The world has long gone digital and whether we like it or not, the brunt rests on businesses to adapt to the ever-growing digital space. We may be right to thank the pandemic year for pushing more businesses to delve into online marketing. Since the end of the pandemic, consumers have found that purchasing can be a lot easier if done online and this has further necessitated the growth of digital marketing.
For starters, you should know that Facebook is the platform king of online business sales and adverts, so it’s an amazing place to start. Despite initially starting out as a platform for socializing and connecting with old friends, Facebook has long metamorphosed into a large digital market for business owners and brands.
Facebook have at least nearly 3 billion active users. Need I point out that the most successful marketing is not the one that reaches the “most people” but the one that reaches the “right people” and converts? This means before thinking of running Facebook ads you have to do proper research on your target audience to make sure that they constantly frequent the app. Else, you would be better off focusing on another social platform where your target audience can be found. For every business, the end goal revolves around making sales, building engagement/community, and even awareness. So to ensure the success of your business or brand, you need consumers.
What are Facebook ads?
Facebook advertisement is done on the social platform to promote products and services through text ads, images, videos, etc. Facebook ads do not require you to be an expert before you can use them. With self-help tools and how-to blogs like this one, you can create, run campaigns and also track the performance of each campaign.
3 Things to Consider Before Setting an Ad
Here are a few tips to note before running your Facebook ads;
– Know your platform: It is important to study the platform (Facebook) and also understand the algorithm. This helps you understand consumer behaviour on the platform and the kinds of content that work best on Facebook.
– Set goals for your ads: Ads with a clear objective are known to perform more effectively than others. This is because you can see if your ad is doing what you want it to do via tracking.
Facebook allows one set of 2 types of ads; Dynamic and Lead ads. Dynamic ads promote relevant items from your product catalogue and retarget them to people who have shown interest in your site. Lead ads give viewers an easy way to get the information they seek.
– Select your audience: Facebook ads allow for proper audience targeting. As such, you can create a target for your audience based on location, interest, age, etc. These criteria have been listed earlier on in this article. The location allows you to target people in a different environment or your immediate space. With demographics, you can set age, gender, etc.
How to Set up Your Account
To begin running ads, you have to set up your account. To do this, follow these steps;
- Go to ads manager and select an account
- Fill in the necessary details required to clarify why you are setting an ad
- Add payment method
- Select a payment method
How to set up Facebook ads
Create your account:
To start creating ads you need to set up an ad account. Once you have created your Facebook page, create your ad via the steps in the subheading above.
Start creating your ad:
Once you log in to your ads manager, you will see a performance dashboard that allows you to see all the ads that you have created and even analytics. You can begin creating yours by clicking on ‘create.’
Create your objective:
Creating your objectives helps Facebook ads better recommend the best-suited ad for you or your business. You can pick from a range of the listed 11 objectives.
Target your audience:
It is likewise important to define the kind of people whom you want to see your ads. Your audience should encompass people who have the purchasing power and will to meet your goal for the ad.
Facebook in-targeting allows you to define your audience based on the following criteria:
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Languages
- Relationship
- Education
- Work
- Financial
- Home
- Ethnic Affinity
- Generation
- Parents
- Politics (the U.S. only)
- Life Events
- Interests
- Behaviors
- Connections
You can also create a custom audience by targeting people who have visited your website or page in the past.
Set your budget:
Facebook allows you to pace and monitor your budget in two ways. You can either create a daily budget or a lifetime budget.
With a Daily budget, your ad spend is paced to last for the day. However, with a lifetime budget, your ad will run for as long as you want.’
Create your ad:
What you want your ad to look like largely depends on your objective for creating it. Here, you are required to design your content and copy in a way that will excite your target audience to take action.
Monitor performance:
Once your ad has gone live, it is essential that you monitor it consistently to determine if it is working. This helps you determine if you will need to tweak anything to ensure that your ad is well optimized.
Facebook Ads Campaign Objectives
Before creating your ad, it is essential to consider the result of such an ad. What do you want consumers to do when they come across your ad? Are you seeking for them to sign up for an event?
Objectives are essential when creating ads because they help you better determine the best-suited ads. Here are the objectives you will be required to choose from;
- Brand awareness
- Reach
- Website Traffic
- Engagement
- App installs
- Video views
- Lead generation
- Messages
- Conversions
- Catalog sales
- Store traffic
Benefits of Facebook ads
It is often said that Facebook provides the best return on investments (ROI) on ads.
- The most popular search term in the world is Facebook
- Most people use Facebook for at least 35 minutes per day
- About 68% of adults in the united states have an active Facebook account
Based on these figures, one can easily denote that Facebook advertising is a rather powerful tool for e-commerce marketing.
With Facebook advertising, you can reach people not just by location (countries, states, cities, and even zip codes), gender, and age, but also by interests, behaviours, life events, and many other alternatives.
Facebook ads give your business a higher chance to reach its targeted audience. Savvy business owners have cracked this code and as such, they never undermine the role of Facebook marketing on their business goals.
Just in case you’re still sceptical, here are a few things you can gain from running a Facebook ad;
Targeting:
Like ads run on other social media platforms, Facebook allows you to select your target audience passed on different criteria. These criteria include Gender, Age, Location, Spoken languages, Interests (expressed interests, likes, and hobbies from their Facebook profile), Education level or history, Job title, Income, Political affiliation, Interests, Behaviors, recent purchases, Major life events, etc.
This gives you the liberty to select the category of people whom you want to see the specific ad per time. You can also target people who have engaged with your post in the past and then build your campaign around your core audience.
Diversified ad Type:
A major benefit that Facebook ads have other social media platforms that allow businesses to create ads is the fact that it allows for diversified ads. This means that with Facebook ads, you are not limited to creating plain texts or photo ads. Instead, you can switch up your ad content with videos, and slideshows. You can create collection ads, playable, story ads, carousels, etc.
Collection ads allow you to create ads where multiple of your products appear in one ad. The most amazing part is that consumers are allowed to engage with each product individually.
Playables on the other hand are interactive demo games that users can preview before taking action. This ad type works best for game applications.
Just by setting up your Facebook ad page, you get access to creating these ad types and more. Great, right?
You Get to Pay Next to Nothing:
Marketers agree that Facebook ads cost next to nothing to run. As such, it is indeed suitable for small businesses yet to scale and also great for businesses with a rather large audience.
Facebook ads are operated on a pay-per-click basis. As such the only cost is associated with how many people click on your ad. The ad manager tool is also free to use.
Facebook ads are a more economical option compared to other forms of marketing and they offer the best return on investment.
Very Fast Results:
With Facebook ads, you start getting results almost immediately. This is because Facebook usually approves ads in the window space of 24 hours. Once this is done, your ad begins its work and is instantly shown to your target audience.
As such for an ad whose end goal is sales, if it is done right, you can begin to make sales in less than 3 days after your ad has gone live.
There’s an ad For Different Objectives:
With Facebook ads, you can create your ads based on the goal that you are looking to achieve with it. You may wonder that this also applies to other platforms, however for Facebook, it is more specific and niched down.
The ad platform allows you to set up ad objectives and then run with these objectives when creating your ad. As such, your goal may be business growth like leads, sales, and expanding visibility. For example, you can create ads to boost engagement on your high-value content and also page promotions, etc.
Conclusion
Facebook ads are effective as they help you reach a lot more people. The good part is it is cost-effective and you do not need a certificate before you start running your ads.
Small businesses and even individuals can run ads to promote different causes from time to time. In this article, I have touched on virtually everything you need to know to enable you to begin to run ads effectively. Now that you know how to create a Facebook ad, it is time to set up your own.
