With hundreds of millions of users all around the world spending more time than ever on social media, an increasing number of brands have considered and implemented new marketing and advertising strategies to appeal to these individuals. In the past, advertising was an expensive, broad-based affair that resulted in tons of waste and very little in measurable benefits. These days, though, advertising campaigns via social media can be calibrated to be extremely effective and reach the audiences that are most aligned with your brand – if you know what you are doing. Below, we will discuss a few tips that can help you construct the best Facebook advertising campaign possible.

Know Your Target

Too many advertising campaigns make the mistake of pinging URLs to a wide variety of Facebook users, which can be a complete waste of time and money in most cases. If you are selling a product or service, then you will want to aim for an audience (preferably, adults who are financially stable), while events, causes and volunteer campaigns may wish to target a younger demographic. There is a plethora of consumer data and demographic analysis on the web to assist campaigns in this process. Some common factors to consider are location, gender, age, education level and marital status. Once you know your target audience, you can then create a better advertising campaign that focuses on these groups.

Images Matter

One of the most important elements of any Facebook advertising campaign is the image that is selected for each advertisement. With no options to alter the font or size of the text displayed, images are the only true element that can make your advertisement stand out to your audience. One of the best ways to gain attention from viewers is to use a picture of a human being – with Facebook being so much about personal interaction, users gravitate toward images with people included. Various studies have shown that Facebook ad campaigns with pictures of people do 40% better than those with images that do not include people.

Create Variations

The biggest mistake of any Facebook advertising campaign – whether it is an excellent one or not – is to create various advertisements that target different audiences and in some cases, the same audiences. The classic A/B test scenarios exist for a reason – any given audience is more likely to respond to one particular ad over another. This kind of experimentation can help you optimize your advertising to figure out what works and what does not. You will also want to experiment with the two different forms of cost – cost per thousand impressions (CPM) and pay per click (PPC).

Provide Incentive

It’s good to be pinging URLs to various groups who may be interested in your products, services or mission, but what added incentive do they have to follow-through and engage with your brand? Many advertisers use coupons, discounts or freebies as a way to entice individuals to click and interact with their brand. Many brands will require users to like their page before they can receive the benefits advertised, which helps you connect with these people in a meaningful way for future interactions.