Create Effective Facebook Ads

Posted in social media marketing
on June 22, 2016
facebook tiles

I have been an advocate of Facebook Ads for years. Mainly because the platform enables marketers to target people and their interests as opposed to long-tail keywords associated with traditional PPC. The platform has grown into a robust delivery network with different ad options including interactive carousel ads and a new exciting option: an Instagram ad placement—even if your business doesn’t have an Instagram account!

Analysis of Successful Facebook Ad

One of my favorite marketing campaigns I have had the pleasure of working on is USF Pre-College: summer programs for high school students. With a small budget for paid social I knew I needed to get the most of our my ads. Luckily for the 2016 campaign I was able to review several years worth of previous Facebook ads and analyze what worked best in the past. Normally I would segment the audience into two of our buyer personas: teenagers and their parents. This year I went all in on the parents targeting.

Let’s take a look at the breakdown:

Target:
Individuals living in FL
Age 37-65+
who are Parents with Teenagers (13-18 year olds)

The Facebook ad ran from March 2 to May 31, 2016. It was run through the native Facebook ads platform. To be clear no organic results mixed into the ad— it was not a boosted post and didn’t showed up on the page’s timeline.

Facebook Ad

Here were the awesome results:

Spend: $1,997.11
Conversions: 198
Cost per conversion: $10.09
Conversion in this instance is defined as a landing page form completion.

As you can see in the ad above there were 240 shares. Most of these shares were parents tagging their teens. It created a conversion about summer opportunities. The ad spoke directly to the parent with very specific action-oriented words “sign up,” “plan” and “learn more.” The ad imagery directly matched the associated landing page.

Most of the comments requested info on scholarships or dates the programs run. Commenting back as the page, each of the messages were answered and often offered a way to contact our office for additional questions. This engagement and customer interaction was exciting and helped me as a marketer understand the customer’s exact concerns and need.

USF Pre-College 2016 is already up and running successfully. Several of our programs have filled to capacity and started a waitlist. This Facebook ad was only a small part of the marketing for this program and continues to be a team effort. I’m hopeful that this exiting offering will flourish for years to come.

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