Thinking about running your first Facebook ad campaign? Then you'll need this guide to get started with you ads. Facebook is used by almost 1 billion people worldwide. I bet you spend time on Facebook everyday, why not use it to build a business you can be proud of?
You post on your timeline to update friends and family, why not use it for advertising on Facebook with boosting your content or using Facebook ads to get in-front of a larger audience.
There are a lot of things to consider when setting up your first paid Facebook ad. You will find a lot of configuration needed to target the right audience, so keep in mind it can get really confusing if you're not sure what type of audience will be interested in you content.
These are some questions you might have to consider for your ads;
- Your targeting audience
- Image dimension
- Content in images
- Ad placement
- Location
- Age group
- Budget
- Length of campaign
With more than 1 billion people using Facebook and over 900 million active visitors every day, Facebook can easily provide an opportunity for marketers to optimize their organic content and reach a large audience. But this will require your time and money, and limited options on who to show your ads to over time.
To help you setup your first Facebook ad campaign, I've put together a short checklist for creating and optimizing Facebook Ads within 15 minutes.
Here is my breakdown:
There are a wide variety of paid Facebook ad options and placements, but there are three elements that make up the whole ad network for Facebook advertising:
1. Campaigns - You will find all campaign assets you need for you ads.
2. Ad sets - Targeting separate audiences with different needs, setup individual ad set for each campaign.
3. Ads - Ads you create can be found within your ad sets. Each ad set can hold a variety of ads from videos, images, gifs and more.
Now that you know what encompasses a Facebook campaign, lets get started creating an ad.
What Ad editor will work best for you?
You will find that Facebook offers users two different tools for creating a paid ad campaigns within their platform:
Facebook Ads Manager and Power Editor.
Deciding which one will best work for you by determining your company size and the number of ads you plan on running when you get started.
Ads Manager - Works best for most companies.
Power Editor - Works great for larger advertisers who are looking for more precise control over a variety of campaigns.
Create an objective on what you'll like to accomplish.
Facebook's Ads Manager, like many social media advertising networks, is designed with your campaign objective in mind. Before getting started, Ads Manager will prompt you to choose an objective for your campaign:
There are 10+ different objectives you can select from:
- Local awareness
- Brand awareness
- Reach
- App installs
- Engagement
- Videos views
- Lead generation
- Store visits
- Product catalog sales
- Conversions
By choosing one of these objectives, you're giving Facebook a better idea of what you'd like to accomplish with you campaign, thsia will help optimize your campaign for the following:
- App Engagement (taking action within your app)
- Page Likes (Facebook following)
- Website Conversions (leads for sales)
- Page Post Engagement (comments, shares and likes)
- Clicks to Website (Include your website url)
- Event Responses (Going or not going)
- Offer Claims (Discounts)
- Local Awareness (drive foot traffic)
- Video Views (Takes visitors to your video)
- App Installs from the app store (For downloading your apps)
Once you select on of this options, Facebook will then display the ad option that makes the most sense in terms of achieving this objective for your campaign.
Choose your Facebook audience
When choosing your audience, Facebook has a built-in filter that targets specific audiences, including options such as:
* Location * Age * Gender * Languages * Relationship * Education * Work * Financial * Home * Ethnic Affinity * Generation
* Parents* Politics (U.S. only) * Life Events * Interests * Behaviors * Connections
If you don't want to select any of this recommendations, you also have the option to select a Custom Audience you can create from scratch. Once you find a group that responds well to your ads, Facebook allows you to save these audiences to be used again later for other campaign you setup. You can also create as many custom audiences so you won't have to keep create new ones every time you setup ads.
Set your Facebook campaign budget
Facebook advertising budgets have 2 options - A daily budget or a lifetime budget.
Daily budget: Facebook will pace your spending per day. Keep in mind that the minimum daily budget for an ad set is $1.00 USD and must be at least 2X to 4X times your CPC.
Lifetime budget: Facebook will pace your spend over the time period you set for the ad to run. Example: If you set your ad run for a month, Facebook will configure you budget to run for the life time of your campaign.
Specify your budgeting further through advance options. This section allows you to specify a few things:
Schedule your campaign
Choose to run your campaign immediately and continuously or customize the start and end dates and start your campaign at a later time. You can also set parameters to have you ads only run during specific hours and days of the week that best suit you.
Ad Delivery
Delivery type falls under two categories: standard and accelerated. Standard delivery will show your ads throughout the day, while accelerated delivery helps you reach an audience quickly for time-sensitive ads (Note: this option requires manual bid pricing).
Create your ad
What do you want your ad to look like? It all depends on your original objective.
If you're looking to increase the number of clicks to your website, Facebook's Ad Manager will suggest the Click to Website ad options. This ad option is broken down into two formats: Links and Carousels. Essentially, this means that you can either display a single image ad (Links) or a multi-image ad (Carousel) with three to five scrolling images at no additional cost.
Once you decide between the two, you'll need to upload your creative assets. It's important to note that for each type of ad, Facebook requires users to adhere to certain design criteria.
For single image Facebook ads requirements:
- Text: 90 characters
- Link Title: 25 characters
- Image ratio: 1.91:1
- Image size: 1200 pixels x 627 pixels. (Use a minimum image width of 600 pixels for ads appearing in News Feed.)
For multi-image ads:
- Recommended image size: 600 x 600 pixels
- Image ratio: 1:1
- Text: 90 characters
- Headline: 40 characters
- Link description: 20 characters
- Your image may not include more than 20% text. See how much text is on your image.
Keep in mind that these are the ad options for the "send people to your website" objective only.
For "boost your posts," you'd be presented with different ad options that include; Page Post Engagement, Photo ad. This ad has a unique set of design recommendations. Once you select an ad type, the Ads Manager will prompt you to identify how you'd like to display your ad. The options they provide are as follows: Desktop News Feed, Mobile News Feed, and Desktop Right Column.
Desktop News Feed
Be aware if your ad isn't associated with a Facebook page, you'll only be able to run Desktop Right Column ads.
Report on the performance
Once your ads are running, you'll want to keep an eye on how they're doing. To see results, use your Facebook Ad Manager or Analytic tool.
Conclusion
Facebook ads have a call-to-action's (also called a CTA's), in the bottom right corner, which might say one of the following things for users to click on:
- Learn More
- Sign Up
- Download
- Contact Us
- Shop Now
- Book Now
- Watch More
- Apply Now
Facebook has a predefined set of CTA buttons. So, remember, you can spot Facebook ads by paying attention to these 3 things on your timeline:
1. A “sponsored” tag, below the name of the site being advertised on Facebook.
2. The prompt to like the page in the top right corner of pages being advertised.
3. A call-to-action button in the bottom right corner of a post on your timeline.
If this helps you setup your first Facebook ad, please don't forget to drop a comment and let me know what actions you took. If you also need help setting up you first Facebook campaign, please contact us here to get started.
Divine Tumenta is an entrepreneur and professional digital marketing expert based in Los Angeles. He has worked in digital marketing for more than 8 years. He is currently founder and CEO of backlinkfy.com and a go to consultant for startups and small businesses in the USA.
