Before starting your Facebook advertising campaign, it’s critical to understand that the best way to manage your campaigns is by using the Facebook Pixel or the Conversions API if you want to engage your target audience in actions outside of Facebook (such as likes and follows) and direct them to your website to complete an important action for you (such as a purchase). These need some technical setup but are essential for displaying the results of your advertisements.
Facebook Ad Goals, Campaigns, and Ad Types
Feeling ready to advertise on Facebook? In the following sections, you’ll find out how to get started.
What goal do you want to accomplish with your Facebook Ad?
- More website visitors
- More customers
- Larger follower base
- Event registrations
- Wider reach
Not sure about your goals and how to proceed? Book a free consultation appointment, and we’ll help you!
After selecting your campaign goal and target audience, you can choose from several ad formats that determine your ad’s appearance. The available options include:
- Single image ad
- Carousel ad
- Video ad
- Instant experience ad
- Product feed ad
It’s worth running multiple ad formats simultaneously to discover which one appeals most to your target audience. The most successful advertisers on Facebook continually use A/B testing methods to achieve the best results.
How to create your first Facebook ad?
Selecting your campaign goal
Select your campaign goal from the options above, as this will define the actions Facebook aims for and the user characteristics taken into account when displaying your Facebook ads to potential customers. At this point, think about the budget you want to allocate to your campaign and the time frame for running it.
Target audience
The targeting of your audience, which may be decided at the ad set level, is another essential component of your campaign in addition to specifying the campaign goal. You have the option to select excluded or particular audiences here.
You have two main options:
- Interest-based audience
- Custom audience
1. Interest-based audience
Choose from a variety of categories based on data collected by Facebook, each linked to a certain demographic. Examples include “Sports,” “Dog Lovers,” “Vacation” interest groups, or even parental, marital status, educational background, or job position. Combine these with demographic targeting to reach your desired audience. To target older students, for instance, choose the relevant educational institution, the “Students” and “School” interest groups, and set the targeting to 30–50 years old.
2. Custom audience
With custom audiences, you can target people who have shown interest in your business in some way. This can range from liking a Facebook post, visiting a specific webpage, or even adding a product to their cart. This technique, which is an essential component of ad management, is also known as retargeting campaigns. Imagine someone visiting your website, adding a product to their cart, and then closing the browser for some reason (e.g., getting off the tram). In this situation, it would be beneficial to target this person with an advertisement for that product to push them to complete the purchase. Retargeting campaigns should play a key role in your marketing strategy because they typically generate higher returns. Additionally, you can mix the two targeting strategies to deliver special offers to a more specific audience. During ad management, it is advisable to test various audiences to determine which is the most effective.
Crafting Compelling Ad Content
It’s time for the creative part. It’s crucial that the creative content align perfectly with our campaign’s objective. For instance, the content should be attention-grabbing if our objective is to reach a larger audience; if our goal is to increase sales, the content should have a clear call-to-action (CTA).
The ad’s text and visuals must convey a clear message. Longer or shorter texts can be tested, but you should always aim to make your ad content easily understandable for your target audience so they can relate to it. For the visual (or video) aspect, showcase appealing options for your target audience, as it’s not about what we like but about what resonates with those we’re targeting. Try to create unique content that blends in with other existing Facebook content.
In this part of ad management, test multiple versions, and don’t be afraid to mix and match interesting combinations, as they might hit the mark.
Measuring Results and Optimization of your Facebook Ads
After launching your campaign, it’s time to wait for the results. Optimization: Based on various metrics, you can decide which campaign (targeting, ad, creative) performs better than others. You can make minor adjustments, try new ideas, and scale up the best-performing ones. This brings you closer to achieving your goal and helps your business become increasingly well-known, larger, and more profitable week by week, month by month.
Summary
Of course, this is a beginner-level, quick guide that even non-techies may grasp. While this article can help anyone create their own Facebook campaign, achieving guaranteed success requires a broader perspective, capitalizing on more opportunities, investing significant time, and mastering technical settings.
If you don’t have:
- Time
- Interest
- Expertise
- Desire
To manage Facebook ads, or you want professionals to handle ad management for your company, don’t hesitate to book a free consultation!