Facebook Advertising For Beginners
Learn how to launch Facebook ads for your business
My career background is in planning and executing paid media campaigns, with a heavy emphasis on paid social advertising.
I have 4+ years of experience executing campaigns on Facebook’s advertising platform. I have assisted a variety of clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to local businesses.
My thoughts and recommendations are based on my past experience managing millions of advertising dollars.
The goal of this post is to help anyone launch a successful Facebook advertising campaign.
First: Pick Your Marketing Objective
It is imperative to clearly define your marketing objectives. What is the goal you are trying to achieve for your business or organization?
Establishing clear goals and measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) will be key to success. For each campaign, you should only have one clearly defined objective. Also, you should define the KPIs for that campaign objective.
The first step to creating a Facebook campaign within Facebook Ads Manager is choosing a single campaign object.
Facebook offers the following pre-set objectives below:
Awareness Campaign Objective: Brand Awareness or Reach
KPIs for Awareness campaigns include: Estimated Ad Recall Lift, Cost Per Reach, Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM), etc.
Consideration Campaign Objective: Traffic, Engagement, App Downloads, Video Views, Leads, Messages
KPIs for Consideration campaigns include: Click Through Rate (CTR), Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Lead (CPL), Video Completion Rate, Cost Per Site Visit, etc.
Conversion Campaign Objective: Store Traffic, Online Sales, Conversions
KPIs for Conversion campaigns include: Cost Per Conversion, Cost Per Sale, Cost Per Store Visit
Second: Audience, Placements, Schedule, and Budgets
Audience
After selecting your marketing objective, the next step is to define your audience. Layer on audience parameters that define your ideal target customer.
This can include age, geography, behaviors and interests, languages, lookalikes, and even a list of your own customers you want to remarket.
Placements
Typically, Facebook recommends to run on all placements, but you may choose not to depending on your goals.
When you run ads on Facebook’s platform, your ads can be shown on a variety of placements including Facebook News Feed, Facebook Marketplace, Facebook Search, Instagram News Feed, Instagram Stories, Audience Network, Sponsored Messages, and much more.
Pick the placements that make sense for your marketing objectives.
Schedule
Defining your ad schedule is also key.
Does it make sense to run your ads 24 hours, 7 days a week? Or do you only want to run ads when your store is open?
Your ad schedule will be dependent on your organization’s goal.
Budgets
Unfortunately, Facebook ads are not free. Define how much you would like to spend on your campaign. You can set a daily budget or lifetime budget — whatever amount is comfortable for your business or organization. Pick a campaign start and end date.
Be careful here because Facebook will not refund you for any budget mistakes!
Last: Creative
Format: Video, Image, Carousel, Collection
What type of assets do you have on hand? You can run successful Facebook campaigns with a few images and videos.
Make sure that your creative assets meet Facebook’s design and size specifications or else your ads won’t run.
Ad Text and Links
What is the clear value proposition you want to convey to your audience? Does the ad copy align with your brand?
Be natural. Nobody likes a pushy salesperson.
It is recommended for the Primary Text to be less than 125 characters. Headlines and descriptions are optional but highly recommended. A URL and vanity URL should be used.
Call to Action (CTA)
The Call to Action button allows you to pick the action that you want your audience to take. You can have the option of no button — I highly do not recommend it.
Some common CTA choices are Contact Us, Learn More, Get Quote, Get Offer, Shop Now, and Sign Up.
Final Thoughts
Setting up a campaign within Facebook Ads Manager can be challenging for those who are brand new to paid media/advertising.
It took me a few campaigns — and lots of trial and error — to fully understand the structure and best practices!
Facebook is constantly changing and releasing new features. Do your research and feel free to ask me any questions!
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Thanks for reading!
