Facebook has nearly 2.19 billion monthly active users. Furthermore, 1.45 billion people log onto Facebook every single day. Your target audience is there just waiting to be discovered, and also waiting to discover your products. Users in Southeast Asia are no exception. As of January 2018, over 130 million Indonesians accessed the social network, with 67 million users in the Philippines and another 55 million in Vietnam.
There are a lot of things that go into a Facebook campaign, and making the right decisions throughout the process will lead you to success. When choosing “boost post” you are just letting Facebook decide everything for you.
There is, however, a science to advertising and various combinations to making it work. By selecting the proper categories for your campaign rather than a one-size fits all boost, you’ll be able to get the results you want for that region. It will take some tweaking, as Facebook changes their algorithms regularly, but staying up-to-date and trying new tools will allow your strategy to stay relevant with a Southeast Asian audience.
The first thing you decide when creating a campaign for Southeast Asia is your ad objective. This will impact who sees your ad.
Reach: This will find the lowest cost impressions within your target audience. This may include people who are not interested in you brand.
Traffic: This will show your ads to people have a history clicking on your site or are likely to.
Conversions: This will display your ads to people who are most likely to convert at the lowest cost.
Decide what the goal of your campaign is and match your ad objective to that.
Facebook has gotten very creative in the types of ads you can create. Video ads, canvas ads, and carousel ads are just some of the many possibilities. They even offer ads through Facebook Messenger now. Choose the ad that can tell the best story and aligns best with your objective for the Southeast Asia region. For example, carousel ads perform best for conversions, while video ads are great for reach and awareness.
When marketing in Southeast Asia, carousel ads have found high levels of success and engagement. That’s because these ads are specifically designed to be viewed on mobile, which is a major boost in a market that is mobile first.
You have many options when it comes to designing a carousel ad. Some best practices include choosing strong visuals, keeping a strong focal point, avoiding overcomplicating things, and completing the user journey with a call to action at the end.
As always, it’s a good idea to consistently test your ads. Consider changing visuals, experimenting with video content, or editing the copy to find what works best for you and your audience.
This determines where your ad will be seen. You can choose from mobile and desktop feeds, solely on Instagram, or the right side of your feed. The latter option, however, only works on the desktop. As mentioned earlier, Southeast Asia is particularly mobile-first so consider this when debating ad placement; right-side ads may not be the right choice. However, different brands see success in different areas, so test this out and see what works best for you.
With 302.3 million users active on mobile in Southeast Asia, it’s essential that you reach them where they are accessing social media. Newsfeed ads are a good option, but risky as your audience may simply scroll past them. Be sure to give ample consideration and testing to this feature to get the most you can from your campaign.
Custom Audiences: reach people you already know, such as existing customers or email subscribers.
Website Custom Audiences: retargeting people who have visited your site from any source. This will be a small group, but very well may perform the best.
Lookalikes: these are people who aren’t your customers, but share similar characteristics and demographics. This will help you reach new customers.
Facebook includes three different types of interfaces that you can decide between when it comes to building your ads.
Boost Post: this is the option that gives the least control to advertisers. It’s the easiest option and also allows you to publish a campaign quickly.
Ads Manager: more complex than Boost Post, but less so than Power Editor. This is the option that the majority of users leverage, as you also have more control than with Boost Post.
Power Editor: this is great if you manage multiple campaigns at once. This option allows users to edit campaigns on the large-scale.
What users are doing after they take an action on Facebook. This could include them going to your site and adding items to their cart but not completing a purchase. When this happens, it’s a great opportunity to retarget customers with another campaign.
As you’re able to see which ad a user clicks on, you can see which one is most effective. Use this information to tweak your campaign.
If your ad is really successful, Facebook will use the collected data to optimize your future campaigns. For example, if you earned 1,500 conversions, the platform will search for similar audiences to show your ads to.