Creating your first Facebook ad to advertise on Facebook can be a daunting experience. With so many options to choose from, questions to answer and decisions to make – it can be quite confusing. It surely doesn’t help that the first step (selecting the right type of ad) is the most important and a wrong choice can impact the effectiveness of your ad. Have no worry! I’m going to show you the basic steps to create ads, set up a budget, target the right audience for maximum reach and create a strong Facebook marketing strategy.
Here’s why advertising on Facebook can be an effective way to grow your brand or business
Facebook is a mega data giant and an extremely effective way to reach niche audiences or the world when you are running a social media strategy because they collect tons of data on each person using Facebook. If you want to read about it more in depth you can read one of my previous posts titled “How Facebook uses data”
With one billion people active on Facebook, running ads on the platform is a remarkable way to reach your business’ ideal audience, increase sales and increase brand awareness. Because Facebook has control on the targeted ads on your newsfeed if you follow the right steps and create a targeted campaign to the right audience its can boost your business or brands visuality that leads to sales, leads, or increased brand awareness even help with your SEO efforts. However, it is an investment of both time and your money, leaving little room for error or oversight.
Luckily, if you follow the steps in this guide to creating a Facebook Ad you can effortlessly create your first Facebook advertisement. Follow these steps to stay organized, keep your goal in mind and reach your dream audience to generate more leads:
How To Create Your First Facebook Ad Campaign
- Brand Awareness: This objective is a solid choice if you want more people to know about your brand. It can also be used to drive more general traffic to your website.
- Reach: This objective is helpful if your goal is to reach the maximum number of audience members over and over again in little time. Consider using this for promoting sales, limited-time offers, etc.
- Traffic: If your goal is to lead people to your website with no specific action (just to read your blog post instead of purchasing a product) boosted posts are a great option to try. Here’s How To Create a Strong Facebook Marketing Strategy
- Engagement: This is objective is perfect for getting more people to see your event or like your page.
- App Installs: We bet you know what this objective is for! Yep, getting people to download and use your app.
- Video Views: Again, this one speaks for itself! If video views and video engagement is your end game, this is the objective to go with.
- Lead Generation: This is ideal for sign-ups, newsletter sign-ups, or downloadable content. Instead of users having to navigate to your website, Facebook collects data (names, emails, phone numbers, etc) directly on Facebook and provides you with the information.
- Messages: If you’re one of the brands utilizing Facebook Messenger bots, this is the way to go! It entices your audience members to strike up a conversation with your Facebook page via messages.
- Conversions: If your goal is to directly make money through your ad, this objective is ideal. It aims to increase sales, purchases, and sign-ups on your website.
- Product catalog sales: This objective is best for e-commerce advertisers who sell a great variety of products (think a store selling clothes).
- Store Visits: If your goal is to increase foot traffic to your brick and mortar, give this objective a try!
Choose a Budget
News flash: You don’t have to spend big bucks on a Facebook Ad. One of its benefits over traditional advertisements is its low cost. Ads can be run for as little as $5 a day, and we recommend starting low until you get the hang of it. Facebook allows you to create daily or lifetime budget – making sure you stay on track. Pick a budget that is sustainable, comfortable but also aggressive. Facebook ads are a learning process. Learn what content your audience responds to best, and put more money behind those ads in the future.
Choose an Audience
If you aren’t showing your Facebook ad to a relevant audience, it’s simply a waste of your time, resources, money and energy. For example: You spend $500 during the month of October on a set of ads for Detroit Lion’s sneakers for men. However, you didn’t pay much attention to your audience selections and you targeted both men and women, aged 25 and under, all across America, who speak Italian. Yikes. You’ve just wasted $500. Your basic audience selections should have been men and women, in Detroit (plus surrounding areas), all age groups, interested in football, sports, Detroit Lions. We’ve added in women because it’s the holiday season and many gifts will be purchased, but do you see how limiting just to the Detroit area will make your audience preferences much more direct? Here are just the basic audience selections to make when creating your first Facebook ad:
- Location
- Age
- Interests
- Gender
- Languages
- Education Level
- Relationship Status
- Political Views
Choose a Format
There are several ad formats for you to chose from on Facebook! Though carousel ads and video ads tend to have the highest engagement and CTR rates, we encourage you to try a few and learn what your audience responds to best:
- Single Image
- Video
- Carousel (allows you to show several photos or videos)
- Slideshow
- Collection (opens to be a full-screen ad)
Choose a Placement
Objective? Check. Audience? Check. Budget? Check. Now it’s time to decide where you’d like to place your ad. Here are the three main locations on Facebook that you can choose your ad to be displayed:
- Newsfeed: Chances are if you recall seeing a Facebook ad recently it was on your newsfeed. These ads are placed seamlessly in between the posts that your friends and family share. It says “Sponsored”, but still feels personal and genuine as it can be liked and commented on just like every other post in your newsfeed.
- Right Hand Column: These advertisements are slightly hidden – and loaded right below the “Trending” topics section.
- Mobile Newsfeed: No doubt about it, most people browse Facebook on their phones, not via desktop. This makes placing your ad in mobile newsfeeds ideal. However, keep in mind that for this to be effective, your brand MUST have a mobile-friendly site. If not, your efforts will be lost once they navigate to your website and have a poor user experience.
Fill in the Details
From website URLs to text to headlines to Calls to Action, there are tons of small details to fill in. Remember, creating a Facebook ad isn’t something that should be rushed. Utilize clean, brief copy, engaging images and crisp headlines to help optimize your ad for the greatest success rate possible.
Time your posts
No two businesses are alike but timing is everything. So when is the best time to post on social media? Each platform from Facebook to Linkedin all have their own algorithms so time your posts strategically check your Google analytics for times that your traffic is the highest and read one of my previous posts linked above titled Best Times To Post On Social Media: Expectations vs Reality to get more detailed info on each social media platform.
Summary
One thing is for sure: Facebook gives you endless options to chose from when creating an ad. The good news is, once you become comfortable with the options and more practiced in creating ads, you’ll find these options will work in your benefit! Let us know how these tips work for you and look out for our upcoming blog post detailing tips and tricks of Facebook ads you probably didn’t know to exist!
