We’re going to look at:
- The benefits of advertising on Facebook,
- The difference between a boosted post and an advert,
- Ads Manager and Business Manager (download set up guide here)
- Types of adverts you can create for your business,
- Tips for a good advert,
- Audiences
- Budgets
What are Facebook ads
Facebook adverts often look very similar to normal posts on your Facebook feed. You can often identify them as they say ‘sponsored post’ underneath or they appear down the side on the Facebook news feed. They are often hard to spot, but are usually specific to you, depending on your location or your likes and interests and how you have interacted with other pages on your account.
Reasons to advertise on FB
- Highly effective
Facebook is one of the best places to advertise online and a survey I found said that “78% of American consumers say they’ve discovered products on Facebook.” I imagine those stats are similar to the UK. With the right set up and a little knowledge you too can use Facebook ads to promote your business and sell your products. You don’t need a huge budget and it is relatively simple to do.
- Simple to set up and fast results
Anyone can log on to Facebook and create a business manager account, set a payment method and publish a campaign in a matter of minutes.
You can boost a single post to reach users directly from your Facebook page, or you can create a more complex campaign that targets custom audiences and produces even greater results with the business manager. (I’ll talk about the difference between boosting a post and creating an ad from scratch later on)
- Reach your ideal audience
We already know how many millions of people use Facebook every day, so it’s no surprise that FB ads are a great way to reach more people.
Facebook provides lots of different ways to reach specific people based on their behaviour on your website, their known likes, engagement with your Facebook page, and other various elements of their demographic such as age, gender, and location.
So, for example, you can target people in a specific radius from your business
You can target people who like certain things, such as dogs
Small business owners
Women in their 40s etc etc
Also more complex things such as who has visited your website, people who are similar to those who already like your page or friends of people who already like your page.
The difference between boosting posts and adverts
A boosted post is a post on your Facebook Page that you can apply money to in order to promote it to an audience of your choosing. It is the simplest way to advertise on Facebook.
Boosted posts differ from Facebook ads because with a boosted post you can do this directly on your page, whereas a Facebook advert needs to be done in ‘Ads Manager’ and they don’t have all of the same customization features that Facebook adverts do.
When you boost a post, it’ll show up in your audience’s Facebook News Feed as an ad. You choose a post that’s already on your page that is performing well and boost it in a couple of steps:
Who you want to reach, your max budget and how long you want to run your ad.
You press ‘boost’ and it’s done. Easy peasy.
Facebook ads, on the other hand, are slightly more complex. ‘Boosting’ a post is still considered an ad as you have to pay for it, but Facebook ads are created through Ads Manager and offer more advanced customization.
- You can choose different ad placements – you can choose whether you can to place the advert on Instagram, Facebook News Feed side ads, Messenger ads, Instagram stories, instant articles, and Audience Network.
- You can be more specific with ad objectives: You can choose things like brand awareness, likes, lead generation, conversions, clicks to your website and you can edit your ads while they’re running and have a bit more flexibility over them.
- Be Creative: You can also be more creative with the ads, and design carousel ads, add specific descriptions and add a call-to-action button that’ll drive more of your audience to take action.
- Targeting: You can also use more advanced targeting. Boosting posts let you decide on interests, age and gender for your ad targeting, but with Facebook ads, you can use more advanced tools to define demographics, lookalike audiences, use the Facebook pixel code on your website to capture web visits and more.
So, which should you use? This all depends on your business and social media marketing goals. If you simply want more likes and engagement then a boosted post could work well for you. If you want to make sales online, be more specific with your targeting, retarget people who have shown an interest in your product or service then Facebook ads would be more beneficial.
How to set up accounts
Ad Manager Vs Business Manager
So, often you may hear people talking about Ads Manager and Business Manager.
Ads Manager is specifically what you would build any Facebook adverts in. It is where your account payment details are saved and where you can see all the reporting tools.
