It feels like yesterday when Facebook arrived and reshaped society. A few years later, the social media site threw a grenade into the marketing world when it made its advertising tool available to all.

Too often we talk to businesses who swear by Facebook, but are not able to tell us what their Facebook return on investment is.

Facebook is here to stay as one of the world’s most powerful marketing tools, but you will only be rewarded if you use it correctly, like any other marketing tool.

What you need to know
If you don’t use the Facebook advertising tool correctly, it will be a waste of money. Simple as that.

Over the next few articless, we will be talking you through the steps towards building a successful Facebook campaign. Forget about the Likes, Reach, Views and Shares, you want dollars in your bank, right?

To measure your results properly, you must still plan, build, report and improve your campaigns. At Active Networks, we follow the below steps for all our Facebook advertising:

  • Goals – what we aim to achieve
  • Research – the best channel to hit those goals and reach the desired demographics
  • Plan – design, build, budget, target, timeframes for campaigns
  • Activate – the live period, where we tweak the campaign for success
  • Report – measure success of campaign
  • Customise – use the findings to improve our next campaign

Over the coming articles, we will outline the steps to setting up a successful Facebook campaign. In this article, we will talk about identifying your goals, and the research phase.

Goals
What do you want to achieve from your campaign?

You must have a clear understanding of what you want to get out of your Facebook campaign, before you begin. These are your goals. They may vary considerably but determine which Facebook advertising objective you choose within the Research phase.

1. Is it to encourage the Facebook user to complete an action?

  • On-site sale
  • Complete a sign-up form
  • Complete a survey
  • Enter a competition
  • Complete a product review

2. Is it to introduce your new product to the target audience (not necessarily completing an action)?

  • Click through to your website
  • Read an article or blog
  • Read product reviews
  • Click through to watch a product video
  • Join a Facebook group

3. Is it to promote your brand to as many local residents as possible?

  • Promote the brand
  • Watch a branding video within Facebook’s environment
  • Look at a picture gallery

Remember, you do not have to focus on just one of the goals above. If you aim to hit more than one of the above goals, you can set up your Facebook campaigns to work together.

For example, at Active Networks, we may set up a Reach campaign to promote the brand before setting up a call to action to the same audience, increasing the conversion rate.