Facebook Ads can be a powerful platform for driving growth and success for a lot of businesses. However, getting the most out of it requires careful planning, execution, and ongoing optimization. To help you with this, this article provides tips and best practices for implementing growth marketing-focused campaigns using Facebook Ads.

While any channel can be a key driver for a growth marketing-centered organization, what makes Facebook Ads a channel that can help drive massive revenue growth comes down in reality to a couple of key factors.  First, Facebook as a social media platform is used by the vast majority (approximately 70%) of the world’s population on a daily basis, regardless of whether they use it uniquely or in concert with others.  Moreover, the array of demographic targeting that Facebook Ads have at their disposal allows businesses (provided targeting is used correctly) to target those looking specifically for your business’s products or services. 

By now, you probably know that Facebook Ads hold considerable potential for your business.

They can drive cold traffic to your products and turn visitors into warm customers who buy from you again and again.

But it can be difficult to get it right and get the most out of it.

A lot of businesses quickly put together a simple ad and think it will make them millions. In reality, it takes a lot more than that if you want to really increase your sales.

Why Use Facebook Ads As Part of a Growth Marketing Approach?

Facebook has more than 1 billion active users, which means you have access to an incredible number of potential customers from all walks of life.

Along with its laser-focused targeting efforts and the ability to reach cold audiences that you otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to reach, Facebook is one of the best platforms for increasing your sales.

So, maybe you’re seeing some return on your Facebook ads – maybe a few sales a month but nothing anywhere near the kind of numbers you want or need.

Or maybe you’re getting started with Facebook ads for the first time and want to get them spot-on from the word go.

Let’s look at some of the unique ways you can leverage your Facebook ads to increase your sales and boost your revenue.

That being said Facebook ads are also a marketing channel that can incur significant costs with very little tangible return when it is not applied in a meticulous manner.  This is where a growth-marketing consulting agency such as eCommerce Made Simpler with a strong background in paid social marketing,  and specifically Facebook Ads can be a tremendous asset to businesses.

Among the topics we will look into include setting goals and targeting the right audience, crafting compelling ad copy and design, optimizing your landing pages for conversions, A/B testing your ads for better performance, using remarketing to target previous visitors, maximizing your budget with bidding strategies, tracking and analyzing your campaign's performance, and staying up to date with Facebook Ads best practices.

We will also highlight common mistakes to look out for when running Facebook Ads.

By following these tips and best practices, you can optimize your Facebook Ads campaign for success and drive growth for your business. 

 How can you make sure your company stands out in a sea of businesses, websites, and social media posts? That's where growth marketing that is driven by Facebook Ads can come into play.  With the right approach, you can use Facebook Ads to drive targeted traffic to your website and boost your bottom line. But with so many options and settings to consider, figuring out where to start can be overwhelming. That's what this guide is for.

How to Ensure a Proper Growth Marketing Framework Using Facebook Ads

Before we delve into anything tactical, we need to dive into some basic fundamentals of proper Facebook Ads management, as well as mistakes to avoid, both of which supersede any specific tactic that your business should consider applying.

6 Facebook Ads Best Practices That Are an Essential Part of  Growth Marketing Fundamentals

If Facebook ads are a big part of your growth marketing mix, then embracing the fundamental best practices outlined below is imperative for growth-focused businesses.

1)Use Facebook’s Store Traffic Objective to Increase Offline Sales

Facebook advertising is often associated with online sales. It makes sense: You create a digital ad that leads to your online store where customers purchase and wait until their products are delivered to their doorsteps. However, Facebook isn’t only useful for online sales. It can also help you increase sales within your brick-and-mortar store, using the store traffic objective.

The store traffic objective reaches nearby customers most likely interested in your business. The ad that appears to those customers will contain directions to your store, your business’s phone number, and store hours

2. Always Know Your Business Objective

You can’t run Facebook ads and expect results without defining your business objective. When you run an ad campaign, you must know the goal you want that campaign to achieve. In your case—increasing sales—your objective may be conversions, for example. Choosing an objective is important because it helps Facebook optimize your ad to reach your goal. Facebook’s ad objectives are below. Study them and decide which one best fits your business. 

