The topic of Small Business Advertising on Facebook at our June SBNG after work networking meeting in the NEXUS Hub in Wyong was, to say the least, very informative. Notebooks, phones and tablets were out in full force to keep up with the topic details.

The presenter at the meeting was Elizabeth Todd of Income Trigger Consulting. Her slides took us step by step through the process involved from campaign set up, to creation of ads and mechanisms for tracking results and monitoring performance. The main points noted were:

• Facebook still attracts more internet users in all age groups than channels such as Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat
• No advertising campaign, be that Facebook or traditional advertising, will pay off if you don’t have a solid strategy in place before you start.
• You must know your ideal customer and your buying persona for a campaign to be successful
• Put tracking tools such as Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics in place before starting a Facebook advertising campaign
• Boost only those posts that have a benefit for you and that are already doing well organically.
• Monitor the stats for a boosted post and turn an ad off it isn’t working
• Before starting work on an advertising campaign make sure you have an eye-catching image, know your target audience and have a starting budget
• To generate leads and get opt-ins, target your budget and schedule where it matters.

• Don’t edit ads that are up and running. To make changes, duplicate and ad and then change before running the edited version.
• Use split testing to create a few Facebook ads, run them, track their results, and then adjust ads based on the results.
• Facebook can shut down your Ad accounts because they’re not compliant and they typically do it without warning. Make sure you familiarise yourself with the policy document at https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/

Thank you Elizabeth for a presentation that gave all of us a lot to take in. For those of you who missed the meeting or who would like to take another look at the Small Business Advertising on Facebook presentation, Elizabeth tells us that she has a video that she’s happy to share with you. To get the link, send her a message via the contact page on her website or email her at admin@incometrigger.com.