A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are a powerful tool for online marketing. With over 400 million active users, it’s the perfect place to connect with your target market and start building your brand. However, you can’t just create an ad and hope that people will like it. Here’s a guide that explains everything that you need to know about Facebook Ads if you’re just getting started.

What are Facebook Ads?

Facebook Ads are a form of online advertising that allows businesses to promote their products or services to a target audience. Facebook Ads can be used to reach people based on interests, demographics, and behaviours. They can also be targeted by location and by the device that the person is using.

Why use Facebook Ads?

Facebook has more than 400 million active users. That’s a lot of potential customers who are using Facebook every day! Many people go onto the social platform to check out what their friends have been up to, or share pictures and updates about themselves. What does that mean for you? It means that your message can reach a large number of people who are interested in what you have to offer.

With Facebook Ads, you’re able to choose the right audience so when they see your ad, they’ll be more likely to take action and convert into customers or clients. You only pay when someone interacts with your ad, meaning that you only pay for results.

What should you use Facebook ads for?

Facebook is a great platform to increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website – particularly if the content on your site can engage users in what they’re interested in. You can also promote special offers or discounts to bring people into your store. When you target the right people, Facebook ads can be a great way to increase conversions.

How much does it cost?

You can choose between a cost per click (CPC) or a cost per thousand impressions (CPM). If you’re just starting, CPC is the best option as people have to take action for you to be charged. In general, even with a small budget of $50, it’s possible to get thousands of clicks which will deliver results.

How to create a Facebook Ad campaign

Steps to create a Facebook Ad Campaign:

Choose your objective

When you’re creating your Facebook ad campaign, it’s important to keep in mind the objective of your campaign. Are you trying to increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your website? Get more leads or sales? Once you know what you want to achieve, you can move on to:

Set a budget and schedule

Choose how much you want to spend per day and what you can afford. A general tip is that it’s better to set a smaller budget with the intention of increasing it as you see results. You can also choose how long you want your ad to run.

Select your target audience

Before you start creating your Facebook ad, it’s important to do some research and know who you’re trying to target. You can use the ‘interests’ tool on Facebook or look at similar pages that people have liked to build an audience for your ads.

The 5 most important things to know about your target audience :

1. Geography: where are they?
2. Age and gender – what’s their demographic like? Are you targeting the right people with your ad creative so that it stands out amongst Facebook users’ newsfeeds? How old is a typical customer or client in this industry sector? What percentage of them would be female versus male, etc.?
3. Interests: what do they like? What are their hobbies, activities, or work interests? What other businesses do they like?
4. Behaviours: what actions do they take on Facebook that could indicate an interest in your product or service?
5. Connections: who are their friends and family members? Do any of those people work at the companies you’re targeting? What about their friends’ interests and behaviours, can they help you to reach your target audience?

Create the ad creative (image, text, and link)

Once you’ve chosen who your target audience is, it’s time to come up with the content for your Facebook ad campaign.

Facebook Ad Image: what kind of image would resonate? What about a video or animation instead? Or how about using an actual product as part of the design so that users can ‘try it before they buy? There are no rules when it comes to Facebook ad images, but you’ll want to make sure that it stands out and is eye-catching.

Facebook Ad Text: what’s the headline? What’s the call to action? How can you get users to engage with your product or service? The text should be short, and leave enough room for the user to click through to your website.

Facebook Ad Link: what’s the destination URL? Is it a special landing page that you’ve created just for this ad campaign, or is it your main website? Make sure that the link is correct and leads users to where you want them to go.

Review your campaign settings

Once you’ve created the Facebook ad image, text, and link it’s time to review your campaign settings before launch.

What do users see in their newsfeeds? Is there a call to action that can help tell them exactly what they’re clicking on when they visit your website from the ad itself?

Does everything mentioned previously look good?

Okay then, it’s time to launch!

Now it’s time to hit the ‘publish’ button and see how well your new Facebook ad performs.

How to track and analyze your campaign performance 

Once you have created your Facebook ad campaign, it’s important to track its performance so you can gauge how successful it is. This means tracking things like likes, comments, shares, conversions (sales or downloads), etc. Facebook gives marketers a wealth of data about their ad campaigns and it’s important to use all of that data to learn what works (and what doesn’t) so you can make the changes necessary for future campaigns.

What Facebook Ad metrics should you look at and how do they work?

Impressions: this is the number of times your ad has been seen, whether it was clicked on or not

Clicks: how many people have clicked on your ad to go to your website?

Cost per click (CPC): how much you’re spending for each person who clicks on your ad

Conversions: how many sales or downloads have resulted from your ad campaign? A Conversion can be anything you specify it to be. This includes:

1. Sale
2. Downloads
3. Video played
4. Lead forms submitted
5. Anything really, as long as you’ve set up your conversions correctly (link)

ROI (return on investment): what’s the monetary value of the conversions generated by your Facebook ad campaign, compared to how much you’ve spent on the ad campaign itself?

Once you know which metrics you’re going to be tracking, it’s important to set up a system where you can automatically track them. This way, you don’t have to spend time manually recording data every day – you can instead focus on improving your ad campaigns based on what’s working (and what isn’t).

There are a number of different tools and services that can help with this, but in most cases, Facebook Ads Manager will suffice.

Examples of successful Facebook Ad Campaigns

Now that we’ve gone over the basics of creating a Facebook ad campaign, let’s take a look at some successful ones and see what we can learn from them.

