As a business owner, promoting your brand can appear as a daunting task. Marketing and advertising are vital to any successful business, especially with the role of social media platforms like Facebook. A brand is considered more than solely daily operations, therefore it is important to identify the right target audience and consumer base. At this point, any resource that streamlines efficiencies by saving time and money will serve as a valuable tool for you to get the most out of your Facebook ad tools. According to Hootsuite, Facebook has an advertising audience of 2.14 billion as an average Facebook user clicks on 12 ads per month.
To get the right engagement and optimal return on Facebook advertising, you must learn how to effectively market and advertise your products and services. Before we dive into some business-friendly tools, it’s important to recognize a few common ad challenges faced by small businesses on Facebook. These challenges include:
Complying with Facebook Ad Rules – If you’re using Facebook for advertising, it’s vital to understand the importance of complying with Facebook rules. There are criteria outlining character limitations, appropriate content, and even how you mention Facebook in the ad. Additionally, Facebook has a 20% rule, which states that in order to run ads on Facebook, your image(s) must contain less than 20% text. This is mandated because the platforms’ best performing ads include images with little to no text.
Audience Targeting – In order to drive optimal returns, you must pursue the audience that would be attracted to whatever products or services you are offering. For instance, if you have a service that would be of interest to millennials, you need to ensure your ad is appropriately targeted to that age group with common interests of that generation. The content on the ad itself also needs to be compelling enough for a call to action. A call to action includes options such as: “Sign Up” or click on “Shop Now”. Unfortunately, too many businesses spend valuable time creating high-quality content that results in targeting the wrong audience niche.
Low Conversion Rate – So now you have a few paid ad campaigns on Facebook, which is a great start. You are receiving consistent engagement with followers leading to comments, likes, and shared posts. Yet you find through data analytics that, the conversion rate is still low. Doesn’t sound like you’re getting good ROI from your content, right? Engaging content is less valuable if it’s not driving the right conversions for your business. Every piece of content must serve a purpose and set a specific goal that fulfills both your business goals and the audience’s needs.
For business owners like you that care about saving time and money, there are several Facebook advertising tools to consider utilizing. Here is a mixture of both free and paid Facebook ad tools that will make your brand shine with ease
AdEspresso
This Facebook ads management tool is by far among the simplest and most straightforward to use. The learning curve is minimal and the results are astonishing for your digital marketing success. This technology allows for automated ad creation, multivariate capabilities, and split testing competencies. AdEspresso is a savvy A/B testing tool as well. Its powerful analytics tools include:
- Customizable dashboards, identifying top ads and highlighting stats that mean most to you
- Detailed metrics for those who want to do a deep numbers dive
- Split test headlines and ad texts on a single campaign paired with audience targeting criteria. AdEspresso will run the tests and evaluate which elements are most optimal for you.
Overall best feature: Allows you to create ads from different platforms in one place. Monitoring the ads is easy because the data is organized in a single panel.
Website: https://adespresso.com/
Price: $49/month gets you unlimited ad accounts, google ads, Facebook, and Instagram campaigns as well as essential features.
User Review: “The best thing about AdEspresso is that it allows you to create ads from different platforms in one place. The creation of ads from this tool is simple and relatively easy to get used to each function it offers.” -Emily M, Sales Team Lead
Hootsuite Ads
With Hootsuite Ads, ad creation is quick and intuitive. The platform empowers you to have full control of the audience, placement, and budget. Create ads with as few as two clicks, and their automated targeting and bidding algorithms will ease you into Facebook ad management. That way the program does most of the work for you, by finding the optimum method of advertising placed in front of the audience most likely to click. This allows owners to build up a business with a tool that centralizes both paid and organic content.
- Hootsuite automatically scans your Facebook page and news feed, pursuing the best posts to promote your target audience.
- Receive aid in defining goals for each ad. With this, you will be able to modify your marketing campaign to achieve maximum results.
Overall best feature: Automatic creation of ads and analytical reports on campaign performance
Website: https://www.hootsuite.com/
Price: $49/ month allows for one user, ten social accounts, unlimited scheduling of posts, and access to messages in one inbox.
User Review: “This tool offers some great analytics where we can also see how different posts of ours are performing. Their customer support is definitely a good thing. I have been using this product in my company for several years now and I am highly hooked due to the user-friendliness attitude.” -Reynolds S, EB Operations Function Analyst
Facebook Business Manager
What better resource to use for information and guidance than Facebook itself? Although it is a very standard and basic tool, it is extremely user-friendly for smaller businesses as you can create, manage, and optimize your campaigns. Here are some simple steps to get started on Facebook Ads Manager:
- Create a Facebook page of your business (if there isn’t one created already)
- Provide info on what account, post, product, or service you want to promote
- Choose your target audience for the ad that best fits your consumer needs
- Set your budget to whatever you are comfortable spending at the ad set and campaign level.
