Brand awareness. It’s important, but is it as important as conversions? After all, aren’t impressions a vanity metric?
It’s true. Impressions are a vanity metric, however, if you don’t put as much effort into the brand awareness and attraction stage of your flywheel, you’re going to have a problem.
For example: if you start focusing exclusively on conversions as opposed to giving each stage of the flywheel a little attention, you may decide something like Facebook for brand awareness is no longer necessary.
But then after a little while, your Facebook campaigns begin to suffer. Their performance seems to drop off and though many may make a case for Facebook ads not being effective or the fact that your landing page and/or CTA sucks, these are usually only contributing factors. Facebook ads DO work, but you have to know how to use them.
On top of that, despite every effort you make to increase your conversions without worrying about brand awareness ads, your ROI is going to tank and your conversions will slowly trickle out.
Why?
Because people won’t know you or your company exists!
Brand awareness campaigns, when executed correctly, can fill your funnel and keep your flywheel spinning.
Today, we’re going to dive into all the ways you can give your Facebook brand awareness campaign a boost without breaking the bank. (Or your heart). Ready? Let’s go.
They’re Not Around to Shop
They’re there to scroll and check out the latest news and see what their friends are up to. Facebook users aren’t there to shop around for your products, and this is a fundamental difference between ads you’d create on Google VS the ads you create for social media. And specifically Facebook.
Users discover things on Facebook by happening upon it in the News Feed. They’re minding their own business and suddenly BOOM there’s a brand right in front of them.
Of course, nobody’s intent on social media is to buy, which means you can’t be overly sales-y on Facebook the way you can on non-social platforms. This, of course, means that there’s a long road between first sight and sale on FB, and your ad campaigns are going to need to reflect that.
Why Run a Facebook Brand Awareness Campaign?
The only thing awareness campaigns need to do is draw attention to your brand, encourage website clicks and engagement. That’s it.
This means that the ads themselves DON’T SELL they simply draw attention to your website, encourage interaction and raise awareness for your business by creating custom audiences and leading people into your Facebook funnel that’s also feeding into your flywheel.
The thing is, in the end, you want your relevance score to go UP and your CPC to go DOWN.
And luckily, we have the tricks that will make it happen.
Do a Little Customer Study
If you’re selling services or products that target certain people in certain locations or something along those lines, you’re going to want to put together buyer personas and do some research into the demographics that Facebook provides you.
See if you can draw parallels between age, location, gender, etc, and see if you can find the ways you found it easiest to market to them with the best overall results.
When you have those details, either by mapping them out or asking your customers yourself, (it’s a major leap of faith, but worth it in the long run!) you need to pinpoint exactly where and how you can market to them effectively on Facebook. Where are they spending the majority of their time?
Find Out What Interests Your Customers
If you really want to find your customers and get a conversation rolling, you need to know what interests them.
You see, Facebook allows you to target specific audiences of people based on interest. This is fabulous because depending on what you sell you can figure out what might relate and then target those particular people. Do you sell costumes? You can target people who like Halloween and people who enjoy going to big dress-up events, or people who regularly perform in plays.
Maybe you sell custom jerseys. You can target people who have a particular affinity for soccer, football or basketball.
Of course, this can be quite broad depending on what you’re shooting for, but Facebook also provides an option for selecting large brands or personalities as the interest. This can help you narrow down on specifics and get better results depending on what you need.
The most helpful thing about this feature is that you know now who your potential partners might be and also that you immediately have a brand new lookalike audience at your disposal.
It’s genius, right?
Audience Size Matters (Really)
Too big? You’re going to be throwing money down the drain on people who don’t exactly fit the “target audience” criteria. Too small? You’ll be forever waiting on the day you really “take off” as a brand. And it’ll never come.
Start at a good medium. Maybe somewhere between 400,000 and a million, depending on the estimated size of your target audience. If you’re doing something really niche, stay near the bottom of that number. The less niche your brand and product, the higher you can estimate.
Whatever you do, don’t forget that exclusions can mean the world at this stage. If you know people who make less than $50,000 a year won’t even be glancing at your product, exclude anyone under $55,000 and call it a day.
You may start out with a list of a half a million, but exclusions will do a number on your number, so don’t be afraid to fine-tune as you feel appropriate. You are your only limitation.
Embrace the Emotional. Always.
I know some sites and marketers lead you to believe that emotional campaigns don’t always work. But see, I disagree.
Emotional campaigns are everywhere, we just don’t always realize it. The trick is in the PAS way of looking at things: Problem, Agitate, Solution.
You present the problem. You agitate it by mentioning something specific about it that sucks. THEN you present a solution if they click on your ad.
It doesn’t seem emotional, but IT IS. It’s emotional because you’re stirring up feelings within your viewers and giving them a reason to feel like you care. Like you want to help, and that you will help.
This is especially helpful when you’re marketing B2B. Companies need a reason to work with you and if you can make their life easier, more efficient and help them spend less by spending, they’ll be more likely to want to work with you.
It’s all about marketing to the emotional and logical sides of a buyer’s brain. Not just advertising to advertise.
People Trust Influencers Over Businesses
And more than you probably realize.
Which is why influencer marketing is growing.
Leveraging influencer marketing can be complicated. It’s difficult to measure, hard to build a relationship with an influencer you can trust and also finding a good fit for your brand can be its own struggle, not to mention the expense.
Facebook has added a branded content with a handshake icon that allows you to share information and metrics more easily now, which, in turn, makes influencer marketing for brands a little easier.
You can also run the same images and copy, but leveraging a particular influencers review and/or encouragement also.
And if you think that running giveaways or specific contests with influencers won’t be helpful, just give it a try. I promise there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to be pleasantly surprised.
The End
If you’re trying to bring in lots of leads to fill the first stage of your flywheel, brand awareness is important. And with the tools on Facebook, leveraging your brand awareness ads is significantly easier than you might think.
Just remember that getting sales-y with your copy should come second and the relationship between you and your customers should come FIRST.
With the right priorities, you’ll be bringing in those leads in no time.
Do you have any particular insight into brand awareness campaigns on social media? And maybe Facebook in particular? We want to hear FROM YOU!
You can check out our social media marketing in the south Facebook group if you’re interested in joining us for open discussions, constant new opportunities for networking, making new friends and learning new things. We look forward to seeing you!
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