• Brand awareness: Increase awareness of your business, brand, or service.

• Reach: Reach the optimal number of people within your target audience.

• Traffic: Boost traffic to your website, blog, or a specific web page.

• Engagement: Deliver your ad to people most likely to engage—like, comment, share, react—with your post.

• App installs: Direct users to where they can download your app.

• Video views: Deliver video ads to Facebook users who are most likely to watch.

• Lead generation: Acquire more leads for your business by obtaining users’ contact information.

• Messages: Connect and seamlessly communicate with new and existing customers on Facebook using the Messenger app.

• Conversions: Drive a specific action on your website, such as downloading your app, signing up for your newsletter, or making a purchase.

• Catalog sales: Highlight products from your e-commerce catalog.

• Store traffic: Drive foot traffic to your store’s physical location.

Once you’ve chosen your ad objective, it will be easier to determine who your target audience is, set a realistic budget, and create engaging ads that deliver your desired results.

3. A/B Test Your Ads

A/B testing allows you to determine what is working in terms of ad creatives and ad messaging, who it’s working with, and how you can improve your campaign so that you can reach customers most likely to respond to your ads. When you’re measuring your campaign’s effectiveness, it’s important to A/B test. A/B testing is the process of experimenting with your Facebook ad campaign by taking two elements of your ad and testing them against each other. The version that performs best is the one you run. This process (which is continuous and ongoing) ensures that you work to maximize the return on investment for your campaign. 

To A/B test, you want to create a list of all the possible ad elements you may want to test in different versions. Your list may include the following elements:

• Ad copy: What tone do you want to use? Which words will resonate the most with your audience? You can find out by A/B testing the language and wording you use in your copy.

• Colors: Which colors in the graphic or image of your ad perform best?

• Images: Is your image high quality? Should you use a stock photo

• Call-to-action button: The specific CTA button you choose for your ad can also make a difference. Is the “Learn More” CTA better for your campaign’s purpose or would a “Shop Now” CTA work better?

• Audience targeting: Are you perhaps targeting the wrong audience in your market? You can A/B test one target demographic against another.

If you find that your Facebook ads are consistently failing, you may want to properly A/B your ads to see what works and what doesn’t.

4. Install the Facebook Pixel to Improve Ad Targeting

The Facebook Pixel is an effective measurement tool that tracks customer activity on your website. This pixel, a piece of JavaScript code, tracks the web activity of users. This tracking tool makes it easier to measure, optimize, and build an audience for your campaign, as well as monitor conversions that came from a Facebook ad. 

You get the following benefits when you use the Facebook Pixel:

• You better understand your audience.

• You retarget buyers with ads of products or services they’ve previously browsed or expressed an interest in. 

• You can use the data you collect to create Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences.

• You can use Pixel data to identify customers who have longer shopping journeys so you can customize special messages for them.

• You can identify potential shoppers and determine what ad formats are best to use for them.

To create a Facebook Pixel for your website, navigate to facebook.business.com. From the home page, click the “Business Manager” tab. On the drop-down menu, click “Pixels.” Select the “Create a Pixel” option to generate a Facebook Pixel. After you’ve named your Pixel, you can click “Create Pixel“ and install it on your online store by copying the code and pasting it within the header of your website.

5) Create Buyer Personas

In order for any Facebook advertising strategy you choose to work, you have to know your audience. We’ve all heard the saying, “When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one”. It’s true — not everyone you come across is going to care about what you have to offer. It’s harsh, but it’s the reality.

A better approach is to create a range of personas based on ideal customers. This will help you create targeted ads that resonate with people. Each persona should include details about customer needs, demographics, and psychographic attributes – things like values and opinions. This is the foundation for forming buyer personas.

Pro tip: Don’t create buyer personas based on assumptions. Do the research to make sure that the personas you’re targeting actually care about what you offer and that you know all of the factors that are relevant to the purchasing decision as it pertains to the products or services you offer.

