Plant an idea, strengthen a brand: This is how to build an awareness campaign on Facebook

How do you formulate a strategy, who do you target, what is the mistake most of us make – and why do you need a lot of air? Ravit Goffman from Goffman Creative takes us on a trip down the panel

A short exercise: How many of you watched the election propaganda ads on television? Not many. The first broadcast night (September 3), which used to captivate crowds, this time garnered ratings of 8.6% on all three channels combined and then faded away. But how many were exposed to the political campaign digitally – from Netanyahu’s endless Facebook Live to Lapid’s “Natural Partners WhatsApp”, from Miri Regev’s mobile studio to Gantz’s running Gaza death clock? Almost everyone.

At the end of this decade, it seems that there is no longer any need to expand on the advantages of digital advertising in general and Facebook in particular. In 2018, the share of digital advertising in Israel equaled that of television for the first time – 36% of the pie. Digital advertising has seen a 12% jump, drawing NIS 1.4 billion in revenue in one year. Contrary to immediate instinct, this is not (only) a world for young people: seniors are consuming more and more content, including television, digitally. And just like young people, they share with the world their life status, vacation experiences, and rants about the situation on Facebook.

Facebook, it’s important to remember, is not just Facebook. Similar to Google’s Display Network (GDN), the world’s most popular social network operates a peer network with a wide variety of partner sites. Facebook’s advertising engine also gets us into Instagram (feed and stories), which it owns. Its advertising tools reveal to us, through the transitions, for example, also content consumers on websites and even users of games in apps. In short, we also have access to the last refuseniks who didn’t open an account, or who opened and closed it and have since told everyone that “no one is there anymore.”

So how do you advertise on Facebook? It seems like a simple business: you open a business page, upload a post and click the Boost button, or you receive the automatic offer to “boost and reach this and that reader for so and so shekels.” But like most things in life, digital advertising is more complex. In fact, it is a profession in its own right, and sometimes even an art.

Widening the funnel

“Everyone is on Facebook,” says Ravit Gofman, owner of the Gofman Creative advertising agency. “We are there every day, some all day – so it is natural that business owners want to advertise there. The first question I ask them is: For what? What would you like to achieve through the campaign? The answer to this question is crucial, since the goal of the digital campaign determines the type of campaign.”

“Awareness is the basis”, explains Ravit, whose firm specializes in Facebook awareness campaigns. “The goal of an awareness campaign is to plant an idea, introduce a new brand or strengthen the visibility of an existing brand, whether among the general public; a certain age, status or gender segment; or in a specific area.” And here comes another critical question in formulating the campaign strategy: For whom? If, for example, we opened a restaurant in a specific neighborhood in Netanya, then the target audience is local, unlike when launching a fashion line. If we are marketing back-to-school supplies, we will aim to expose as many students and parents of students to it as possible and as few irrelevant populations as possible, who will “waste” exposure and money for us.

“Facebook is a wonderful platform for targeting and segmenting audiences, but you need to know how to do it,” says Ravit. She mentions that the awareness campaign, which is designed to achieve exposure and brand recall, is just one of the existing types. Alongside it, there is a preference or consideration campaign – Considering – designed to bring the customer closer by means of engagement, increasing traffic, leaving a lead, installing an app or encouraging video views, as well as a conversion campaign – Conversion – designed to realize the potential for making a deal.

“We are talking about a funnel – a panel – that moves our customer from stage to stage and strengthens the relationship between us,” says the owner of “Goffman Creative.” “The basis of a successful customer journey is the awareness campaign: the wider the opening of the funnel, that is: more exposure and more clicks with an emphasis on relevant audiences, the more likely we are to achieve more conversions in the end.” A common metric in a Facebook ad campaign is Ad Recall Lift, which simply reflects the number of people who remembered it and were able to associate it with the brand within two days. This is of course only an estimate, not an exact figure.

Not for the faint of heart

A digital ad campaign can have several goals. These are the main ones:

1. Effectively handling the remarketing population – for example, those who entered the dedicated landing page we opened but did not leave a lead there.
2. Effectively handling the gap between leaving the lead and arriving at the meeting. This is a problematic range in which a significant portion of leads fall, after we have invested money and effort in them.
3. Creating awareness of a service that is difficult to predict in advance when it will be used, for example: law firms, locksmiths, and consulting in various fields.
4. Creating long-term awareness of the activity in order to create a preference when necessary.
5. A preliminary step towards a deeper advertising move, which will in turn drive conversions.
6. “Trial balloon” – testing the reactions to a new product or service.

“In most cases, this is a long-term path to building awareness,” concludes Ravit, “We have to assume that we will not see mass conversions tomorrow morning. The results are not immediate and have an amorphous nature. It is not for those with a short fuse, but it is definitely worthwhile.”