If you own a business, manage a Facebook page for a business, or are responsible for marketing a business, you’ve no doubt heard of Facebook advertising.
You’ve probably received plenty of solicitation emails from Facebook as well.
Facebook wants to make it easy for you to advertise your business, but as a professional digital marketing firm, we want to make sure you do it right. If you think that digital advertising is over your head, we’re here to break it down into a usable guide to getting started on Facebook Ads Manager.
Let’s get started!
What’s the Difference Between Website Click, Page Like, and Promoted Posts Campaigns?
Great question, and it’s also the first question that Facebook asks you when you begin organizing your campaign. Log into Facebook and click on the Ads Manager icon on the left of your screen.
Once you’re in the Ads Manager dashboard, click the green Create Ad button in the top right corner.
At this point, Facebook wants you to decide what you want your ads to do:
Do you want more Likes on your Page?
Do you want to send traffic to your website?
Do you want engagement on your posts? Facebook started using an algorithm to decide what content your audience sees years ago, which means your posts only reach about 10% (or less!) of your audience without advertising.
So choose your objective thoughtfully. We’re just going to cover the Website Traffic objective in this post, but if you want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, you can always contact us here.
Input the URL you’d like to use—remember, this will be where the user lands after clicking your ad, so choose the page you send them to carefully.
Sometimes the home page is the most effective landing page, but more often than not, a landing page specifically designed for your ad’s call to action is more effective.
Define Your Audience with Facebook Ads Manager
Facebook has more than a billion active users, but the amount of psychographic data Facebook (and its ad partners) has on your audience is the real value of this platform.
But before we get to the fun part, fill out the basics—choose a gender (or don’t), select your geography, age range. The graphic on the right will show you your audience size based on your targeting—the more specific you are, the fewer people you will target.
Targeting a small group of people is not a bad thing.
Add Interest Targeting for your Audience
Start by targeting the interests of your audience—are you selling sports memorabilia for a specific team? Type the team name into the Interest box. You can browse through the Interest categories the Facebook provides, or you can search on your own.
Once you’ve done this, you might decide that’s good enough for your campaign. Feel free to skip down to the budgeting portion of this post.
Or, check out this sneaky tip for pinpoint targeting…
Add Demographic Targeting for your Audience
It’s incredible how much data we give to Facebook, sometimes unknowingly. As a marketer, we want to use as much data as possible to serve relevant ads to people.
For example, if I owned a wedding photography business, I can serve ads about my engagement photo service to people women who have their Relationship Status set to engaged by using the Demographics tool.
Is it creepy? Maybe.
Is it useful? Definitely.
Again, let’s serve ads that are actually relevant to the current needs of people. I mean, since we have the data.
Setting Your Budget with Facebook Ads Manager
I recommend changing the Facebook default Daily Spend to the Lifetime Spend and choosing a date range. I find it easier to keep track of my campaigns this way, and since most billing is done on a monthly basis, our finance people also find it easier 😉
Now, let’s design some compelling ad copy and graphics!
Designing Your Facebook Ad Creative with Facebook Ads Manager
For single image ads (Advanced users may consider multi-product ads) you may choose up to six images.
Upload six of your own images. Check out this post on choosing effective images.
Pro tip: Don’t use light blue!
Through a partnership with Shutterstock, Facebook offers you a ton of free photos to pick from—this has saved me on more than one occasion when I was running low on available artwork.
Use with caution, however: People get burned out on stock photos pretty quickly.
Writing Effective Ad Copy with Facebook Ads Manager
Craft a snappy headline (25 characters or less!) that grabs attention. Keep it light. Try to step into somebody else’s shoes and ask yourself:
Would I click on that? Is that corny?
Follow up with some compelling ad copy (you only get 90 characters) and don’t forget a call to action—what do you want the user to do? Sometimes it may be to click to learn more, other times it might be to shop now.
Don’t be shy about asking for your desired action. Remember, it’s the Internet—don’t make people think too hard.
Lastly, don’t forget to link your ad to your Facebook Page—this will make your ad look more professional.
With all that said and done, you’re ready to launch your ad. Give it a once-over and set that bad boy live.
Feels good doesn’t it?
Split Testing with Facebook Ads Manager for Maximum Success
Oh, you thought we were done!?
Turns out, if you want to get the most out of your Facebook ad campaigns, you should really be split testing. Or you may want to upload more than six different images to test—for bulk ad editing, Facebook Power Editor might be a better option.
Don’t know what split testing is, or do you have an idea for a more complex campaign? Then it’s time to give us a call.
But if you’re going to go it alone, good luck on your Facebook ads campaign!