Facebook Guide to Ads Manager

Getting Serious With Your Campaign Strategy

Boosting

If you want to get started with the most basic form of Facebook advertising (ideal for beginners and shoestring budgets) check out my previous blog: Facebook Boost Guide.

Ads Manager

Once you have had some fun playing around with the basics in boosting and are ready to get more serious with your advertising, try using the Facebook Ads Manager for more precise control. In comparison, Facebook advertising is very similar to Google AdWords advertising–only way more affordable and in my opinion, user friendly. Facebook knows the in-depth demographics, interests, and behaviors of your target audience, so why not leverage this accessible opportunity to share important messages with your core audience?

Ads Manager works much like the simple boost function but has more options for setting objectives and tracking results. To access the Ad Manager, click the dropdown caret key in the right hand side of the primary navigation menu of your Facebook homepage and select “Create Ads.”

1. Campaign: To begin, identify your account page and define your campaign objective.

Defining Your Objective

Awareness (Attract)

• Brand Awareness: Reach more people who are the more likely to pay attention to your ads and increase awareness for your brand.
• Reach: Show your ad to the maximum number of people.

Consideration (Nurture)

• Traffic: Send more people to your blog, portfolio or website.
• Engagement: Get more people to see and engage with your post or page. Engagement includes: likes, comments, shares, event responses and offer claims.
• App installs: Send people to a store where they can purchase your app.
• Video views: Promote videos that show behind-the-scenes footage, product launches or customer service stories to raise awareness for your brand.
• Lead generation: Collect lead information from people interested in your business.
• Messages: Get more people to have conversations with your business in Messenger to complete purchases, answer questions, or offer support.

Conversion (Convert)

• Conversions: Get people to take valuable actions on your website or app such as making a purchase. Use a tracking pixel to track and measure conversions.
• Catalog sales: Create ads that automatically show items from your catalog based on your target audience.
• Store visits: Promote multiple business locations to people who nearby.

2. Ad Set:

Now, it’s time to set the parameters your ad will be targeting: audience, placements, budget and schedule.

Set Your Audience

Customize your own audience by uploading a mailing list, implementing a tracking pixel to target your website visitors, or create your own custom profile of demographics, interests, and behaviors. You can further mimic an existing audience (ie: mailing list or site visitors) by running a campaign to attract more people that meet your specific target audience criteria.

Be sure to refer to Facebook’s Audience Definition meter in the right hand side of your dashboard as you work to help gauge how broad or specific your audience size is and its estimated reach.

Custom Audience

Connect people who are already interested in your brand offerings to your Facebook community by uploading an email marketing list. Facebook will match addresses to existing Facebook accounts and build a custom audience for your ad placement. This can be expanded upon by layering lookalike audiences.

Lookalike Audience

Lookalike audiences allow you to clone an existing audience in a sense, in order to expand your reach among a new set of leads that are similar to your existing custom audience. By layering lookalike audiences on top of an existing custom audience, Facebook will find new leads that fit your ideal target audience profile.

Further customize your audience with specific key demographics, interests, and behaviors that make up their characteristics of your ideal audience profile.

Demographics

Target through a mix of physical demographics:

• Location(s)
• Age(s)
• Gender(s)
• Language(s)

Interests

Targeting by interests can be extremely beneficial in narrowing a wide audience, use the meter tool to gauge how narrow or broad you are reaching! Target products, services, publications, causes, topics or other metrics to reach people who will be most interested in the content that your post is offering.

Behaviors

Using cookies, Facebook tracks the other sites and content customers have looked at. This allows identification and classification of online behavior and interests. For instance, if a customer primarily looks at Facebook on their phone, it will give them mobile ads. If they’re in the market for new car insurance and have looked at insurance sites, they’re likely to see insurance ads on Facebook the next time they log in. As you plan your ad, think about the behaviors and interests of your target customer.

Set Your Placements

Optimize your ads to be shown to the right people in the right places.

• Automatic: (Default) will allow your ad to appear to your audience in the places they’re likely to best perform. For this objective, placements may include: Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and Messenger.
• Ads in Messenger Home: (New) Now you can run ads that people will see in the Home tab of their mobile Messenger app.
• Device Types:
• All (recommended)
• Desktop only
• Mobile only
• Platforms:

Facebook

• Feeds
• Instant Articles
• In-Stream videos
• Right column
• Suggested videos

Instagram

• Feed
• Stories

Audience Network

• Native, Banner
• In-Stream Videos
• Rewarded Videos
• Messenger

Set Your Budget and Schedule

Budget

Facebook gives you the option to set a daily or lifetime budget. If you want to be sure people will see your ad everyday for a specific period of time, choose the daily budget. If your objective is to control cost, it is recommended to select the lifetime budget.

Schedule

• Run ad set continuously starting today
• Set a start and end date

Optimization

• Link clicks (recommended)
• Impressions
• Daily reach

Bid Amount

• Automatic: Let Facebook set the bid that helps you get the most link clicks at the best price.
• Manual: Enter a bid based on what link clicks are worth to you.

Charges

• Impression based charges
• Charges based upon link clicks (CPC)

Delivery

• Standard: Show your ads throughout your selected schedule (recommended)
• Accelerated: Show your ads as quickly as possible.

3. Ad:

Choose Your Format

Choose how you would like to display your ad:

• Single image
• Single video
• Carousel
• Slideshow
• Collection

Insert Your Creative

You can upload an image by browsing your computer library, or select a free stock image.
*Note* Image Specs recommend an image size of 1,200 x 628 pixels. Be sure you select an image that contains very little, to no overlaid text.

Craft Your Headline and Text

Headline

Add a brief headline (40 character limit) to let people know what your ad is about. (This won’t appear in all placements). You can add more text and go over the character limit, but it may be cut off when people see your ad in certain placements, for example in the Mobile News Feed.

Text/Copy

While there is no set character limit for the body copy of an ad, it is critical to keep text as brief and to the point as possible when promoting your offer.

Insert your Link and Call to Action

Destination: Website URL

Here, you insert the final destination you wish for your people to visit when they click your ad (most often, your company blog or website). I recommend using Bitly to shorten the links you use.

Messenger Setup

Now, you can set up messages for people to read after they click on your ad as an automatic follow up.

Call to Action (CTA)

Choose the direct outcome you wish for users to take when reacting to your ad:

• Learn More
• Download
• Apply Now
• Book Now
• Donate Now
• Contact Us
• Get Tickets
• Get Showtimes
• Send Message

Newsfeed Link Description

Add additional text to emphasize why people should visit your website. This won’t appear in all placements.

Conversion Tracking

Select one or more options for conversion tracking. You’ll see the results in Ads Manager along with ad performance data.

• Facebook Pixel: Add a tracking pixel to your website to track website activity, conversions, and build audiences for further ad targeting.
• App Events: Add events to your app to review analytics, measure ad performance, and build audiences for further ad targeting.
• Offline Events: Upload offline sales and interaction data to measure ad conversions. Then build audiences for further ad targeting based off of those transactions.

*Helpful Hint* Ad sets that use targeting terms related to social, religious or political issues may require additional review before your ads start running. If your ad set contains targeting terms related to these topics, your campaign may take longer to start running, or you can adjust your detailed targeting selections.

Best of luck with your first campaign!