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Gone are the days when social media was solely about organic posting and reach. Today, businesses are using the power of Facebook and Instagram advertising to boost their brands. With the potential to reach billions of users across the world, these platforms have become indispensable tools for marketers looking to expand their online presence and drive results.
In this article, we will take a journey through the dynamic world of advertising on Facebook and Instagram. We will cover the strategies, tactics and trends that can help you maximise your campaigns on these platforms.
To be able to run successful campaigns on Facebook and Instagram it’s crucial to understand how each platform works, the general demographics of the user base and what type of content works well on each placement. Knowing this will help you determine if you want to advertise on both platforms or just one. Where you advertise may be dependent on your goals as well. For example, let’s imagine a new FMCG brand is launching a new line of organic snacks aimed at health-conscious consumers. By understanding both the platforms and the users, we can build out a strategy for advertising.
On Facebook, the brand could target a slightly older demographic of those aged between 25 and 54 interested in healthy eating and wellness. They can use Facebook's targeting options to reach users based on interests such as fitness, nutrition and healthy living. Whereas on Instagram, the brand could focus on reaching a younger audience as the platform typically has a slightly younger demographic and targets millennials and Gen Z.
On both platforms, you would need to create a variety of engaging creative content to promote the brand and product. To do this you must ensure you produce content that can fit all the platform placements. You can create single-image posts, videos or Reels, stories and carousels - from here you can test which placements work best for your brand.
Whether you’re producing organic content or content for your paid media strategies, you always want to be sure you’re staying true to your brand and keeping up with the trends. By doing this you’ll be producing creative content that is easily recognisable as your brand but also staying competitive in the marketplace and on social media. Visually appealing content grabs user's attention whilst persuasive copy prompts them to take action. Using these fundamentals you can begin to produce captivating content to push your brand on these highly visual platforms.
The main elements you need to include in your Facebook and Instagram advertising content are:
Captivating imagery or videos
Clear call-to-action
Concise messaging
Brand consistency
When creating content you need to have your audience in mind. A massive trend in recent years has been the use of organic and authentic advertising content. Audiences want to really understand your brand and know more about your products and how it can fit into their everyday lives. It’s key for your brand to be relatable to your audience in your advertising on Facebook and Instagram. Here at Together, we have a dedicated creative team, who can help you produce content for your campaigns using research and insights to back strong creative ideas. If you have a project you’d like help with, talk to us today.
When it comes to reaching the right audience, Facebook and Instagram ads have options to build out your audience. The three main audience types are:
Saved Audiences - these are audiences that you can define by selecting people’s interests, location, age, gender and more.
Custom Audiences - this is how you can retarget past website visitors or people who have engaged with your content.
Lookalike Audiences - this option allows you to reach people who are similar to your existing customer database which usually means they’re highly likely to convert.
Each of the different audience types has different uses and benefits to help meet your specific goals. Let’s break this down even further.
Your Facebook or Instagram advertising targeting strategy must be based on your goals. Using Meta Ads Manager, the platform in which you will be running any advertising campaigns for Facebook or Instagram, you can pick from a list of goals, from leads and conversions, down to engagement and brand awareness. If you were looking to boost leads or conversions, a strong strategy for your targeting would be to retarget your website's past visitors or those who have engaged with your content before, as this shows they’re already invested in your brand and would be more likely to convert than someone who’s never heard of your brand.
However, if your goal is to build up more brand awareness then saved and lookalike audiences will be more useful to capture new people who haven’t been exposed to your brand yet. The key to targeting strategies is to understand your goal and who it is you want to reach in your Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns.
When it comes to Facebook and Instagram advertising, just because you’ve selected the audience you’re aiming for and put some budget behind the creative, doesn’t necessarily mean you will get the reach you are looking for. Meta uses an ad auction to determine the best ad to show a person at any given time. One person may fall into a number of different buckets, we explained earlier how you can tell Meta who to show your ads to, however, another business may select a very similar or the same target audience and Meta will have the opportunity to show this person both ads. However, an auction will be held at this stage to ensure the chosen ad maximises value for the business and the person.
The winner is determined on a combination of three factors, the ad with the highest total value will win the auction and be shown. The three factors are:
Bid: This is what the advertiser sets as the max they are willing to pay to achieve the desired outcome.
Estimated action rates: An estimate of whether a particular person engages or converts with the particular ad
Ad quality: A measure of the quality of an ad as determined from many sources including feedback from people viewing or hiding the ad and assessment of low-quality attributes such as withholding information, language and engagement bait.
To make the most out of your ad spend on Facebook and Instagram you need to take a strategic approach, earlier we spoke about setting goals and a target audience. This step is crucial to make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck. Not only will it help craft targeting and creative it will also allow you to track spend and attribute it to specific outcomes. Ensure your goal is clear and that you have a broad enough audience, if you go too niche you could find it difficult to pinpoint your potential customers, however, it’s also key to ensure you’re not setting your net too wide. You don’t want to reach people you already know won't be interested in your brand or products. Setting up your Facebook and Instagram ads is a fine balancing act.
Much like organic content you need to constantly be checking in on your ads. It’s important to closely monitor performance metrics so you can identify areas for optimisation. Key metrics you should look at are click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, cost per acquisition (CPA) and return on ad spend (ROAS). By regularly checking in you’ll be able to see which ad creative and copy is resonating most with your audience. A good way to do this is by A/B testing and experimentation. This will allow you to see what works pretty quickly and you can continue to edit and optimise your ads, improving them from your learnings each time.
A great way to maximise your budget is by retargeting a previously engaged audience. This could be a gold mine for your business. They’ve already had exposure to your brand so reaching them could bring your brand back to 'front-of-mind' at the right time, and help lead to a conversion.
Overall, the key to making the most out of your ad spend is to keep testing, and really get to know your audience and how the advertising platforms work.
The social landscape is forever changing and trends come and go. When it comes to advertising on platforms like Facebook and Instagram it’s important to be on top of what's happening in the space. For example, a big part of the landscape (which has remained at the top for a few years) is video content. Using video content in your ad campaigns could be vital in reaching your goals. Video is a great piece of content and holds great value in the advertising space, as it’s very easy to see if your video resonated with the audience by seeing how much of the video viewers tend to watch. In general, the majority of viewers prefer to watch videos to learn about products and businesses over images and copy. It’s important to test all different types of media in your ad campaigns as you need to find what works for your business.
Another emerging trend is the growing demand for personalised advertising. With advancements in data analytics and AI-driven capabilities growing daily, you can now begin to deliver highly tailored ads to individual users based on their interests, demographics and behaviours. This level of personalisation can enhance the user experience and help drive the likelihood of meaningful interactions and conversions.
Staying ahead of the game in the world of social media will be key to helping you to create the most effective advertising campaigns on Instagram and Facebook. We recently wrote a blog about the future trends you’re likely to see in 2024 on social, so if you want to stay in the know or are looking for inspiration, head over to the blog to read it now.
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It’s clear that mastering Facebook and Instagram advertising is essential for businesses looking to expand their online reach. Throughout this article, we’ve explored strategies to maximise campaign effectiveness. Understanding how the platforms work is key, and making sure your ads look great and communicate the right messages is the difference between winning or losing audience interest.
We’ve also covered how to pick the right audience for your ads and how the bidding process works to get our ads in front of the right people. Keeping up to date with the latest trends and testing your ad content is vital for success on these social platforms - it’s also important to keep learning about the platforms to ensure your ads are as effective as possible.
If you need help with advertising strategy or content creation on Instagram, Facebook (or any other social platforms), please get in touch with the team today.
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