A 10-year digital marketing veteran, Matt Hogan has found himself down a number of digital avenues throughout his career. From display to POP, email to native, and almost everything in between, Matt is now the Paid Social Manager at Adzooma.

In charge of all of Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads, Reddit, Quora, Capterra, and Etsy, as well as dabbling in Google and Microsoft, Matt’s spent around £700,000 on Facebook Ads in total, and generated thousands upon thousands of leads for the business.

You can follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

So first off, tell us the best thing about advertising on Facebook…

For me, the biggest benefit to advertising on Facebook would have to be the wide audience you can reach. The number of people that visit Facebook on a daily basis is estimated to be over 1.5 billion. With such a vast amount of active users, from all over the globe, it’s easy to see how it’s appealing for marketers.

You throw in the various different creative and placement options, then the appeal just gets bigger and bigger.

Just how specific can you get in terms of audience targeting?

You can drill down the audience targeting to get quite granular. Some targeting areas on their own can be more generic; like Demographics (age, gender, marital status etc.) and Location. But you pair that with Interests and Behaviour targeting and you can build a rather refined audience.

However, it can sometimes depend, for example, if you wish to target a certain group or page, sometimes it wouldn’t appear in the targeting. Whereas other groups and pages will. When it works, it can be a great way to get your ads in front of people you know will be interested in your product.

Do people actually bother clicking ads on Facebook? Aren’t they just on there for their mates?

People most certainly do. A lot of people will click your ad. If your audience is targeted enough, and the ad offering is relevant enough, you’ll get the clicks you’re after. For sure.

You are right in thinking that some people’s intent might be different, a lot of people visit Facebook to connect with friends, family, watch videos or play Farmville for hours on end. But if your offering is targeted enough to that person, they’ll be likely to click through.

The buyers intent is definitely there on Facebook, which is why Facebook makes billions of dollars through advertising revenue each year.

Read: 44 Practical Facebook Marketing Tips For Businesses

What about Instagram?

Even though the number of daily users is lower on Instagram than Facebook, the appeal is still strong. You’ll see businesses of all sizes advertising their wares on Instagram. That’s because the active user base is still there. 6 in 10 Americans log in to Instagram every day making it the second most logged-in-to social media platform. Second to? You guessed it, Facebook.

People use Instagram for the images, that’s obvious. So if you can really crack that creative nut, people will like your image, click through and, hopefully, sign up or purchase.

Is it all about acquiring leads? Or are there or other benefits?

No, it’s not as black and white as just lead gen or conversions. There’s multiple objectives and end goals you can achieve through Facebook marketing. For example, Brand Awareness, App Installs and Engagement. Plus others.

So if you’re looking to build that brand awareness and increase exposure, Brand Awareness will be for you. Looking for more likes and shares on your posts? Engagement will be the ticket.

There are multiple goals that can form part of your social media marketing strategy. And they’re all worth exploring.

What kind of CPA on average do you see from your ads?

This can be a tricky question, the straight answer is £40-£45 CPA.

Now for the politician’s answer, to fully understand that CPA number, you need to think about the value of that lead/sale to your business.

I may be getting a low CPA of £20-£30 on a campaign; but is that lead valuable to the business? Do they buy or complete other revenue-driving actions? Or do they sign up with junk information never to be heard from again?

On the flip side, I’ve run campaigns where the CPA has been higher, £70-£80. But the worth of them leads is much greater to the business.

So there’s no one size fits all to this question.

Read: How Much Does Facebook Marketing Cost?

Are Facebook campaigns easy to set up from scratch even for real novices?

If you’re a total novice, then creating that first campaign can be daunting. There’s many moving parts and it can be easy to miss something. I’d recommend learning the structure of a campaign and as much about the different elements as you can. You’ll often find guides, videos or advice online, which you can always turn to.

In fact, we’ve written a comprehensive guide to setting up a Facebook campaign. I’d certainly recommend checking that out.

How much digital marketing knowledge do you need to be successful with Facebook Ads?

You certainly need some knowledge about the digital marketing world. However, I’m a firm believer of learning by doing. Again, answers will always be online should you ever need it. There’s certainly a good amount of jargon that you’d need to understand. Terms like CTR (click-through rate), CPA (cost per acquisition), CPL (cost per lead), CPC (cost per click), ROI (return on investment) and ROAS (return on advertising spend). All metrics that someone who’s looking to run a profitable campaign will need to understand. Not just the terms either, but the actual figures and why/how that’s impacting your campaign.

Who are Facebook Ads designed for? Small business or big corporations?

I’d certainly say both. You’ll find ads for some of the world’s biggest corporations, Nike, Adidas and the rest. And you’ll also find ads from Billy the Builder down the street.

If I had to choose, I’d say medium to bigger corporations are more likely to take advantage of its potential more than smaller businesses. Simply because the bigger corps will have the budgets to run huge campaigns; they’d have the staff to manage the campaigns and the design teams to create some amazing creatives.

However, I wouldn’t let that put the smaller businesses off. The advertising real estate is there for all, and businesses of all sizes should be taking advantage of it.

What is one thing you’d say to someone who’s hesitant about advertising on Facebook?

In one word? TEST!

Test everything. Test different creatives, different destination pages, different ad copy, different offerings, different everything. And never stop testing.

I’d also recommend spending some time learning the Facebook Ads structure, the interface and the terminology. Just to give yourself that helping hand.

There’s a free learning course called Facebook Blueprint, go check that out. Along with a free Facebook tool called Audience Insights. That’ll allow you to build an audience and get familiar with it before diving in.

When/if you decide to dive in, start small in terms of budgets. You don’t have to spend the earth to make it a success. If the campaign starts performing, increase that budget slowly. Reach more people + more leads/conversions = winner winner chicken dinner!

Oh and run multiple ads against each other. All too often I see campaigns that are only running one ad, which I’m against. You’ll never know how well that ad is doing if you have nothing to compare it to.

Minimum of 3 ads per adset, and have different adsets for each targeting topic or theme. You can then monitor the ads’ performance, once there’s enough data, pause the underperformer and launch a new ad in its place. Use the top-performing ad, duplicate it, make small tweaks and repeat.

There’s more, but we’d be here all day.

Ciao!