We know just how daunting the Facebook ads manager can be. Whether you’re a small business looking to use Ads for the first time, a freelancer wanting to expand your area of expertise or simply just want to know the basics of Facebook Ads this guide is a great place to start your learning.
So, why use Facebook Ads?
It’s no secret that Facebook Ads are continuously growing. More and more businesses are seeing the benefits of using the platform. But why? Because if used in the right way, they can be game changing!
Over 80% of internet users use Facebook, which equates to 2 billion active users each month. Specifically for Ads this equates to roughly 22 billion ad clicks per year. That’s a huge audience you could be targeting. Your audience is on Facebook somewhere, it’s just a matter finding them.
If you’re not already using this ever expanding tool, we seriously suggest you start to at least think about it. You are literally leaving thousands of pounds of revenue lying on the table.
Onto the technical Stuff
Facebook Business Manager can be somewhat daunting or confusing, so let us break it down for you.
So at the highest level we have the business manager. This is where you manage your brand/agency advertising account, this holds everything to do with your clients/brands.
Next we have the Ad manager, this hosts your ad accounts and is the place you manage them.
Then we have the Ad account, this is where you run the ads from, usually we recommend only one ad account per client to avoid any administrative confusion down the road.
Below that is the Ad campaign, this is the objective of the ad you are running, this could be traffic,conversions, engagement or reach.
On step down is the Ad set. To think of this simply it’s your audience/optimisation. Who are you trying to target? What placements do you want to show to them?
Last but by no means least is the Ad, the creative, the copy and the link to where you want to send them. .
Top Tip – Test as much as possible, visuals, audience — rule of large numbers, the more ads you can fire off the more you will learn, the quicker you will find that sweet spot of customers that help you achieve your business goals.
Speaking of goals, next we need to set them. What is it you want to achieve, think about marketing objectives? Is it increasing website traffic, generating new sales, or having better engagement? Below is how Facebook splits out the types of campaigns.
Awareness – this is generally used to generate interest in your product or service. This is used to introduce new customers to your business, people can’t purchase something before they know it exists.
The categories you would look at are:
- Boost your posts
- Promote your page
- Reach people near your business
- Increase Brand Awareness
- Increase your reach
Consideration – This what potential customers would do before buying, they might be thinking about your brand, product or service and want to seek more information.
The categories for those are:
- Send people to a destination on or off Facebook
- Get installs of your app
- Raise attendance at your event
- Get video views
- Collect leads for your business
Conversion – Conversion takes interested customers and encourages them to buy or use your product or service.
Below conversion we have:
- Increase conversions on your website
- Increase engagement in your app
- Get people to claim your offer
- Promote a product or catalogue
- Get people to visit your shops
Note-if you’re wanting to choose conversion you will need to add the Facebook pixel to yours, or your clients website. If you’re not familiar with the pixel, it’s a tool that lets you see what you customers are spending their time doing on your website. You must do this before being able to retarget people who have visited your website.
Once you have chosen the type of campaign you would like to run its time to name the campaign. Don’t just give your campaign a random name, it might be easy to tell the difference between two at first, but as you build more campaigns it can become confusing. We like to have a naming formula and stick to it, that way if you have more than one person working on a campaign they can also easily navigate business manager.
Ad Set
Similarly with naming the campaign, you want to give your ad set a name that makes sense.
Here is where you are going to define your audience and budget. When first starting out with ads, it’s important to experiment with different audiences to find the right one for yours or your clients brand.
The demographics you can play with are:
- Location – This is relevant if your product only ships to a specific country or if you have a bricks and mortar business in a particular area. So this starts at country level, then goes down to state or county, then to city, zip code, address and you can refine it even further to target people within a mile radius.
- Age
- Gender
- Languages
- Interests – To find this information Facebook looks at a person’s interests, activity, and the Pages they like.
- Behaviours – Things like purchase behaviour and intent, how they react to similar ads or pages.
- Connections – This enables you to show to the ad just to people connected to your page and vice versa.
Now, think outside the box with audience. Sometimes it isn’t the most obvious route that will be the most successful.
Setting your budget
There are two ways in which Facebook allows you to set your budget.
- Daily: A daily budget is the amount you’re willing to spend every day.
- Lifetime: A lifetime budget is the maximum that you’ll spend during the lifetime of your advert. Facebook averages this out over the period the advert is set to run.
Different companies like to work in different ways, there is no best practice way to work. The daily budget allows a little more control over when and where the budget is spent whereas lifetime leaves a little more of the work up to Facebook.
Also remember budgets can be set at the adset or campaign level, but that’s a whole other blog post entirely.
Creating your ad
There are different types of ads you can use, it’s important to find the most effective one for your brand.
Image – we think you can guess this one!
Video – this is an easy one as well.
Slideshows – this format is a combination of images or videos, text and sound. You can include three to ten images or one video.
Carousel – simply enough, you can showcase up to ten images or videos in a single ad, each containing its own link.
Instant Experience – this enables the viewer to immerse themselves in a full-screen experience that opens up after clicking on the ad.
Collection – The collection format features multiple products and opens as an Instant Experience when someone interacts with it.
Here are the different specs for both stills and videos.
Image specs:
Recommended image size: 1200 x 628 pixels
Image ratio: 1.9 1:1
Video specs:
Format: .MOV or .MP4 files
Resolution: at least 720p
File size: 2.3 GB max.
Recommended aspect ratio: widescreen (16:9)
The wordy bit
Sometimes people think that all that matters in an ad is the images. Wrong! The text adds information, personality and can draw the customer in. First, you want an attention grabber; tell the audience what it is you’re selling and why they’re going to want it. End with a call to action, if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
The three areas of copy on the advert are the Primary text, the description and the headline. These snippets of text appear in different places in different ads, so its important to preview and test them out.
Final bit of advice, the biggest tip we can give you when it comes to Facebook adverts is to test until you’re blue in the face. Try different images, play with video and see what merits the best response. Add in different variants of copy, use different language and different CTA’s.
As a Facebook advertising agency, we can help with all different areas regarding Facebook Ads, from creative to digesting the numbers. If you would like a hand with your Ad account schedule a call here.
