9 Special Ways to use Facebook Ads to grow your business from a branding perspective

Facebook is not just about getting customers, but also a mass audience. So how do you build brand awareness using Facebook Ads? If you own a startup, you want to use Facebook ads to grow your business

In this article, I am going to share 5 ways in which I used Facebook Ads at my last startup GainSquares to create initial traction and branding with minimal resources and funding.

These strategies are very similar to what many other startups and entrepreneurs have been using for quite some time now (probably ever since the launch of ads on Facebook). One thing that all these strategies have in common – they don’t require too much money or effort as most of them focus on retargeting existing users instead of attracting new ones.

We consider our Facebook advertising model successful, so we want to share it with you! This will allow you to grow your audience and get started with a low budget for Facebook marketing.

How to use Facebook ads to grow your business

1. Build Brand Awareness

Target Interests Using Lookalike Audiences, if you are on Facebook, you are probably targeted by ads from various businesses that share your interests or similar companies from which you have visited their websites before.

These companies already know a lot about your wants and needs through retargeting.

However, there is an option to re-target other users who have similar interest patterns as you but don’t know about your product yet – this is where Lookalike Audiences comes in handy. To do this:

1) Head over to Ads Manager

2) Create a new campaign

3) Set up Audience (just click on ‘Create Audience’ at the top of your screen)

4) Choose an existing audience or choose to upload a list of emails.

With this option, you can re-target people who are interested in similar products as your target market. This is how we did it for GainSquares: You can find more information about creating Lookalike Audiences here.

2. Increase Purchase Rate using Retargeting

– Retarget Your Existing Customers with Solid Message

I was surprised when I discovered that there had been no retargeting options available on Facebook so far, but then they launched them back in April 2019.

It turns out that they are extremely valuable! Retargeting existing customers gives businesses the opportunity to convert their previous customers and reach them with a solid message.

Facebook allows you to re-target your current customers, the people who visited your website and did not convert yet (or didn’t sign up for the newsletter, etc.), or those who abandoned their shopping cart – all of these are great options for businesses looking to increase conversion rate.

To do this:

1) Head over to Ads Manager (Go through facebook business)

2) Create a new campaign

3) Set up Audience

4) Click on ‘Create Audience’ at the top of your screen

5) Choose ‘Custom Audience’ and select website visitors as a previous action

In order to create custom audiences using Pixel code (so that we can retarget people who have already visited our site), we had to install the Facebook Pixel code on our site and then sync it with our ads account.

Retargeting is an awesome method to convert potential customers into purchasers.

While we were doing this, we have noticed that more people were converting from retargeted than non-retargeted traffic. This means greater sales – which is why I recommend you use this strategy to make your business grow!

*Read Also: 13 Affiliate Marketing Strategies you must not overlook as a beginner

3. Increase Traffic

– Target Audience Interest + Upload List of Emails

If there’s no specific purpose for targeting existing users (like in case of GainSquares), the best way to go about growing company awareness and traffic will be target interests in relevant niches using Lookalike Audiences like I mentioned above.

This will create highly interested user base and help your business grow. Another way to do this is by uploading a list of emails – Facebook can use these lists to create audiences based on categories.

4. Get Lead Information for Your Business or Sales Page

– Target Custom Audience

This option still allows you to target existing users but it does not focus on retargeting (none of us want our ex-users to be re-targeted from Facebook), instead, you will be targeting people who have already visited your website and are looking at your products.

There are many reasons why people visit a certain webpage; some of them come there with the intention of buying something right away while others just browse around as they are searching for information about a specific product or service – these are the people you want to target.

To do this:

1) Head over to Ads Manager

2) Create a new campaign

3) Set up Audience

4) Click on ‘Create Audience’ at the top of your screen

5) Choose ‘Custom Audience’ and select website visitors as a previous action

6) Build Relevant Interests for Your Business or Sales Page

I have found that people who were looking at GainSquares products were interested in reading information about how it can help them with their business, so we decided to reach out to them using Lead Generation campaigns.

This method has proven very effective in terms of acquiring leads for our sales page!

5. Acquire Qualified Leads for Your Business

– Target Interests and Locations

Similar to creating custom audiences based on website visitors (mentioned in point 4), you can create an audience of people who have visited your sales page.

