In our Data Driven Academy Deploying Digital Media (Facebook Ads) Class, we talk about the three phases of Facebook Ads:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Conversion

Our recommendation for Facebook Ads "first timers" is typically to spend $1k per month for the first 6-9 months on Facebook "Awareness Objective" Ads.

This increases eyeballs on your business, in the form of impressions (times your ad was seen) and reach (# of people who saw your ad).

The coolest part of spending your ~$1k per month on Facebook Ads during the awareness phase is building your custom audiences. Let's use our recent Data Driven Design Campaign as an example.

For the last month, I spend ~$400 targeting "Decision Makers" age 25-65 in the United States with these job titles...

I deployed a video message, with some copy about how they need to think through their next website design decision and pick the right partner. The ad sent them to our Web Design and Development Landing Page, generating 340 link clicks from 283 unique users, a cost per click of $1.12. The video message wasn't really in line with the copy, rather it was talking about some tactics that need to occur to ensure a successful website launch.

For an Awareness Phase ad with a Link Click Objective, it didn't do too poorly, but the data shows it could have done a lot better. People didn't really watch the video, so I'm taking that as a queue to seriously take the creative in a completely different direction next time around. And the bounce rate on the landing page was pretty high according to Google Analytics, so I need to examine how to improve that.

I haven't generated any leads from this ad yet, but it's just the awareness phase. Consideration won't happen for another several months, assuming of course I can get the creative, copy and landing page flowing together with the right messages.

The Page Like Campaign we're running to a similar audience appears to be doing quite well, acquiring new customers in the form of followers at a solid Cost Per Page Like of $2.00. If this seems high to you, keep in mind that I'm targeting my EXACT audience.

With this creative...

So I'm using my data to drive design and next marketing actions, and in the meantime, building up a solid awareness of my brand, creating momentum in this game of brand marketing. The sales will come later. In the conversion phase. I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime...

KEEP MARKETING!

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

Paul Hickey, Founder / CEO / Lead Strategist at Data Driven Design, LLC has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 10 years. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Social Media Content Marketing and Email Marketing. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data.