- Track results and data analytics to understand what advertisements are successful
Overall best feature: Facebook-like dashboard for familiarity and allows accessing all Facebook business apps in one place. Plus it will always have the latest and greatest features from Facebook to explore and learn from.
Website: https://www.facebook.com/business/tools/ads-manager
Price: Free (Pay for Ads only)
User Review: “One of the things I liked the most about Facebook Pages Manager is that you can have real-time statistical control over who sees your publications, the number of reactions your page has, and the activity within it. It is handy for businesses that, like mine, move mostly through social networks.” -Gabriel A, Small Business Owner
AdStage (now Tapclicks)
If you are a small business looking to advertise on multiple social media channels outside of just Facebook, then this is the marketing tool for you. AdStage is a Facebook ads automation tool that saves you time on reporting. You can manage all your ads across all social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) through one customizable dashboard with built-in templates.
- Responsive and helpful company resources that can drive your campaigns
- Easy to pull up advertisement metrics with Google Sheet integrations
- Customizable dashboards in seconds that drive ROI
Overall best feature: Allows a report on a campaign, ad set, or ad and allows many different ways to filter and view information.
Website: https://www.adstage.io/
Price: $149/month for a support center including chat & email support, unlimited curated dashboards, google sheets add-on, and Google Data Studio connector
User Review: “Extremely easy to pull account and campaign data into Google Sheets to manipulate at your pleasure. This makes it simple to create dashboards or even deep analysis reports of your data.” -Anonymous, Small Business Owner in Marketing and Advertising
Qwaya
Feel like a seasoned marketing professional in the world of social media advertising? Qwaya is the Facebook ad management software created for professionals. It is more complex compared to other platforms, however, it delivers results and value with its features and tools. Creating ads is fairly simple in what seems to be a more experienced tool. Here are the platforms main features:
- A/B testing with advanced reporting side-to-side comparisons
- Target audience search options
- Offers library of ad templates with customization
Overall best feature: Create templates that can be utilized for your campaigns. You can easily publish hundreds of campaigns in an hour or two.
Website: https://www.qwaya.com/
Price: $149/month for one user, unlimited ads, and unlimited Facebook users.
User Review: “I like that you can create templates and use those for your campaigns. You can easily publish 600 campaigns an hour or 2. Doing it manually would take you ages.” -Anonymous, Small Business Owner in Information Technology and Services
Driftrock
Driftrock is known for automating the process of creating ads with a focus on lead ads. This is a Facebook ad tool that allows you to create visually appealing lead ads in minutes. You also have the capability of a custom bidding strategy and preferred payment methodology for ads. Overall, it is a robust platform that allows you to centralize your lead sources through one managed source. Driftrock enables you to have:
- A bidding strategy customization options
- Saved targeted audience groups and apply all ad variations
- Easy content reuse to create new versions of campaigns
Overall best feature: Simple to set up and able to create audiences within a short amount of time.
Website: https://www.driftrock.com/
Price: $149/month
User Review: We liked the automation with our CRM that captures granular user data, great support service, really helped us acquire and convert leads.” -Chris H, Small Business Owner
AdRoll
To maximize lead generation, AdRoll will be your right-hand man to reach customers when they’re most fascinated by your product or service. AdRoll has cross-device reach capabilities that seek out potential customers no matter what device they’re using, including tablets and smartphones. As a remarketing tool, AdRoll can boost brand awareness and improve your marketing across the social network. Here are its offerings:
- Generates a product feed for you to run dynamic ads
- Enables conversion and ROAS tracking
- Maximizes lead generation potential with remarketing
Overall best feature: As a retargeting tool, it makes sure they are taking back their client’s prospects to the things they are interested in most.
Website: https://www.adroll.com/
Price: $25/month guarantees brand growth through ads, email, product recommendations, audiences, integrations, attribution, and support.
User Review: The management team and the service they provide is the best, plus the creative team that we can utilize because of them. Having the ability to send off raw images and get professionally done creatives with a very quick turnaround is reassuring when up against a crunch.” -Jordan L, Digital Advertising Manager
Overall, these seven platforms will assist in executing solid marketing and advertising strategy on Facebook and Instagram. Due to social media’s increasing prevalence in society, it is difficult for small businesses to flourish without the assistance of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or YouTube. Utilizing Facebook Ad tools not only helps improve efficiency and leverage AI-based recommendations but is also an immense time-saver. Based on the information provided, you are now able to decide which platform best suits you and your business. Any of these tools will significantly help in growth and brand awareness.
Not ready to make the leap and manage your own Facebook advertising? Reach out to the team at Ombre Digital instead.