6) Set up a sales funnel

When you do Facebook advertising, you’ll often create ads with different goals in mind. You may focus on driving people to your website, earning email sign-ups, or getting people to buy products. With each of these ads, you’re targeting people at different points in the sales funnel.

That’s why it’s essential that, before you launch your ads, you set up your sales funnel. Your sales funnel is the path prospects take from awareness to conversion.

So, why is creating a sales funnel one of the best Facebook ad strategies?

Well, it helps you create ads for your audience at the right time. If someone’s discovering your business, showing them an ad to buy your products isn’t fitting for them. An ad inviting them to join your email list, however, is.

When you set up a sales funnel, you understand what ads to deliver to prospects as they move through the funnel. Taking this approach enables you to improve results with your ads.

5 Mistakes to Avoid With Facebook Ads in Order to Create an Effective Growth Marketing Funnel

Now that we have established some best Facebook Ad best practices for growth-focused businesses, let us look at 5 common Facebook Ad mistakes to avoid that can hurt the execution of the growth marketing strategy your business is working daily to implement.

1. Overlooking Video as a Marketing Method

Research from BuzzSumo indicates a decline in engagement with many types of posts. 

BuzzSumo reviewed a year’s worth of content and engagements on Facebook and found that although posts with images and links show a decline in interactions, that’s not true for video posts. In fact, there was a 10 percent increase in engagement over the past year with these types of posts.

Yet video posts are still nowhere near as prominent as other kinds of content on Facebook. Marketers have an opportunity to fill the void and gain traction by creating video-based ads.

2. Not Being Specific Enough With Targeting

It’s not surprising that a significant number of the people who see those ads don’t respond favorably—or at all. Marketers should be realistic when determining the number of people to target with their product, service, or brand.

Facebook’s advertising interface can also give suggestions about the potential number of people reached by a particular amount of ad spending. If the audience is too large, it’s better to narrow it down by targeting age ranges, geographic areas, or gender.

3. Failing to Monitor Ads Consistently

Monitoring is necessary for a campaign’s success, and it’s easy with Facebook’s handy automation tools. However, it can be tempting for marketers to rely on them too heavily. Look to your target audience’s comments on Facebook ads for an accurate gauge of whether a campaign is resonating with them or annoying them. It’s also essential to avoid targeting the same people with the same content again and again—an effective way to frustrate an audience.

Not only can ad fatigue cause your performance with those assets to decline, but you’re also creating negative mental associations with your brand in the minds of potential customers.

4. Choosing the Wrong Type of Ad for the Intended Action

Facebook offers various types of ads, and that’s sometimes problematic. A marketing professional could make the common mistake of picking an ad type without making sure it’s the most appropriate type for the desired response. There are many advertising options to choose from, including ads meant to boost attendance at events, bring people to a website, and urge them to install an app. Becoming familiar with each type and its purpose helps reduce the likelihood of selecting an ad that doesn’t connect with your audience.

5. Testing Too Many Things at Once

Test different kinds of Facebook ads with your desired audience, especially ads with images. That said, testing should happen carefully and include adequate isolation to learn which characteristics of ads have the highest impact on viewers.

Another frequent Facebook advertising mistake is not isolating one variable to test. If you fail to isolate your ad variables, you’ll find it difficult (or even impossible) to know with any certainty which factor inspired a more positive reaction than usual.

13 Facebook AdsTactics to Instill as Part of Your Business Growth Marketing Strategy

Now that we have delved into specific best practices to instill and common mistakes to avoid, here are 13 specific Facebook Ads tactics that your business should strongly consider making a part of your growth marketing mix.

1) Use a custom landing page

One of the best Facebook ad strategies to try is creating custom landing pages. Custom landing pages help you keep prospects focused so they complete your desired action.

For example, let’s say you want people to click on your Facebook ad so they join your email list. If you use your homepage as the landing page, people won’t know how to sign up for your emails. You may miss out on earning that conversion because those leads get discouraged.

