Facebook is increasingly becoming a pay-to-play platform and whilst there are rumors that ‘organic content is dead’ (it isn’t, by the way), paid advertising should form a crucial part of your marketing strategy.

I regularly hear horror stories from people who have spent thousands on Facebook ads and got nothing in return, so how can you avoid making the same mistake?

Often the first fatal area that causes failure is not knowing your goal. You may think that this is obvious, but it is actually a little more complex than you first think.

For example, your goal could be:

• Raise awareness of your business
• Encourage people to engage with your content
• Collect leads
• Get people to take a specific action on your website

This is certainly not an exhaustive list, however without clearly knowing your goal, you cannot create the right type of campaign and then focus on hitting it.

The beauty of Facebook is that you can fairly precisely reach the type of people you want by targeting your ads correctly.

For example, are you an accountant that specialises in low-cost services for people working in construction? If so, you can use Facebook’s targeting options to get in front of business owners whose work in construction in precisely the geographical area you want.

This kind of targeting means you can use your budget economically by getting in front of the people you want. You should always take time to research your audience as a more precise audience will get you better results for less money!

Here’s a warning. Don’t use the boost button as unless you set things up correctly, Facebook will choose to spend your money in the way they want and no-one wants to give Facebook that kind of control.

Instead, make sure you choose the right goals for your ads. There is a lot to this, but using the examples above, here are a few tips:

• Raise awareness of your business – Tell Facebook to show your ad to as many people as it can
• Encourage people to engage with your content – Tell Facebook to show your ad to people who are most likely to engage with it
• Collect leads – Choose a lead form or click to call ad
• Get people to take a specific action on your website – Tell Facebook to go and find people who will take the specific action you define using a conversion ad

Don’t underestimate the value of getting the right creative! For example, videos tend to perform better, however, your creative should be clear, stand out and make people stop scrolling to take a look.

Also, think about your ad copy as this is crucial to encouraging people to consider taking an action.

I always explain to clients that marketing is not like that magical fairy dust that turns on leads! This applies to Facebook ads and it is important to test things like audiences, creative and goals until your ad is performing at its best.

Optimize DAILY until you are getting the results you want and do not be afraid to kill ads that are not performing.