Facebook Ads Guide. Part 1.

Tired of dubious results of you campaigns witt Facebook Ads? It’s time to check your Facebook strategy and see which elements could be improved. Follow our Facebook guide, compare every item with steps you have taken, refine them and reach the next level of Facebook advertising.

More than two billion people in the world are Facebook users and more than 800 million like or share something on Facebook every day. This social media has a powerful tool for advertising with lots functions. To navigate through all the options learn first the basics about ads creation via Facebook Ads Manager.

Let’s take a quick look. You start with a New Advertising Campaign. There you should choose an objective from given options: awareness (brand awareness and reach), consideration (traffic, engagement, app installs, video views, lead generation and messages) or conversion (conversion itself, catalog sales and store visits).

Then you proceed to the more detailed level of Ad Sets. Here you fill in the details of your ad: it’s budget, schedule, audience, placement, optimization and delivery. Then you move to Ads level where you add Image or Video to promote, Destination, Texts, Call to Action (if necessary), Tracking, and see the Ad preview. It’s important and convenient that one Ad Campaign can include multiple Ad Sets, and one Ad Set can include more than one Ad.

Let’s dwell on the objectives and goals. First of all, you have to decide what is the goal of your Facebook promotion at the moment. Think about this and then choose the most appropriate option for Facebook objectives:

- Brand awareness objective increases awareness for your brand by reaching people who are more likely to be interested in it. Notice that the longer someone spends with an ad, the more likely they are to remember it.

- With Reach you can show your ad to the maximum number of people who live nearby or in the general area of your local business.

- Traffic is designed to send more people to a destination on or off Facebook such as a website, app or Messenger conversation. You can target people who previously installed your app in the Audience section of ad creation and thereby increase your app engagement.

- The engagement objective is obviously for getting more post engagements, Page likes, event responses or offer claims. Use it to boost your posts, promote pages, get people to claim an offer on your page and raise attendance for an event on your page. We also recommend creating ads with a coupon, discount or other special deals for this objective if you want to use an additional method to drive sales for your products of services.

- The app installs objective is intended for getting more people to install and engage with your app (if you happen to promote one). Don’t forget to integrate the Facebook SDK (Software Developer Kit) to be able to track and measure how people use your app while optimizing your ads to deliver to your most valuable customers. Learn more about App Ads here.

- Video views objective could help to get more people to view your video content. Show behind-the-scenes footage, product launches or customer stories to raise awareness about your brand. Use shorter videos (15 seconds or less) to get more completed views, start with the most compelling parts of your video and use vertical or square video if it’s created and will be promoted especially for mobile.

- Lead generation allows you to drive more sales leads, such as email addresses, from people interested in your brand or business. Unlike other ad types, lead ads include a contact on-Facebook form that lets people show their interest in a product or service by filling out the form with their details and allowing a business to follow up with them. You can customize the question in your lead ad form. Lead ads can be used to collect sign-ups for newsletters, price estimates, follow-up calls and business information.

- The messages objective allows to get more people to contact your business in Facebook Messenger. This type enables you to start conversations with customers and drive them from interest to purchase.

- The conversions objective is created to help you in driving valuable actions on your website or encourage existing app users to interact with your app. To track and measure conversions use the Facebook pixel or app events.

- With Catalog sales you’ll create ads that automatically show items from your catalog based on your target audience.

- Store visits allow to get more people nearby to visit your offline locations. For now, Store visits optimization and reporting are available to a limited number of Facebook clients, so before relying on that objective check if you’re able to use it at all. It lets you create dynamic local ads for multiple store locations so you can drive store visits and in-store sales, and also help people navigate or contact the location closest to them.

Choosing the right objective is only the half of the plan. There are strategic steps you should also know about:

Tests. Allocate a budget for tests and conduct them according to your plan. It will save your time and money in the long run, as after correct tests you’ll have a working strategy and clear understanding of your audience and how much will the Facebook promotion of your brand cost. It’s foolish to throw a ton of money without a clear plan and to get neither expected results nor data to analyze.

During the tests always check one single parameter in a single time unit for one campaign. Only this way you can learn what exactly is causing changes in the promotion results. If you check more than one parameter you would never be able to know what exactly contributed to the result.

Test the possibilities offered to you by Facebook, for example, page promotions, boosting successful posts or campaign prolongation. Sometimes it is something you cannot create by yourself via Ads Manager — but you frequently have an ability to edit it after the launch.

Integrate your Facebook advertising strategy into the main marketing strategy of the brand. The synergy always saves sources of the group so you will increase your effectiveness by working together and sharing plans, texts, creatives, and ideas with colleagues from a marketing department. For example: did you know that you can use the same picture sizes in Adwords and Facebook promotions?

Prepare everything you’ll need for your campaign in advance. This is the short checklist:

• the text for Ads;
• creatives (pictures, videos);
• a budget for a clearly defined time period;
• targeting details or just a saved audience;
• enough amount of money on the card or account you’re using for Facebook Ads;
• enough time to wait for Facebook ads checking and campaign editing if necessary.

We’ve outlined only a few of the options and nuances that you need to keep in mind when creating ads on Facebook. Other practical methods and helpful advices will be described in the second part of the article that is coming soon.