This year has been incredibly eventful in the world of social media - especially Facebook. And despite what you may have heard about all of the changes to the platform, it remains one of the best values in digital advertising with over 1.4 billion people daily active users. If you’ve run into some roadblocks with your Facebook ads, we’re here to help. Here are five tips to help you knock your ads out of the park!

1. Have a Goal In Mind

Anytime you put a dollar amount to a marketing campaign it’s important to have a goal in mind. Business 101 dictates that your goals should be SMART, and that should apply to your Facebook ads, too! They should be specific (what are you wanting to accomplish?), measurable (can you define success with numbers?), achievable (can you realistically accomplish this goal?), relevant (how well does this fit into your overall strategy?), and time-bound (set a definitive start and end date).

My college professors would be so proud.

But Facebook ads go a step further. What is the action you want your audience to take or maybe, what is the purpose of your Facebook ads? Are you trying to drive brand awareness? Drive traffic to your website? Maybe you’re trying to generate as many leads as possible. All of these goals are defined in the Ad Campaign section, and Facebook will show your ads to users that are more likely to take that specific action to get you the lowest cost per the desired result.

2. It’s All About the Audience

When we create Facebook ads, we probably spend more time in the Ad Set portion than any other section. That’s because getting the right audience is critical. There are two types of audiences within Facebook, and you can use them in different ways. Here’s a quick rundown.

Custom Audiences are audiences you create yourself. You can upload a customer list by way of a .csv file, utilize your Facebook Pixel to retarget website visitors, and use your offline events (like walk-in traffic to your model home).

Custom audiences can go even further with the lookalike audience feature. That .CSV file you uploaded can do even more for you. When you create a lookalike audience, Facebook gathers all of the targetable attributes of the audience and finds other people on Facebook that match that audience. Basically, Facebook tries to find people similar to your audience, which leads us to…

Demographic targeting is great for trying to reach new users. Use Facebook's targeting options to narrow your audience by demographics and a few behavioral attributes. Think of this as a broad yet powerful approach to reaching your audience. But proceed with caution because...

3. Competition is Not Your Friend

It’s enough to compete with other builders in your area. You don’t want to compete with yourself. It’s easy to do this if you’re not careful and you’re running a lot of campaigns. Here are the basics:

Facebook ads are set up in an auction style. That means different ads compete against each other to be delivered to their intended audience. Facebook ads delivery is based on the relevance of the ad and the dollar amount behind the bid. But if multiple ad sets are targeting the same audience, your ads will compete against each other. That will drive up your cost per result and that not good.

For example, let’s say you have two maintenance-free townhome communities in adjacent towns. The communities have similar offerings, so the target audience is roughly the same first-time buyer audience. Conventional wisdom might say to run a campaign for each community. But if the audience is the same or very similar, it would make more sense to either combine the ads into the same ad set,  separate the audience based on geography, or utilize a custom audience from your CRM or web visitors.

4. Set Yourself Up For Success

The golden age of marketing allows us to gauge the success of different campaigns on a very granular level. Utilize UTM codes to know what ads are driving the most traffic and converting the most leads.

You may recognize UTM codes if you click on a link from a timeline or an email, they’re easily visible in the URL. They play a vital role in giving Google Analytics the ability to recognize and analyze your web traffic. Creating these can seem like a tedious task, but you’ll thank yourself later when you’re analyzing traffic and leads.

5. Don’t Set it and Forget It

Remember those rotisserie chicken infomercials? Just pop the bird in the oven and SET IT AND FORGET IT!

Yeah, don’t do that with your Facebook ads. It may be tempting to cut your workload down by setting up your audience, budget, and creative to run for the next four months and then to wait to see what happens at the end. I mean, Facebook could change their entire ads policy (and probably will) in that time.

Check in with your ads weekly. Pay attention to a metric called “Relevance Score”. Over time, that number will become important as it heavily factors into the delivery of your ad. A score of one to three will tell you if you need to rework your creative because it’s not resonating with your audience. A high relevance score like an eight, nine, or ten means your ad is very relevant to your audience. Ads with high relevance score deliver more results at a cheaper cost per result.  Also, don’t forget users ask questions and can use your ads to engage with you.

Staying on top of your ads can help you zero in on your audience and creative and help you reach your SMART goals like a Facebook advertising pro!

6. (BONUS!) Go Beyond Boosted Posts

Everyone likes free stuff, right!? There are two types of ads on Facebook: boosted posts and traditional ads.

No doubt you’ve seen and have been tempted by that “Boost” button under an organic post. While boosted posts are an excellent way to expand the reach your Facebook post gets to your followers, they should only supplement your ad strategy. The bulk of your advertising budget should be focused on dedicated Facebook ads because they’re more powerful and should be tailored to getting the action your advertising goals.

That’s it! If you keep those five(ish) things in mind when building your ads, you’ll ensure that your Facebook ads are going as far as they can go! Just don’t forget to be authentic and feature your best content for the world to see. Remember, your customers look at thousands of ads and other pieces of content a day, make yours memorable. Whether you are running your own Facebook ads in-house or hiring an outside agency, be sure to review these tips with them for the best results.