To make it easy for leads to convert, consider using a custom landing page. Custom landing pages help keep prospects focused because you can limit how much information is on them. You can tailor the information to fit your ad and guide users toward taking one action.

A custom landing page is key to helping you get more prospects to complete your desired action.

2) Nurture repeat customers through Facebook Custom Audiences

Facebook Custom Audiences are groups of Facebook users who know about your brand to a certain extent. This means that they’ve visited your website before, engaged with your Facebook page or posts, signed up for your emails, made a purchase, or engaged with your brand in some other way.

Essentially, Facebook takes the customer data you give it and compares that data to Facebook users, eventually matching your customers to individual users. Facebook then creates groups of these people, allowing you to target them with different ad campaigns.

You can create four types of Custom Audiences:

• Website Custom Audiences. Build these audiences from users who have visited your website or a specific page on your website.

• App activity Custom Audience. These segments are made up of people who have engaged with your mobile app or taken a specific action within your mobile app.

• Customer list Custom Audience. Import a customer list spreadsheet and Facebook will match the data to its users to build this audience group.

• Engagement Custom Audiences. Groups of people who have engaged with your Facebook content or ads in the past, including watching a video, submitting a lead form, or viewing your Facebook page. This is a great source for building Lookalike Audiences (more on that next).

2) Expand your market through ‘lookalike’ targeting

Over time, you’ll use your Custom Audiences to create new segments with similar characteristics to target. These audiences are called Lookalike Audiences.

Lookalike Audiences are valuable because they have a lot in common with your existing audiences, so you already know what they like and which ads perform well. In many cases, you can use the same ads for your Lookalike Audiences that you’re already running for other targets.

This Facebook ad strategy is a great way to acquire new customers. You already know these groups’ preferences, so you can use proven, effective ad creative to introduce them to your brand.

You can scale how similar your Lookalike Audience is to your original source audience. If you keep it very similar, you’ll target a smaller but more specific group. If you allow for a lot of variation between the audiences, you’ll target a larger but broader audience. Facebook allows for a maximum of 500 Lookalike Audiences, so you have plenty of room to get creative and experiment.

3. Retarget previous visitors to your Facebook or Instagram pages

Facebook retargeting ads are shown to users who have visited your e-commerce website or interacted with your Facebook or Instagram page in the past. This Facebook ad strategy is a great way to nurture relationships you’ve already started. You can target users down to specific actions they’ve taken—likes on Facebook, products added to the cart, or even specific pages visited.

There are many applications to this Facebook ad strategy, with retargeting options that include people who have:

• Engaged with your brand on Facebook and/or Instagram

• Visited your website

• Used your mobile app

• Spent a certain amount of time on your website

• Visited specific pages of your website Viewed a product (called “viewed content”)

• Added a product to their cart

• Initiated checkout

If you’re trying to sell a certain product, you can retarget users who have visited that product page. 

4) Incorporate Facebook Messenger ads

Since Facebook introduced Messenger, the platform has grown to be one of the most powerful ways to reach and interact with audiences. Add to that the fact that customers expect instant answers to their questions — and Facebook Messenger offers customers a direct link to you — and you have an open channel to offer really targeted ads.

The main difference between this type of ad and other ad types is the call-to-action. Instead of guiding customers to a Facebook page or website landing page, Facebook Messenger ads invite customers to start a conversation.

5) Find The Right Frequency Balance

Nothing’s worse for a customer than seeing an ad over and over and over again. Over time, the ad loses its effectiveness because customers either ignore it or get frustrated by it and avoid the brand.

The most effective ads don’t appear more than five times to the same customer. Any more than this means you’re heading towards a higher cost-per-click (CPC) and lower click-through rate (CTR).

To avoid this headache, decide on frequency specifications during ad creation. Set the frequency by telling Facebook how many times an ad should show up for each customer, let’s say five times. Then set the action. This tells Facebook what you want it to do once five views have been reached. Set this to “turn off all ad sets” so that the ad stops showing for each customer once the limit’s been hit.

