Facebook Advertising is a great tool to have at your disposal as a small business owner. Especially if you have a great understanding who your target audience is. Facebook will put your ad on a plate in front of them. In this article, we will give you a clear understanding on how to get started with Facebook Ad’s.
Step 1) Create Business Manager
Facebook won’t allow you to run ads on your personal page. You have to have a Business Manager account. Head on over here to set one up. Click on create, add in all your details, link your page and away you go.
Next you will have to create, or add, and an ad account (say that 5 times fast) and add in your credit card details.
Then you should be good to go and able to start running ads.
Step 2) Types of Ads
Choosing the right objective is key to having a successful campaign. Facebook has optimized each of the below to target certain types of people, so make sure you have clear campaign goals in mind. Not sure, give us a shout and we’ll be happy to help.
- Brand awareness: Get your message in front of potentially interested people and build awareness around you.
- Reach: Get your ad in front of as many people as possibly, for a wide reach.
- Traffic: Get people over to your website.
- Engagement: Get people engaging by encouraging them to comment, like or share the post.
- App installs: Send clients to the app store, to download your app.
- Video views: Boost traffic to your videos, targeting people with the best chance of watching it.
- Lead generation: Get new prospective customers.
- Messages: Entice the customer to contact you on Messenger, WhatsApp or Instagram Direct.
- Conversions: Encourage people to take that next step with your product, such as “Buy Now”.
- Catalogue sales: Show off your products, with targeted products, encouraging purchasing.
- Store traffic: Target locals and get to come to your physical store.
Step 3) Create your Graphics
Head on over to Canva to get some graphics for your ad. They have so many templates to choose from, you will find one that suits your business and campaign in no time. Their easy to use drop-and-drag function allows you to edit the images easily. You can even create GIF’s or MP4 videos.
Step 4) Choosing Your Audience
Knowing your audience is key to running a successful business, even more so when running an Ad Campaign. Facebook gives you the options to really choose exactly who you want to put your message in front of. There are many different ways to aim at specific groups of people. These include:
Location: Advertise in the cities, areas or entire countries.
Demographics: Target your audience based on age, gender, education, income & many more.
Interests: Add interests and hobbies of your ideal audience, keep them interested in like-minded stuff.
Behaviour: Target your ads based on consumer behaviours e.g. purchase power, previously added to cart.
Retargeting: Aim at people who like your page, or have previously engaged with it, or even seen a previous ad.
At the bottom, Facebook will tell you how many people fit your targeting metrics. The aim of this is to get it over to the left-hand side as much as possible, but not too far into the red, where you won’t have many people to target.
Tip) Boosting A Post
If you are finding all the above too technical and overwhelming, we have a tip that is much simpler. Just boost an old post! Now, make sure this is a good post, with a clear graphic and interesting writing. Don’t waste your money boosting crap. To boost a post, when choosing an ad, select ‘Boost a post’ like below.
Like above, you will have to choose your audience, ad length and budget and what you would like the button to say and do. Facebook will automatically choose what your goal should be based on their insights of your page. However, you can override this and change it.
This article is intended for people new to Facebook ads, and there is a lot more in-depth knowledge I could have gone into, but we’ll leave that for another day.
