Facebook Ads can be an excellent tool to build awareness of your brand, but it’s overwhelming when you’re trying to get started. Here’s our top tips for getting the most out of this powerful platform!

1. Understand Your Target Audience
We know you’ve heard this countless times before, but it’s particularly important before you start your ads. Your target audience should be the focus of everything you do. Without a clearly defined audience, you’ll never appeal to the most lucrative demographic, reach your engagement targets, generate the right kind of brand awareness, or make a decent return on investment. Essentially, without a clear target audience you’ll be throwing money down the drain!

Spend some time figuring out exactly who it is you’re trying to reach. Which people do you want to make aware of your brand? It can be helpful to take all the data you know about your ideal audience and transform it into a person: your target persona. 

How old are they? Are they male or female? What do they do for a living? How do they spend their time outside of work or school? How does your brand fit into their daily lives and aspirations? Answer these questions to build a picture of the person you’re ultimately targeting.

2. Create the Right Types of Content for your Facebook Ads
Developing a target persona helps you to select the most effective forms of content to improve brand awareness. So think about how your audience consumes content: Which formats work best for their preferences? Do they like to watch videos while commuting on the train, catch a good meme at lunchtime, or flick through photos in the evening? 

In practice, it’s probably a combination of different formats, but look for trends that show the most popular formats of both your current and prospective audience, then steer your own content in those directions to match their preferences.

3. Facebook Has Big Data – Use It!
Did you know that there are over 2.4 billion Facebook users? That’s more than a quarter of the entire population of the world! 

Facebook’s colossal user base carries with it a huge amount of information. This data can be used – with Facebook’s own Ads toolkit – to create custom and lookalike audiences, generate analytic data, and optimise brand awareness campaigns. It’s all there for the taking – don’t make the mistake of missing out, so if Facebook offers the tools, use them!

4. Don’t Worry About Conversions
Take a deep breath, and stay with us on this one.
Although you should never turn down the opportunity to make a conversion, think about the essence of a brand awareness campaign. Fundamentally, it’s not about conversions; rather, your aim is to raise the profile of your brand to the right audience, encourage engagement, and keep your name in their consciousness. That’s it. 

Don’t risk missing your brand awareness objectives by chasing another goal. Worry about conversions another time! Having two goals on a Facebook ad is going to dilute your message. If it’s brand awareness your content and copy should drive that, if it’s conversions then it’s going to be different. Make sure that you’re clear on the goal of your ad before putting too much money behind it.

5. Target at the Right Time

Facebook Ads are most effective when they’re reaching the right audience, in the right format, at the right time. So, how do you optimise the time element?
The Facebook Ads toolkit has a plethora of useful analytic data points. From the Insights menu, select the Posts tab to find out when the largest portion of your audience is online. Then, schedule your ads accordingly. It’s inefficient to spread coverage over the whole day if you target audience is pretty inactive until dinnertime!

Again, your target persona should help you here for a good starting place, but timings are also better when you do your own A/B testing with your ads. 

6. Use Canvas Ads for Extra Engagement
If you’ve spent any time on Facebook recently, you’ve probably encountered a canvas ad. This format takes photos and videos and presents them in one post that you can scroll through. It’s immersive, fun, and built for clever creativity from brilliant brands. 

This style of ad is perfect for building brand awareness, because its unique format encourages users to pique their curiosity. High-quality visuals are a must here!

7. Use Lookalike Audiences
Imagine there’s a huge untapped audience out there; they’re already aware of adjacent brands, hold an interest in the same things as your existing audience, and they hit the right demographic notes. A marketer’s dream, surely?

Well, it’s reality! This is a lookalike audience, which can be found in the Facebook Ads platform. Simply choose a source and allow Facebook’s algorithms to do the rest. Target these audiences with relevant, interesting content that will encourage greater awareness of your brand. It’s perfect for those in competitive industries to get up to the same standard quickly! 

8. Keep Text to a Minimum
Facebook Ads are focused on the visual currently. That’s not to say that great writing isn’t important, particularly for scripted videos, but you must avoid cluttering photos and videos with excessive text.

For one thing, Facebook won’t allow it. Their text in ad policy is pretty robust, and a wordy ad simply won’t get through review. Furthermore, it makes an ad unattractive to your audience, eliminating your opportunity to make a positive impact.  

9. Go Local!
Facebook has been a pioneer in facilitating global connection. While your business aspirations might (rightly!) take you all around the world, it’s a good idea to use Facebook for local engagement, too.

Facebook Ads gives you the tools to target an audience closer to home and places you in the perfect spot to pick up local interest. Tailor some of your online content to your neighbours to help them discover your brand and tap into your local network first. 

10. Something for Nothing
As well as analytic data, insights, and algorithms, Facebook offers another excellent tool within its Ads infrastructure: education. Free online courses are available to marketers and brands to help them get the most out of the platform according to a comprehensive selection of business objectives. Check out the ‘Build Awareness’ section by clicking here and you’ll be able to get the low-down from Facebook themselves how to best utilise their platform! 

Just remember, the most important tip for Facebook ads is to remember who you’re creating them for! Know this and the hard part is done.