Your Facebook advertising strategy should guide customers and create an experience that encourages them to complete a desired action, such as buying something or giving you their email address. Experiment with different frequencies to find the balance between a comfortable CPC and CTR for your campaigns.

6) Create Evergreen Facebook Ads

Depending on your business, you might decide to run ads weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. But even though your ads run frequently, it doesn’t mean that you have to start from scratch every single time. This is time-consuming and not required. A better approach is to take “old” ads and repurpose them to make them more engaging.

To help, there are three evergreen strategies that you can choose from:

• Awareness Campaigns. These campaigns target people who are most likely to engage with your brand. Facebook awareness campaigns are designed to share your brand story with this audience. To get started, include product highlights like new features. Use your awareness campaign ads to increase engagement and sales.

• Lead Generation Campaigns. Once people know who you are, the next step is to get their information, like an email address. To do this, offer value to your audience, so they are engaged with you and receptive to further communication — think e-books, webinars, and free samples.

• Conversion Campaigns. Use conversion campaigns to take these leads you just collected and convert them into sales. Here’s where you close the deal with a super-targeted value proposition: exactly what makes you better than the competition.

Once you’ve chosen your evergreen strategy, make any necessary tweaks to already-made ads. You might be surprised to find how much you can get out of an old favorite with just a few minutes of work to set up a new campaign and CTA.

7) Use Geo-Targeting 

Back in the days of early advertising, marketers didn’t have a lot of options for where they’d target customers. There were a few channels on TV, in newspapers, and in magazines. Marketers had to wait for customers to engage with them before sharing their message.

Fast forward a few decades and things have changed to allow marketers to be more proactive. Geo-targeting is a great advertising strategy for getting your message in front of customers. Geo-targeting works by serving up relevant ads based on where prospects are located. The result is timely, hyper-targeted ads that get customers engaged.

Let’s say you have a fitness app and want to target people who spend time at gyms. When you create the audience for your ad, enter the address of a specific location. For example, if there’s a location with a lot of gyms or studios in the area, enter an address in that neighborhood.

If you have a physical store, enter your address into the location field so that every time people in your ideal audience enter the area you’ve specified, they see your ads.

You can choose how wide of a radius you want to target — depending on how many people you want to reach. You’ll notice that on the right side of the edit audience screen, “potential audience” will adjust to show how many people your ad can reach. Refine the audience specs further by filtering age and gender. Now, specific people who spend time in the area you’ve highlighted will see your targeted ads.

8) Maximize Conversions By Targeting Brand Aware Audience

Just because your audience finds your brand doesn’t mean they’re aware of what it does or how it solves their problem. In order to maximize conversions, use ads that target a “warm audience.” These are people who are familiar with your brand and what it does. They might have encountered your product in passing when someone mentioned it, but they haven’t tried it for themselves yet.

Maximize the conversion of warm prospects by creating custom audiences based on engagement. For example, target people who’ve liked posts on your Facebook page or left comments on your Instagram pictures.

9) Remarket to Your Target Audience

Advertising to increase sales isn’t a one-and-done deal. You simply don’t show an ad to a potential customer and give up when that customer doesn’t convert. In fact, when customers interact with your ad in some way—clicking the link, watching the video, perusing your product catalog—you want to remarket to that target audience to push them to convert. A user that interacted with you once will likely buy from you after several tries. 

You can use Facebook’s Custom Audience to retarget an existing audience that you have. There are a number of different types of Custom Audiences to choose from:

• Website traffic: This Custom Audience includes any visitors to your website. 

• Customer list: You can upload a customer list to Facebook. Facebook will use the information to identify and target your existing customers on the platform.

• App activity: Remarket to users who have interacted with your app in some way, whether that’s launching your app, playing a game, or purchasing an item.

• Offline Activity: Remarket to customers who have interacted with your business offline, such as over the phone or at your physical store location.

• Video: Create a Custom Audience that consists of users who have watched your videos on Facebook or Instagram.

• Instagram business profile: Reach your audience of users who have interacted with your Instagram profile or your Instagram ads.

• Lead form: Remarket to leads you’ve collected through your lead generation form on Facebook or Instagram.