This method is best used when building an audience for a specific business goal, like getting clients or leads for your company.

To do this:

1) Head over to Ads Manager

2) Create a new campaign

3) Set up Audience

4) Click on ‘Create Audience’ at the top of your screen

5 ) Choose ‘Custom Audience’ and select website visitors as a previous action

6 ) Build Relevant Interests for Your Business or Sales Page

7) Determine the Best Location

You want to be able to target specific location areas with the custom audience the best way to do it would be by using their location area information. When you are creating a lead generation campaign, make sure that people who saw your product on Facebook are also interested in buying it!

6. Retarget Your Audience

– Target Custom Audiences

After you have created an audience of people who have seen your ads and/or website or sales page, you can now re-target these users with relevant offers for your business!

These audiences can make great landing pages for retargeting since they already know about your company and could use further support while converting to customers.

This is how I used this method:

1) Head over to Ads Manager

2) Create a new campaign

3) Set up Audience

4) Click on ‘Create Audience’ at the top of your screen

5) Choose ‘Custom Audience’ and select website visitors as a previous action

6) Build Relevant Interests for Your Business or Sales Page

7) Determine the Best Location

I am doing this on a custom audience level, but you can also do it based on country, city or region.

Do not forget to target the interests and locations of these people who have already come in contact with your business! If you want to get ahead simply use Lookalike audiences!

7. Engage Your Users with Relevant Ads

– Use Lookalike Audiences

I have always been a big fan of lookalike audiences; they provide you with the optimal way to reach out and connect with people who are similar to your current customers.

If somebody takes an interest in something or buys it, there is a good chance that their friends would also be interested in that particular product or service.

None of them has done business with you, but they like your style and work; it is very possible that they will open their wallets for your product just like someone else before them!

If your business focuses on multiple products/services you can create a retargeting campaign that shows ads to only one of your products attached to different interests.

For example, if you sell T-Shirts and Hoodies, you can target people based on their interest in each product type and show them specific merchandise based on those interests.

8. Consider Focusing also on Location (used for retargeting)

Now, remember how we used custom audiences? If so, it might be helpful to know about how location demographics work (used for retargeting). Location demographics allow you to show ads only in cities or regions that are relevant to your business. In other words, it is kind of like using “geo-fence” except we do not need any third-party software!

Whenever I use location demographics, I and set a very narrow audience segment: I am showing my ad only to users who live in Istanbul. As you can see, Facebook allows us the ability to target very precisely by location which makes our campaign highly relevant while we use smart lists + interests related to one another = more efficient data usage!

Finally, there is one thing left that I want to cover under this section;

9. Consider Post Type targeting.

Now post type targeting is very similar to interest targeting in its concept; So I will not go into too much detail. Let’s just take a look at what it is exactly:

Post Type targeting allows you to show ads only in the form of posts which are relevant to your business. In other words, it is a kind of advertisement that you can place on Facebook specifically for users who have posted in the past and these posts can be different types of content (such as photos or videos).

As such, there are three main goals when using this type of advertising:

1) To reach new people

2) To reach people who have previously engaged with your posts

3) To reach people who have not engaged with your posts before.

Now all three of these goals can be met when you use post type targeting thanks to Facebook!

Conclusion

I have given you some tips on how to use facebook ads to build your business from a branding perspective. Also tips that guides to to creating ads that target all of your customer base efficiently using Facebook’s advanced advertising platform.

Now when it comes down to actually taking action and running your campaign it is important to keep in mind that the more relevant ads you run, the better results you will see.

For example, if you are targeting users based on their interests and locations then do not forget to use these same two things when creating your ad(s); Do not create an ad targeting people based on “interest” and then use that same ad to target people based on “location”.

As you can see from the previous examples I have given; I created a very specific audience segmentation which makes my campaign highly relevant while we are still targeting the same customer base efficiently.

The best part about using Facebook Ads to build your business from a branding perspective is that almost startup can do it (with little to no experience). Above all, your new business can literally start making sales within the first week by applying the various steps.

So if you have not started advertising on Facebook yet, then I would highly recommend doing so right away!