Facebook Ads Manager has a lot of options and it may seem overwhelming, but once you’re familiar with the platform, it will get easier every time. Here are some steps and tips from us for your very first Facebook Ad.
1. Create an account on Facebook Ads Manager
Because Facebook does not allow personal profiles to run ads, you’ll need a Facebook Business Page. Here are some steps you need to follow to create an account on Facebook Ads Manager:
- Go to https://www.facebook.com/business/tools/ads-manager.
- Click the button that says “Go to Ads Manager”
- Confirm your information on the ad account setup page
- Set up your payment method
- Save changes
When you finish with this setting it’s time to create your first Facebook Ad.
2. Develop your strategy
If you want your Ad to be successful, first you need to ask yourself this questions:
- What product or service am I promoting?
- Who is my target?
- What kind of audience will they be?
- What is the solution that my product delivers?
- In which stage of the funnel is my audience?
- What is the goal of this campaign?
- Do I need brand awareness, site traffic, sales, leads, or something else?
Answer these questions and create your strategy with a goal you want to accomplish. This step is very important and you will need a strategy for every ad or campaign you plan to develop in the future. The more you practice this step, the easier it gets. It will help you to get to know your audience better and create the right ad for the right people.
3. Choose your objective
This step is related to the question „What is the goal of this campaign?“. When choosing the right objective, you’re giving Facebook a better idea of where, to who, and why you’d like your ad to be shown.
You can choose from the following objectives:
- Brand awareness
- Reach
- Traffic
- Engagement
- Video views
- App installs
- Lead generation
- Conversions
- Messages
- Catalog Sales
- Store traffic
For ex. brand awareness focuses on introducing your business or improving your brand awareness with users who already know you. It is a great choice for the campaigns that are at the beginning of the funnel. Traffic as an objective is used for the goal to send users to a specific page of your choice (usually your website, landing page, or app page). Choose the one that suits your goals the most.
4. Target your audience
You need to start creating your ad campaign with a strong idea of who you want to target. The first couple of times you’ll have to experiment with several different targeting options until you find an audience that fits you the best.
Facebook gives you the following targeting options:
- location
- age
- gender
- languages
- relationships
- education
- work
- home
- financial
- generation
- ethnic affinity
- parents
- politics
- interests
- life events
- behaviors
- connections
Facebook gives you the option to save an audience you have created before, so you can use it later. This saves you time for the next campaign if you decide to use the same audience again. Remember to save it with a recognizable name. You also have an option to choose a Custom Audience which allows you to target specific users from your company’s database, email lists, users who have taken certain actions on your web, your Instagram or Facebook’s business profile, or those who use your app or game.
5. Budget and schedule
Budgeting
Next step, you choose your budget, schedule your ads and select an optimization method. Options are, you can choose a daily or lifetime budget. A daily budget means that Facebook will spend only up to the limit you set to be spent per day. Seems pretty simple, and it is. However, Facebook will not only spend up to that limit, but it will actively search for ways to spend the full amount of budget. Every single day, no matter what performance is on the account. If you set up a lifetime, you decide the budget for the entire campaign and choose the date the ad set should end on. Now Facebook is more performance-conscious. It will adjust daily spend levels based on the campaign results.
How to choose:
- Daily budget if: you want to maximize strong performance, you want to change your budget regularly, your campaign will be evergreen
- Lifetime budget if: you run your ads on a schedule, your campaign has a set of budget and end date.
Schedule
If you don’t want your campaign to run immediately and continuously, or you want to give special start and end dates, Facebook gives you the option to schedule. You can also choose the specific hours and days of the week for your ads to be shown.
Optimization
Optimization for ad delivery lets you choose whether you want to bid for your objective, impressions, or clicks (this will change how your ad displays and is paid for). This means you’ll pay for your ad to be shown to people who are more likely to complete your desired action (determined by Facebook). Or, you can choose manual bidding. This gives you the option to fully control how much you’re willing to pay per action completed.
6. Create your ad
What do you want your ad to look like? You can choose from:
- single image ads
- video ads
- carousel ads, allowing you to show several videos or/and pictures
- collections – full-screen landing page
Once you decide, you upload your creative assets. Very important thing to note is that Facebook has certain design criteria. You can check them here https://www.facebook.com/business/ads-guide/image/facebook-feed/traffic .
Then you will choose how you’d like your ad to be displayed. Options are: Desktop News Feed, Mobile News Feed, and Desktop Right Column. If your ad isn’t associated with a Facebook page, Desktop Right Column is the only option for your ad.
7. Monitor your ads
This step is important not just for your paid ads, but for everything you do with your business online. To see the results of your ad campaigns, you can choose the Facebook Ad Manager or some other marketing software that will work the best for you and your business. CPC, relevance scores, frequency and number of actions are some of the most crucial metrics. Monitoring your ads will help you understand how your ads work and will help you make better decisions with your ads next time. Don’t skip this step!
Hope you’ll find this article useful and simple. If you still struggle with your Facebook paid ads, feel free to contact us.