• Events: This Custom Audience includes users who have engaged with your Facebook event, either by RSVPing or sharing it with friends.

• Instant Experience: Remarket to your audience who has interacted with your Instant Experience ads on Facebook.

• Facebook page: Create a Custom Audience of users who have engaged with or followed your Facebook page.

To create a Custom Audience, go to your Facebook Business Manager page and select the “Business Manager” menu. Click “All Tools” then click “Audiences.” Click “Create Audience” and then click “Custom Audience.” From there, choose the type of Custom Audience you want to create. 

10) Incorporate Social Proof Into Facebook Ad Design

The whole reason most people log onto Facebook every day is to see what their friends and family are doing. Facebook makes it easy by offering features that let you see what your friends have “Liked” or where your friends are hanging out.

It’s this drive for social inclusion that lies at the center of social proof. When you incorporate social proof into your advertising, it minimizes the fear people have of trying something new and unfamiliar.

11) Incorporate Video Ads

If you’ve been running ads for a while and aren’t seeing the returns you’d hoped for, or you’re brand new to Facebook ads and want to try a few different options and see what works best for your situation, video ads may be just what you’re looking for.

Not only do people love videos, but they also have the lowest effective cost per click (eCPC) compared to other ad types. Need to sweeten the deal even more? Adobe found that "shoppers who view video are 1.81 times more likely to purchase than non-video viewers

12) Use Multi-Product Ads

The introduction of the Facebook carousel ad has done wonders for many businesses.

With this new template of ad, you can show numerous products in a single ad, giving your customers choice and the chance to find something that suits their particular needs.

How does this translate into more sales?

Well, the carousel option gives you the chance to show relevant products, increasing the probability of someone buying, and you can even use the template to show the numerous benefits of a single product (remember that people buy benefits).

13) Create a Digital “Store Window” for the Window Shoppers

Window shopping is primarily done on mobile devices, according to 2021 Statista data, which shows that 68 percent of online shopping in the United States was done on a smartphone. In separate data provided by Statista, the numbers show that the conversion rate of US online shoppers in the fourth quarter of 2018 was 4.22 percent for shopping done on tablets and 2.19 percent for smartphones. If shoppers are making purchases online, they’re likely spending a lot of time browsing products.

Knowing the popularity of online shopping, and consequently window shopping, it’s imperative that you create a stellar digital showcase. Facebook offers multiple ad types for displaying your products, such as Canvas, Collection Ads, and Carousel Ads.

Facebook’s Canvas format allows you to create a full-screen, immersive experience through videos and images. Once clicked, Canvas opens up to the full screen on users’ mobile devices. Users can swipe up, down, left, right, or zoom in and out to follow the ad’s narrative. Canvas creatives can be comprised of images and video, with links to landing pages, call-to-action buttons, and headlines. You can even link multiple Canvas ads for a microsite-like effect.

Another Facebook ad perfect for featuring your products is the Carousel Ad, which allows you to simultaneously feature multiple products in one ad through several carousel cards that users can scroll through. When you want to feature more than one product or service, or if you want to tell your story with multiple images, the Carousel format is ideal. You can include up to 10 images and videos, all of which are accompanied by a call-to-action button. Whenever users click on an image or the call to action, they will be directed to a landing page where they can purchase your products.

Facebook Ads:  A Powerful Part of A Growth Marketing Framework

Facebook Ads is a powerful platform for driving growth and success for your business, but it requires careful planning, execution, and ongoing optimization. To help you get the most out of your campaigns, this article provides tips and best practices for growth marketing through Facebook.

By following these tips and best practices, you can optimize your Facebook Ads campaign for success and drive growth for your business. Whether you're new to the platform or a seasoned pro, there's always room for improvement and ongoing optimization.

If you believe that Facebook Ads can be a driver for your business, but don't feel sure about how to get started, please feel to reach out today to our Facebook Ads consultants for a free, no-obligation growth marketing consultation.  Our expert growth marketers look forward to meeting with you to learn more about your business to see where our experience can provide value for you.