It’s no secret that Facebook organic reach for Business Pages is in single digits. However, this doesn’t mean you should just abandon Facebook. What it means for your business is that now is the time to be very diligent with your Facebook marketing. Needless to say, you have to post stellar content on the platform all the time. Plus, you might also consider creating Facebook ads for your best, most important posts.
I am not saying that you need to mindlessly boost all of your posts. What I am advising is that if you feel that a given piece of content truly deserves more attention, then don’t shy away from putting a few dollars behind it.
Facebook still remains a social media giant with its impressive audience size of more than a billion people. Your current and potential customers are out there. You just need to find ways to reach them. You developed killer content (very relevant, unique and fresh; people would love to see it in their news feeds!). Now what? Now, you decide you want to create Facebook ads to reach your ideal audience with your amazing content.
I personally love advertising on Facebook because of its robust targeting and tracking features.
I am not saying that you need to mindlessly boost all of your posts. What I am advising is that if you feel that a given piece of content truly deserves more attention, then don’t shy away from putting a few dollars behind it.
I am getting ahead of myself here. Let’s start from the beginning.
Let’s start by familiarizing ourselves with the ways you can create Facebook advertising. There are two options: the Facebook ads manager and the Power Editor.
Although Ads Manager is not nearly as rich in features, it’s much more user-friendly. Learn how to advertise on Facebook with Ads Manager before jumping on to Power Editor.
Once you decide to move to sophisticated levels of Facebook advertising, you will be able to save a lot of time with bulk uploads and edits. But for now, we’re making ads in Facebook ads manager.
Independently of how you create Facebook ads, the basic building blocks are the same. Any ad consists of:
- Campaign
- Ad set
- Ad
Campaigns are comprised of one or multiple ad sets. Different ad sets are made up of one or multiple ads.
Campaign-level settings
First, you create a campaign. At campaign level, you name your campaign. Name your campaign something meaningful, so that when you have multiple campaigns running, you can easily differentiate between them. I name my campaigns after general messaging or promotion. So, I can call my campaign a “Black Friday promotion” or “Instagram marketing guide sign up.”
At campaign level you also choose your advertising objective.
The most simple, yet the most important and difficult question to answer is “what are you trying to accomplish with a Facebook ad?” Do you care about people engaging with your posts, liking your page or going straight to your website? We want it all, but you have to choose and focus on one objective at a time.
Once you choose an objective for your campaign, all of the ad sets in it will be optimized for that specific objective.
- Brand Awareness: Increase awareness for your brand by reaching people who are more likely to be interested in it.
- Reach: Show your ad to the maximum number of people.
- Traffic: Send more people to a destination on or off Facebook.
- Engagement: Get more post engagements, Page likes, event responses or offer claims.
- App installs: Get more people to install your app.
- Video views: Get more people to view your video content.
- Lead generation: Drive more sales leads, such as email addresses, from people interested in your brand or business.
- Conversions: Drive valuable actions on your website or app.
- Product catalog sales: Create ads that automatically show products from your product catalog based on your target audience.
- Store visits: Get more people nearby to visit your brick-and-mortar locations.
Ad sets settings
At this level, we will define your audience, budget and schedule.
Specifying audience
In order for any advertisement to be effective, it has to be seen by right people at the right time. Facebook offers one of the most sophisticated targeting tools with intricate ways to target people based on their demographics, interests and even purchasing stages.
Facebook has such impressive targeting capabilities, it’s getting scary. After the basics like gender, age and location, you can dive deep into people’s interests and life stages. For example, you can target people in the market for a specific car make or model, or appeal to parents of newborns, or target people at specific income levels, plus interests and lifestyles such as frequent travelers or readers of Entrepreneur magazine. Hone in on your audience by specifying as many demographic, socio-economic and lifestyle characteristics as you can.
You can also choose to target people who are connected to your Page (they or their friends have liked the page) or not connected to your Page. This can be great for later stages in a purchasing decision. For example, if they already follow you on Facebook, they might need just a little reminder of your business to hire you.
Once you feel comfortable to venture into custom audiences, you can upload your own audiences and target people based on their email addresses, phone numbers, user IDs and visits to your website (this is why you need Facebook Pixel). You can also tell Facebook to create “Lookalike Audiences” based on the shared traits of your audience. In my experience, it can make a big difference in your targeting, because Facebook evaluates tens or hundreds of characteristics and signals, which we humans simply cannot do.
Choosing ad placements
There are 7 main placements you can choose for your ad to be shown at:
- traditional desktop News Feed,
- mobile News Feed,
- right-hand column,
- Instant Articles,
- in-stream videos (not available for all of the objectives),
- Instagram feed,
- Instagram Stories,
- and Audience Network (which is simply other mobile apps and websites that partner with Facebook).
Each location has its strengths and weaknesses. Clearly, the most straight-forward advertising placement is the News Feed. When people in your target audience scroll through their friends’ posts, they will see your posts as any other posts except for a little “Sponsored” disclaimer on top.
Mobile News Feed is exactly the same, except depending on your preferences it includes or excludes people on mobile devices. Be careful with any mobile-based placement. If your website is not mobile-friendly and not optimized for mobile devices, better uncheck this option. If you want people to download a file or watch a video, it might be a great idea to check “Only when connected to Wi-Fi” to make your advertising more effective and chances for conversion higher.
Want even more guidance on how to create highly-converting ads? Download a free guide!
Setting budget and schedule
Here you specify a budget for your specific ad sets. If you have one ad set, then it will the budget of your whole campaign. Insert the amount you want to spend and specify whether it is on a daily basis (for example, $10/day) or a lifetime budget (for example, $100 for the whole campaign).
You will also need to pick a start and an end dates or decide to run it on a continuous basis. Facebook will calculate the cost for your whole campaign based on the specifications you input. Facebook will never spend over the specified budget and the funds can always be added (if the campaign is successful and you want to continue) or stopped (if campaign doesn’t perform well).
Ads settings
Here is where the fun begins! At ad level, you get to be creative. Choose a format of your ad to include one or multiple images or videos. Insert text and headline.
Remember, your image or video need to stand out and catch an eye of a casual newsfeed scroller. Your headline should be punchy and clear. Finally, your text has to further explain the headline and give any necessary details or create an incentive to click the ad. Do not go over the board and try to tell your whole work’s purpose in one ad, but do strive to tell a story and pull them in.
Choose a relevant call-to-action. It is best if the call to action matches the action you want them to take on your website, such as contact or book you, or download a file.
Finally, enable Pixel tracking on all of your ads to measure your website conversions. You’ll see your results in Ads Manager along with performance of your ads.
Now, let’s create your first ad together with these step-by-step guides for two common marketing objectives: Traffic and Lead Generation.
Experiment with Facebook advertising with little dollar amounts first to get a feel for what results you get, what statistics tell you, what insight you can gain from test ads and how much you should expect to pay.
Also, make sure you’re trying different ads and play around with its content and placement. Expect first Facebook ads to be a little pricey, but as you get better at targeting and understanding the types of content people engage with the best, the cost of running ads will get lower. It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with fixed amount versus bidding price models and understand whether you’re paying for impressions or actions. Simply, just learn how to advertise on Facebook and get comfortable with ads creation before making any decisions of its worthiness.
Facebook offers lots of information and help for people looking to advertise with them.
Have you tried Facebook advertising? What were your results and thoughts? Let me know in the comment section below or head over to Facebook to continue the conversation.
