Facebook still remains one of the main sources of qualified leads and potential customers for businesses of all sizes. And the most efficient way of reaching them is through Facebook ads. Let us just take a moment and remind you of one thing: we are not hardcore fans of Facebook ads just because. The days of significant organic traffic for pages are gone. And if you try to sneak around the rules set by Facebook for creating pages vs. profiles, types and content of posts, you will be badly penalized, leading to a complete and irrevocable ban from Facebook.
So, if you want to reach people who are most likely to become your customers, showcase your products and services to them, and bring them on your website, the only efficient way of doing this is through Facebook ads. You are already aware of the way you pay for ad space on Facebook: you make a bid. This means that the business with the highest bid gets its ad shown for most of the time to most of the people. But that is an overly simplistic way of viewing the whole bidding process.
What you really need to know is how to bid in the most efficient way, to get the most of your bids, for the smallest price. Time and practice will help you develop a smart budgeting strategy. However, if you are just starting out in Facebook marketing, here are a few helpful tips to pick the right bidding strategy:
1. Choose Your Type of Budget Carefully
There are two types of bidding budgets to choose from: the daily budget and the lifetime budget. Daily budgets determine how much you want to pay per day for each Facebook ad campaign. It works like this: when your daily budget is used up, your ads stop showing to Facebook users.
The lifetime budget is the amount allocated for the entire campaign. This means that if you planned a 6-day campaign for a small bid, your ads will only show up to a small number of people each day, not reaching its desired goals.
2. Select the Period When Your Ad Is Displayed
This is one of the most overlooked options when preparing your ad. Everyone is focusing on selecting custom audiences, lookalike audiences and so on, but they forget one critical aspect: selecting the hours when these people are most likely to browse Facebook to post their ads.
How does this option matter for your bidding budget? If you are bidding for CPM (cost per one thousand impressions), your budget needs to be spent carefully because you are charged for every time your ad is viewed. You want to make sure that the people who see your ads are those most likely to connect with your business.
3. Select Your Type of Bidding According to Your Campaign Goals
As you have seen above, CPM is a bidding option which charges you for each time your ad is viewed by Facebook users. This could be an expensive option, and it may not get you the desired results.
Cost per click (CPC) and cost per action (CPA) are more efficient, especially if the end goal of your campaign is to bring people on your website or to install a mobile app.
4. Consider Running Parallel Campaigns
Bidding all your budget on one campaign can backfire in more than one way. Your money may be wasted on non-qualified leads. Or your ad may not strike the right impression among qualified leads.
This is what A/B testing is for – creating different versions of your ad, running them separately and comparing the results. You may notice that both of them are doing well among different segments of qualified leads. Thus, your best option is to split costs between them and reap all the rewards.
5. Never Bid Too Little
The main misconception about Facebook ad bidding is that you pay as much as you bid. The bid amount you set is the maximum you are willing to pay for the desired result (impression, click, or action). In reality, Facebook will calculate an amount which is just a little higher than the average bid values for the same type of audience and the same time frame as yours.
With these simple and effective tips in mind, you can now start planning your next Facebook ad campaign with confidence. Good luck!