Not all social media teams have a large budget to spend on their Facebook advertising campaigns. And, even if you do, there’s always room to save money and boost ROI.
I sat down with three members of Hootsuite’s social media team to find out what they would do with just $100 to spend on Facebook ads.
Continue reading to discover:
- How to save time and money with precise audience targeting
- The key metrics to track during a Facebook ad campaign
- Oversights that could be draining your budget
- The number one Facebook ads mistake social ads managers make
Repurpose top-performing content
After you’ve been given your $100 ad budget, the first thing to do is take a look at your existing social media content.
“If we notice something is performing really well on social and getting a higher than average amount of engagement, that’s a good indicator that it will work even better with budget behind it,” explains Amanda Wood, Hootsuite’s social marketing lead. “With only $100, you don’t want to take a risk with untested content, or spend too much time creating brand new ads.”
Look at how many comments, likes, link clicks, or views within 24 hours (if it’s a video) your content has earned organically. If something is resonating, there’s a good chance it’ll do well as an ad.
Once you establish your top-performing post, you can Boost it instead of creating a net new ad. Facebook’s Boost Post feature allows you to easily turn any post from your Facebook business Page into an ad. You can customize your budget, audience, placement, and posting schedule to get the most out of your campaign—and make every dollar count.
Target existing or ‘lookalike’ audiences
With such a limited budget, you want to make sure you are targeting the best audience for your brand.
“Be realistic when it comes to your audience. Research thoroughly so you can be as precise as possible. With a budget this size, don’t waste your money on trying to reach people globally. For optimal results, localize your targeting to smaller geographic regions and reign it in,” says social engagement coordinator Nick Martin.
A fundamental part of audience research is finding out how people interact with your brand on Facebook.
“Keep an eye on the type of device you are seeing the most conversions on. At Hootsuite, we saw the majority of our conversions were coming from mobile users. So, to boost efficiency and ROI, we don’t target desktop users with smaller campaigns,” Hootsuite social marketing coordinator Christine Colling explains.
Once you understand who you are trying to reach, be strategic when it comes to setting up your audience. Our team suggests two simple ways to optimize your targeting on a limited budget:
- Build a custom audience and retarget users who have already visited your website or signed up for your email list. If they’ve already sought out your business, there’s a better chance they’ll convert.
- Create a lookalike audience based on your…
