DIY Marketing: Advertising with Facebook

In DIY Marketing: The Basics, you saw just how many options you have for building your own marketing strategy. In this article, we are focusing on how you can market your courses using Facebook advertisements and Facebook Business*.

*This article is focused on the creation of a Facebook business account and advertisements, not business page creation. For details on how to set up a Facebook business page, click here.

Upgrading from page to Business

Facebook pages are the heart of having a presence on social media. However, for businesses, sticking to just a page may not be enough. Sure, it has a ton of content and exposure, but what about analytics, tracking activity from Facebook to your website, or custom advertisement? All of these features aren’t standard, but they are available through Business.

To set up Business, you will need to visit https://business.facebook.com/ and click on the big “Create Account” button in the middle of the screen. If you aren’t already logged in to your personal Facebook account, it will prompt you to do so, and then take you to a popup where you enter the basic information for your business. Then your account page will appear!

Step 1 is entering your business name. Step 2 is entering the email address you want notifications to go to.

Customizing your Business account

Payments

Having a business account is free, just like having a regular account. However, most features coincide with cost-related actions, like advertisements and promotions. For that reason, it is good to set up your payment options before anything else. To do so, go the the gear icon in the top right of the homepage to access your settings.

You will see a series of horizontal tabs on the settings page, one of which is titled “Payment.” Select it and it will bring up a new page, where you can click and add a credit or debit card number to your account (there is not currently another payment option). You will not be billed for anything unless you activate an ad or another cost-related action.

Page Creation

Once your payments are set up, it is time to add a page to your account. A page is the hub where all your Facebook marketing and advertising takes place. It is also functional enough to serve as a replacement for a website, should you so choose.

While still in the Setting area, find “People and Assets” in the same horizontal tabs you found “Payments.” The dropdown menu on the left will include a “Pages” section, which is your next destination.

From here, there are three different ways to progress:

1. Add a page lets you either add a page you already manage to your Business account, or lets you claim ownership of a page someone built on your behalf.
2. Request access to a page lets you ask someone else for the right to manage their page. For example, Table Mesa co-manages some provider pages that are on the enhanced marketing service.
3. Create a new page lets you build an entire page from scratch that will automatically be attached to Business. To learn more about building a page, check out DIY Marketing: Branding with Facebook.

You can manage any number of pages at the same time, but you can also segment and look at the numbers and results of a single page at a time too! That way, you can manage everything from one place, even with multiple pages or sub-companies!

Adverts Accounts

With a page in place, you can now activate your adverts account. Just go back to the sidebar and go to “Advert Accounts.” This will bring up a familiar blank page where you can add or create a new account.

That’s all the bare necessities, but you still have plenty of customization and set-up you can do. Go through all the various parts of your settings and return to your account to check that you have everything you need.

• Add other admins and editors to help manage Business
• Integrate with applications that you use
• Set up Pixel to track conversions from your website based on ads
• And so much more!

Once you have your account set up to your liking, it will look something like this:

If you click on the blue name under “Advert accounts,” it will take you to the internal details of that account. The same goes for selecting a blue name of a specific page under the “Pages” section.

Using Business for advertising

Facebook Business is a hub for all the various pages and accounts you manage. However, if your focus is on advertising, the only area you care about is the “Advert account” section in the middle. If you have multiple, click on the blue name on the account you want to make ads for*.

*If you want to boost a post, create an offer, or promote your page or site as a whole, the easiest method is to use go to the actual page under the “Pages” section. To learn more, check out DIY Marketing: Branding with Facebook.

Once you have selected your account, you will end up in one of two places: the Campaign Builder (if you haven’t made an ad on Facebook before) or the Advert Manager (your base for monitoring all created ads). Since this guide is for new users, let’s start with the Campaign Builder.

The process is narrated very well by Facebook, but we will simplify it even further. In short, all ads have three distinct parts.

Campaigns are the most general tier, and express what your ad objective is. Tons of ads with different targets can exist within the same campaign, but the main goal of all ads within a campaign should be the same.

Advert Sets inside of Campaigns, and help specify the who, where, when, why, and how of ads. You can have multiple Advert sets targeting different audiences at different times and with different budgets, but all the Advert Sets would fall under the same goal of the Campaign.

Ads are the actual “what” that is being promoted and advertised. It is the image, link, content, and all the small details around the design that will capture an audience’s attention. Ads go inside of Advert Sets, and all ads within a set share the same audience, schedule, and budget.

Building a Facebook ad

Simply follow the steps here or on the Campaign Editor and you’ll have your first ad in no time!

1. Choose your marketing objective from the list. You can click to learn more about each, and decide which is right for you.
2. Create a campaign name. You can also create split or A/B tests with different names to see what works and what doesn’t.
3. Name your Advert Set. Use something that will represent all possible ads you will include inside the set.
4. Set the parameters for your Campaign objective. This will be different for each objective. In some cases, it may involve Facebook Pixel, which you can learn about here.
5. Decide whether you want to include an offer. You can use the “Learn more” link to pull up a helper window.
6. Set your audience and targeting. You can use pre-built Facebook demographics, page activity, custom filters, or upload your own lists.
7. Set your ad placement locations. This can include Instagram, which you can learn more about in DIY Marketing: Tell a story with Instagram.
8. Set you Advert Set budget and scheduling. This budget will be split between all ads within the set, and the schedule will apply to all ads within the set.
9. Name your ad. Use some identifiable so you can easily tell the difference between the ads in your set.
10. Select the page or pages that will be represented by your ad.
11. Choose your ad format, and build your ad components. Really take the time to ensure that all links work, images are high quality, and content is accurate. You can edit ads easily, but once they are live, you cannot have people un-see mistakes you may have included.
12. Review and confirm your ad!

Once you finish up an ad, you will be taken to the Advert Manager. This is an example of one with multiple campaigns and ad types.

The ad details are separated and editable based on their three parts, as the tabs on the top show. You can also pull up the “Account overview” tab, which will provide summaries of all advertising metrics within a specified date range.

To learn about creating Facebook pages designed for branding, check out our DIY Marketing: Branding with Facebook article.

To learn more about Facebook Business , please refer to the Facebook Business site.

To learn more about Facebook Pixel, please refer to the Facebook Pixel site.

To learn more about Facebook marketing in general, refer to the “Marketing on Facebook” page.