn’t present a steep learning curve, and it does offer a great deal of potential to any growing business.