Facebook might not have the kind of conversions that other channels boast, but the social network’s targeting capabilities are nothing to be sniffed at.

In his session titled Native Advertising: The Secret Weapon of Content Marketing, Pete Campbell, founder and director of Kaizen, tested Facebook’s accuracy at being able to push advertising to certain demographic groups

Campbell had used Facebook to see how many men in London over the age of 25 love Justin Bieber. According to the social network’s insights there were 138,000 people, which is approximately 1.4% of the UK capital’s population.

You too can use this invaluable targeting, but be careful to take into account Campbell’s following pointers when running your campaign.

1. Create and test multiple ads

When you set up a Facebook ad you should A/B test numerous variations of your headline so that you can increase the click-through rates the ad is achieving. 

Take a page out of Upworthy’s book where each writer is asked to come up with 25 different headline variations for each of their articles. The website then A/B tests them all to understand which is driving the best click-through rate. WordPress plugin AppSumo can help with this.

2. Think about the structure of your headline

On Facebook you should always develop your headline as a call to action, which can take the form of either a statement or a question.

For example a statement might be ‘Here are 25 Reasons Why Native Advertising is Awesome’, whereas a question could be ‘Why do Men in London Love Justin Bieber so Much?’

3. Use tags

Open your posts up to more of an audience than just your own following by inserting tags. For instance, you could boost your readership by including tags for other people or pages and maybe add a hashtag or two. If you are to stand any chance at spreading your post virally, this is the way to do it.

4. Dive into the Power Editor

The Power Editor in Facebook is designed for managing multiple campaigns, but a lot of people still do not use it. Some of the best options for advertisers using the social network are hidden in this tool. 

With the Power Editor you can set up a campaign to target job titles, so you could go after people who have journalist in their job title, for example. 

Alternatively, why not optimise your campaign for likes? Use a manual conversion specification like the one below to do this as it can calculate the cost 0per engagement for the likes you have gained and ensure you are getting value for money.

5. Add a conversion pixel

For any of the campaigns you have set up, it is always worth including a conversion pixel. The purpose of these pixels is to ensure you are getting good conversions off the back of the campaign.

6. Follow image best practice

Images within Facebook ads are really useful. A good image can almost double your engagement rate when compared to having a post with no photo at all. 

Previous tests show that images featuring women, bright contrasting colours and a curious call to action often work best. Just make sure you overlay your headlines while keeping to an optimum size of 1200 by 630 pixels. 

It is worth noting that Facebook also imposes a 20% limit on any text you use in an image.