Facebook Advertising 101

April 6, 2020 |
By Haris Alexandrou

Everything you need to know about Facebook ads

Facebook is a great platform, but it’s sometimes overlooked by a lot of businesses and brands as they find it intimidating. When first looking at Facebook ads you wouldn’t blame them there is quite a bit for a beginner to learn. With so many options and customizations, you can easily be forgiven for not even wanting to begin.

After your first few campaigns though you’ll begin to get the hang of it, while there are many options once you’re familiar with the platform it won’t seem overwhelming and you’ll soon get the hang of it. In this article, we’ll be teaching you how to set up your first Facebook ads campaign and get fantastic results.

Why advertise on Facebook?

There are loads of great reasons why you should invest your time and money into Facebook ads. The insane customization and creative control over your ads are one of the many reasons.

Perhaps, more importantly, the crazy audience options it gives you allow you to target the audience you want when and where you want. Want to target young mum’s interested in yoga? You can. Want to retarget a user on your eCommerce site who abandoned it at the checkout? There is nothing stopping you! The targeting and retargeting options available through Facebook Ads are exceptional.

Another great thing about Facebook ads is that they are connected to Instagram ads, meaning you get 2 for the price of 1 by being able to run a single campaign on both platforms.

Facebook Ads Guide

Now you know why you should be running Facebook campaigns, let’s get into the how. Before you begin each campaign you need to start from step one, ask yourself the questions you would ask before starting any marketing campaign on Facebook or otherwise. Without this strategy planning, you are sure to get overwhelmed when entering Facebook ads manager.

For each campaign ask yourself questions like:

  • What products or services am I going to advertise?
  • Who is my audience?
  • Will they be a cold or warm audience?
  • What is the objective of the campaign?
  • Do I want leads, brand awareness, site traffic, sales, or something else?

Once you have completed this step you’re ready for step two and on the path to creating great Facebook ad campaigns.

The objective

If you have already developed your strategy this step should be easy. This is the very first thing you see when creating your new campaign but could very well be the most important. The right objective for your campaign will bring you better results at a lower CPC (cost per click)

Facebook gives you the following options to choose from:

  • Brand awareness
  • Reach
  • Traffic
  • Engagement
  • App installs
  • Video views
  • Lead generation
  • Messages
  • Conversions
  • Catalog Sales
  • Store Visits

You will want to select the campaign objective that aligns with your goals. For example, don’t expect more purchases from your eCommerce store by running an engagement campaign. Do keep in mind that some of your goals might be more suited to more than one objective, in this case, don’t be afraid to split tests, this will tell you which one would work best.

Audience

This is where Facebook ads really shine, before you started you should have already come up with the audience you want to target. Now is the time to implement Facebook gives you several categories to define when creating your audience.

You can define your audience with the following:

  • Custom audiences, which target specific users from your email list, or users who have taken certain actions on your site, your Facebook, or your Instagram’s business profile.
  • Lookalike audiences, which replicate qualities from your custom audience
  • Demographic targeting
  • Location targeting
  • Interest/behavior targeting
  • Connection targeting, which determines if you want your ads to be shown to users who are or are not connected with your brand

Placement

Here is where you can also choose the placement of your ads as mentioned previously you can choose to run your ads on Facebook, Instagram or both. But there are also plenty of other customizations available. You can run ads with almost all the placement’s if you choose (you will need to test what works best for you), with the exception of story ads, you can only run these in the story placements.

Once you set your budget and have your copy ready, your all set! But don’t just set it up and forget about it. The last step is probably the most important.

Monitor your ads

Great, you’ve set up your first Facebook Ads campaign but the journey doesn’t end there. Facebook ads manager shows you all the information you could possibly want for each of your campaigns. Does your campaign have a higher cost per result than you like? Perhaps the CPC is too high? Get in there and start optimizing your campaigns to get the results you want!

Still, stuck? Don’t worry…we’re here to help contact the experts on Facebook Campaigns today. Let’s Talk about Social Media Paid Advertising Services!