Running Your First Facebook Ads
Over the last few years, Facebook ads have emerged as a powerhouse in the marketing world.
Advertising on Facebook increases every day and they are constantly implementing new features to help get your products out to their user base.
But why would you want to advertise where EVERYONE else is advertising?
Wouldn’t it be a waste of money to advertise on Facebook?
Well, no it is not a waste of money, and not everyone is advertising on Facebook.
Commanding a user base of nearly 2 billion users, there are plenty of people out there to advertise to. I can guarantee the majority of your competition does not understand the importance of good Facebook advertising.
There are some simple ways that you can get started with Facebook Ads, with a budget as low as $5 per day.
Step 0: Setting Up Your Facebook Page
The first step is to create a Facebook page. If you haven’t already done so, you need to head over to Facebook for Business and click “create a page” button.
Click on “create a page.” The following page will allow you to select the type of page you would like to create.
Once you determine the type of page you want to use, you will be asked to fill in some additional information. Once filled in, click “Get Started”. This will take you to your Facebook “Fan” Page. You can fill in all of the information on that page. Since we are talking about Facebook Advertising, I don’t want to spend too much time going through that.
Step 1: Setting Up Your Ad Account
After you have created a Facebook Page, you will want to head over to Facebook For Business. Login with your personal account and then hit “Create Account”.
Fill in your business name and your information. Once you have filled in that information you will be taken to the home screen. You will then want to fill out your Billing and payment method. Click the three lines next to Ads Manager. Then Click “All Tools” to expand the menu. On the far right side you will find the “Billing & Payment Methods”.
You will then be taken to another screen where you will enter your payment method. Click “Add Payment Method”.
Then fill in your credit card information.
Once you have entered your payment information you are ready to run an ad.
Step 2: Setting up the Campaign
Go to your ads manager and in the upper right had corner click the “Create Ad” button.
You will be then be taken to this screen where you will choose your campaign objective. I primarily use “Traffic” and “Conversions” however I do use “Engagement” and “Video Views” as well when running a video ad. The “Lead Generation” option is also an interesting tool that Facebook offers, but we won’t get into that in this post.
Once you decide which objective best fits your criteria, you will be asked to name your campaign. I recommend using something unique that you will be able to readily identify (this is only for you and will not be seen by your audience).
If you hadn’t already set up your payment method for your account, Facebook will require you fill it in at this point.
Step 3: Setting Up Your Ad Set
We will move forward as if we had already set up your payment method. You will land on the following page after you set your campaign name and click continue.
First you will name your ad set. This time you want to be specific with the audience you are targeting with this specific ad set.
Determine if you are driving leads to your website or to an app and choose whether you want to create an offer (i.e. 50% off my services).
You will be able to choose specifically who you want to see your ad.
Filter by geography.
By age, gender, language, interests, demographics, behaviors…
Filter by connection type (People who have liked your page, friends of people who like your page, people who used your app, people who attended your event, etc.).
Determine if you want Facebook to decide where to place your ad or you can edit the placement (I recommend using Facebook News Feed ads to begin, although you should always test).
Then choose your budget. You can start at as little as $5 per day.
Here you can choose how you optimize the ad, the schedule you want it to run, the amount you want to bid per click
Step 4: Setting Up Your Ad
You will then want to name your specific Ad
Then you will decide whether you want to use an existing post or create a new ad from scratch.
You will then decide the format you want your ad to be.
Facebook recently added this option to run a full screen canvas ad.
Lets go with the Single Image ad as it is the simplest and most likely where you should start. You can choose from their collection of stock photos or you can upload your own. I don’t recommend using their stock photos. There are a plethora of free photo websites (Pexels and Pixabay to name a few) out there and you can always edit your ad images in Canva. You can choose to upload up to 6 images into this ad so you can test which images work best. Facebook will optimize and show the image that is being engaged with the most.
Once you have chosen your images, you can choose the website you want to drive the traffic to or you can decide to run a Facebook Messenger ad where you would deliver the link via Facebook Messenger.
You can write in your headline, the body text and the Newsfeed link description.
As you are entering the headline, the body text and the Newsfeed link description, you will be able to see the changes in real time and you can see how your ad will look like. You can even choose to see what it would look like on desktop vs mobile phone.
You can also decide if you want Facebook to track conversions on your website via their Pixel (it is very important to have your Facebook Pixel on your website so you can re-target people interested in your product with future ads). Once you have completed everything you click “Place Order”.
Your ads will be reviewed and will start to run within a couple of hours of placing the order. It’s important to track your ads to determine if which ads are performing well and you can scale up and which ads need to be killed.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact me!
Luke Shankula
P.S. If you would like to see how I can help you generate exclusive leads via Facebook Advertising schedule a strategy call with me today!