Example #1: Dollar Shave Club

Dollar Shave Club is a company that sells razors and other shaving products direct to consumers via the internet. When they first started, they ran a series of Facebook ad campaigns that were very successful in getting people to sign up for their service.

Some things that we can learn from Dollar Shave Club’s Facebook Ads:

1. Use humour and be creative: Dollar Shave Club’s ads were funny and eye-catching, which helped them to stand out amongst other, more bland ads.
2. Target the right people: Dollar Shave Club targeted men between 18 and 34 years old living in cities where they had warehouses (so they could ship razors quickly). This helped them to reach their target customer base with minimal waste.

Example #2: Walmart Canada

Walmart is one of the biggest retailers in the world. During Cyber Monday 2015, they ran a series of Facebook ad campaigns that were specifically targeted at people who had recently searched for specific products on Walmart’s website.

Some things that we can learn from Walmart Canada’s Facebook Ads:

1. Use similar ad creative: the ads were all based around specific products, which made it easy for people to immediately understand what they’re about.
2. Target relevant interests and behaviours: Facebook allows advertisers to target their customers based on certain factors like age, location, gender, or even things like whether or not someone has children (which would make them likely to shop for children’s products).
3. Test different ad types: Walmart Canada tested several different ad types, including carousel ads (which allow you to show multiple images and links in a single ad) and video ads.

Example #3: Warby Parker

Warby Parker is a company that sells prescription glasses online. They launched a Facebook ad campaign that targeted people who had recently searched for eyeglasses or sunglasses on Google.

Some things that we can learn from Warby Parker’s Facebook Ads:

1. Use specific product images and copy: rather than simply showing the logo, Warby Parker used pictures of their glasses in their ads as well as persuasive language to get people to click through.
2. Target relevant interests and behaviours: as with Walmart Canada, Facebook allows advertisers to target their customers based on certain factors like age, location, gender, or even things like whether or not someone has children (which would make them likely to shop for children’s products).
3. Test different ad types: Warby Parker also tested some different ad types, including carousel ads (which allow you to show multiple images and links in a single ad) and video ads.
4. Use retargeting: Warby Parker also used Facebook’s Retargeting feature, which allows companies to target people who have already visited their website. This helps to ensure that people who are already interested in their product see their ads.

Now that we’ve looked at a few examples of successful Facebook ad campaigns, it’s time to get into some tips for running an effective Facebook ad campaign. 😉

Tips for running an effective campaign:

• Keep your target customer in mind: You should always think about who you’re trying to reach with your ads. This will help you to make sure that they are relevant and get the most mileage possible out of them.
• Target people based on their interests, behaviours (and more): As we’ve seen from all three examples above, Facebook allows advertisers to segment their audience based on many different factors, including age, location, and gender. This helps them to ensure that they’re reaching the right people with their ads.
• Test multiple ad types: Different audiences respond better to certain ad types than others so it’s important for companies not just to test one but several different ones.
• Use retargeting: As we mentioned before, retargeting allows companies to target people who have already visited their website. This helps to ensure that people who are already interested in their product see their ads.
• Make sure your landing page is optimized: Once someone clicks on your ad, you want them to end up on a page that is optimized for conversions. If they land on a page with too many options or navigation menus, your conversion rate will suffer.
• Don’t be afraid to experiment: A/B testing allows you to test different images and text against each other to see which performs better. This helps companies make sure their ads are as effective as possible.

Tips seem straightforward, right? Yet, there are many common mistakes that I see clients everyday fall for.

Common mistakes people make with their ads and how you can avoid them

• A/B testing: A common mistake many people make is not to test their ads. This can lead you to spend more money than necessary on ads that don’t work well and limit your ability to improve them over time. Make sure you’re always measuring the success of your campaign so that you know what works best for your audience.
• Not using retargeting: People often forget about the power of Facebook’s Retargeting feature, which allows you to target people who have already visited your website. This helps ensure that only those who are likely to be interested in your product see them and reduces wasted ad spend on ads that aren’t relevant.
• Using too many different images or ad types: As we mentioned before, it’s important to test different ad images and text to see which performs best. If you don’t do this then your ads will likely perform poorly.
• Not including a clear call-to-action (CTA): A CTA helps people know what they should be doing next when they reach your landing page and helps to increase conversions. The more clear your CTA is, the better people will respond to it.
• Not setting up conversion tracking: Conversion tracking allows you to see how well your ads are performing by allowing you to measure different actions on your website (such as signing up for a free trial) against ad spend to see which performs best.
• Not using the right images: The image you use on your ad is super important as it can make or break whether people click on them or not. Make sure that yours are relevant to what you’re advertising and stand out from all of the other ones in people’s Newsfeeds.

Resources for more information on this topic, including blogs, articles, books, and videos that will help you better understand Facebook advertising best practices as well as what it takes to be successful with this platform in general!

Articles:

– How to Choose the Best Ad Type for Your Goals by HubSpot

– How to Create a Killer Facebook Ad Campaigns by WordStream

Wrap Up!

Don’t get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information out there about Facebook ads. Start small and create one successful campaign at a time! By keeping this beginner’s guide in mind, you’re sure to be more successful with your next ad campaign.

This guide was designed for beginners who are looking to better understand how to use Facebook ads for their business. If you’re looking for more information on Facebook advertising, be sure to check out some of the resources listed above or get in touch for a free consultation.