How to successfully engage prospects with Facebook advertising

Engagement is what most social media marketers are looking for when running promotions on social media platforms. An engaged audience is indicative of an effective promotional campaign, where followers are noticing and interacting with posts and ad campaigns. The real challenge is crafting content that will lead to the above, and it takes a boat-load of trial and error. This article takes a look at a few tactics you can use to improve engagement rates with prospective leads on social media.

Identify your prospects

Have you ever gone to visit someone that you rub up the wrong way? You might have had to remind yourself to stay civil, and possibly adjust your behaviour while around the person – if nothing more than to keep the peace and avoid negative exchanges. Likewise, advertisers and marketers should want to satisfy their prospects and put ads out that have the best chance of pleasing and interesting them. The only way to do this is by getting to know who you’re advertising to. What types of posts do they prefer, and when are they most active on Facebook? What are their aspirations, and are there any potential life problems that they might be facing (that you could assist with)? By better understanding who the prospect is, you better understand how to engage with them.

Find engaging content

Critical to driving social engagement is the development of the content to be used as part of the advertising campaign. A brand has two options when it comes to content: in-house versus outsourcing. The benefits of in-house content creation are that you have total control over stylistic elements, time-frames, and campaign management. The issue, however, is that – unless you’ve employed an experienced rockstar of a designer or copywriter – you’re probably not going to know what is hot and what is not in the industry. Outsourcing content generation and campaign management to a third-party agency might be the better option (at least to start off with). Agency employees usually have vast experience working with different brands in various industries, and their worth is measured based on the effectiveness of their content.

Drill down demographics

This is where all of your hard work getting to know your prospective customer comes into the mix. Facebook advertising allows you to set specific prerequisite traits to filter your ad target audience. The social platform allows advertisers to place a geographical pin radius within which the advertising will appear. If you’re a car wash, you can target only people who interact with automotive groups and pages on Facebook. If you sell high-end cosmetics, you can target only women who engage with legacy brands and other high-LSM content. Drilling down the demographics save money, as it gets ads in front of people who are more likely to engage with it.

Be always available

A brand-focused company only interacts with prospects during business hours. A client-focused company interacts with prospects whenever they reach out. People don’t just use social media from 9 to 5, and they often only send enquiries late at night. Engagement isn’t a one-way street, and it doesn’t end when a social media user clicks on an advert. Brands should make themselves available to interact with prospects on a 24/7 basis. No, they don’t have to stay awake each night waiting to reply to night-owl customers. Facebook offers businesses an online chatbot that can be set up to send customisable messages to clients when they make contact. These can also include information prompting the potential prospect to take an action (like send a WhatsApp message, or browse the website).

Learn and improve

Never think that, should your Facebook advertising campaign not garner enough engagement for your liking, it has been a failure. Advertising is more often than not a trial and error exercise. Be willing to gather information from your below-average campaigns, and adjust your approach where you find shortcomings and opportunities to improve. This requires a data-driven mindset, scientifically testing and measuring ad set until finding a winning combination of style, tone, frequency, and budget.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Discover more insights into driving prospect engagement and lead generation across social platforms with our Social Media Marketing course. Find similar digital marketing career kick-starters on our marketing courses page.