Business Manager is like the hub of all Facebook management and where you manage your business pages. You can assign roles, create pixels (I’ll explain what that is later), manage multiple pages, collaborate with agencies. There is also added security for Facebook pages.
Business Manager is a more secure way to manage your Pages and ad accounts.
You can see who’s working on what and what they have access to view and work on.
You can also keep your business separate from your personal Facebook profile.
Ideally, you should have Business Manager set up – I have created a handy ‘how-to’ that you can download here
How to create an advert
We would be here all day if I was going to show you exactly how to set up an advert, but I found this great guide from AdEspresso you can follow, which seems pretty easy to follow…
Types of advert
There are over ten different types of Facebook advert that you can set up. Sometimes it can take a bit of playing around to know what format works best for you and what you want to achieve.
Check here for a guide from Facebook as to all the different types of ads
Here is a quick rundown of the different types of Facebook adverts
Awareness
1 – Brand awareness
Increase awareness for your brand by reaching people who are more likely to be interested in it
2 – Reach
Show your ad to the maximum number of people
Consideration
3 – Traffic
Send more people to a destination such as a website
4 – Engagement
Get more post engagements page likes or event responses
5 – App installs
Get more people to install your app
6 – Video views
Get more people to view your video content
7 – Lead generation
Drive more sales leads, such as email addresses, from people interested in your brand or business
8 – Messages
Get more people to send messages to your business in messenger
Conversion
9 – Conversions
Drive valuable actions on your website, app or in messenger
10 – Catalog (this is how they spell it!!) Sales
Create ads that automatically show items from your catalogue based on your target audience
11 – Store traffic
Drive visits to your physical stores by showing ads to people who are nearby
Tips for a good advert
Your Facebook ad creatives and copywriting are among the top elements that decide whether your ad campaign succeeds. If a Facebook user is scrolling through Facebook and your ad doesn’t catch their eye, they won’t click on it, end up on your website and they definitely won’t end up converting.
Research has shown that images are responsible for 75%-90% of ad performance. This is why it is important to choose a really great attention-grabbing image.
Here is a great step by step guide how to create an advert
Image:
- Think about the image you use. Is it one you’ve taken or a stock image, will it stand out,
- is it colourful and eye-catching, is it funny?
- is it going to make people stop and click?
- Images should only contain a minimal amount of text
Copy:
So what is written in the advert?
- Is it attention-grabbing
- Does it post questions, or answer your viewer’s problems or
- Promise a benefit
- Keep it short and clear
- Perhaps you can use testimonials in your text or give your customers experience dealing with you?
- Give a sense of urgency. Limited edition
Audiences and targeting
Remember that advertising is about getting customers, not cheap clicks. You want to see a return and something tangible from the advertising that you do. So, it is important to think about targeting and not just using a scattergun approach and targeting everyone in the UK.
To find out more about targeting and audiences click here
There are 3 different types of audience in a Facebook advert
- Saved Audiences
Saved Audiences are the audiences that you can define by choosing people’s interests, location, age, gender, devices, income level, etc. You can create Saved Audiences in your ads manager.
- Custom Audiences
Facebook Custom Audiences are probably your most high-value target audiences as they allow to retarget past website visitors and people who have engaged with your content and people who have engaged with your Facebook page as well. You can also upload email lists to custom audiences too.
- Lookalike Audiences
Lookalike Audiences let you reach the people who are similar to your existing followers on your Facebook page. Lookalike Audiences help you to extend your ad campaign’s reach so that you only target people who are likely to be interested in your offer.
Budgets
You don’t have to have huge budgets to see a return on Facebook ads. You can spend as little as £1 a day and see results. Obviously the more money you have the more you will get seen, but I’ve had some great results for clients who have spent £5 a day for a week.
Phew, that is a quick guide in how Facebook adverts can be effective for your business and a bit more about how to use them. Remember you can download a guide on how to set up Business Manager and ads manager HERE.
Please drop me a line with any questions or download my price guide for more information about how you can work with me.
