How to advertise on Facebook?

If there's one social media channel dominating the advertising space in 2021, it has to be Facebook.

With 1.62 Billion people visiting it at least once every day (that's, one-quarter of the world's population 😊) and 400 users signing up every minute, it's definitely the place your brand needs to be.

As an entrepreneur, one of your immediate concerns is constantly growing your business and getting more leads for it. Given its popularity and flexibility in helping companies connect with their target audiences, advertising on Facebook makes perfect sense for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

To those of you who would like to use Facebook advertising but would like to know more about it, our blog shares some insightful factors on Facebook advertising and how to advertise on Facebook.

What are Facebook ads?

While everyone can post their messages and graphic posts on Facebook for free, if you want to reach a wider audience for them, you need to boost them.

Facebook ads are paid messages and posts that you can create and share to a customized audience based on the areas you operate and your target audience.

They are available in a wide variety of formats, based on your campaign objectives.

Some of the popular advertising formats to create facebook ad are;

• Image Ads: You can create these ads using images or posts you have posted on your Facebook page. Simple to make, they can be very effective in driving traffic to your page or creating awareness about a product, service, or even a special offer.
• Video Ads: Similar to image ad's you can use them to highlight a product or service using motion imagery and a storyline. They are great for showcasing product demos or your latest product collection.
  

Carousel Ads

• Carousel Ads: Carousel ads are the best option if you would like to showcase a product line or your latest designs in one singular sequence. You can use up to 10 images or videos for a carousel ad.
• Lead Ads: One of the most popular ad formats, they are designed to collect the contact details of interested customers easily, thanks to most of their details being pre-filled in the form. Facebook lead ads are the best option if you are looking for newsletter signups, product trials, and demos.
  

Why advertise on Facebook?

As businesses get more competitive and look for platforms that can help them connect easily with customers, social media channels are bound to play an essential role in their marketing plans due to their popularity and flexibility.

Among all the popular online networking channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, Facebook, Instagram, etc., it is Facebook that leads from the front when it comes to online advertising.

Despite all its critics, Facebook is still the place people love visiting to check out the latest updates on all things important to them: family, friends, businesses, and even brands. Due to its popularity, 93% of social media marketers use Facebook ads.

Irrespective of the facts, the key reasons you should consider Facebook advertising are;

Flexible and highly customizable

With Facebook, you can target specific audiences based on specific demographics and the areas your business operates. That helps minimize wastage of your advertising budget while giving you the freedom to customize your message as per your audience.
You can also easily select the audiences to whom your ad should be visible and those you would like to avoid.

Highly affordable

Compared to mainstream advertising options such as television or print, Facebook is highly affordable and gives you the maximum bang for your buck. In addition, since you only pay for the leads you generate, you can rest assured there is no non-revenue generating advertising. Besides, you can move your Facebook leads to email and also start an email marketing campaign with that data

Easily Monitorable

Thanks to the in-depth analytics Facebook offers, you can track every dollar spent and how much it costs you for every lead. You can also check out the regions with the lowest CPC (Cost-Per-Click) and increase the frequency of the ads with high CTR (Click-Through-Ratios).

You can easily measure your advertising campaigns and set your marketing goals accordingly with Facebook advertising.

How to advertise on Facebook

Advertising on Facebook requires in-depth knowledge of how it works and the best practices to follow. If executed properly, Facebook advertising can help you get relevant customer leads, sales conversions, and a better ROI than other advertising mediums and social media channels.

At the same time, if you don't plan your Facebook advertising campaign and execute it properly, it could lead to wastage of your advertising budget and poor customer leads that can be a waste of time and money.

To make it easy for entrepreneurs and small business owners to advertise on Facebook, we have broken down the entire process into easy-to-follow steps. If you would not like to spend time creating the ads and instead spend the time focussing on your business, you can hire a virtual social media assistant to manage the same for you.

Step 1: The Facebook Ads Manager

The Facebook Ads Manager is a powerful tool designed to help you create and manage your Facebook advertising campaigns. It's your one-stop resource for everything regarding your campaigns, including monitoring the metrics.

Your business needs to have a Facebook Business Page to access Facebook Ads Manager, so make sure you create one first.

Once you go to the Facebook Ads Manager tool, you can access the Campaigns tab to create your ads.

Step 2: Select A Campaign

Once you select the Campaigns tab, Facebook presents different objectives that you can choose from based on your goals. (Please note only some of the objectives are available on the Desktop version. For more objectives, use Facebook Manager through the mobile app version)

The objectives you can achieve with Facebook ads are;

Reach: Showcases your product/services ad to the maximum audience possible.

Get more website visitors: Designed to drive traffic to your website, app, or specific landing page.

Post Engagement: Shows your ad creative to the maximum number of people with an objective to create an engagement with them through likes, comments, or sharing the post.

Page Likes: You can create a campaign to increase page likes/follows.

App Installs: You can increase awareness about your app and drive app installs.

Video Views: Increase video views.

Lead Generation: One of the most popular formats you can use to generate leads for your business. This objective pre-fills the user data, making it faster and convenient for your customers to respond.

Messages: Get customers to connect with you through Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.

Website Conversions: Get people to buy something/take action on your website.

Event Responses: Get people to see and respond to your event details.

Automatic: Facebook selects the best objectives based on your brand

Step 3: Set the budget & schedule

You can choose a daily or lifetime budget based on your marketing goals. Next, you need to select the period you would like to run the ad. You can specify the number of days and even the start/end date of the campaign.

Based on your budget and campaign, Facebook will display the potential reach/results of the ad. You can now increase/decrease the budget to meet your goals.

Sample Ad Creatives

Step 4: Prepare the ad creative

There are two essential parts while creating the ad creative. First, the description and image you would like to use in the ad. If you don't want to make a new ad, you can boost one of your existing posts.

Remember that the image/graphic you select for the ad cannot have text in more than 20% of its available space. For more information, you can refer to the Facebook Ads Guide.

Ideally, the specifications you need to follow are;

Headline: 40 characters

Link Description: 30 characters

Body text: 125 characters

You can also create a short video/animation using Facebook's advertising tools.

Make sure you preview the ad to ensure that it meets your requirements and brand guidelines.

Step 5: Select Your Audience

One of the essential parts of running an effective advertising campaign on Facebook is selecting the right audience for your ads.

It can make or break your campaign!

Facebook offers different options to select the target audience for your ads. Based on your campaign, you can choose from;

Smart Audience: When you use this option, Facebook selects the audience for your ads based on your page, people who have interacted with your page and are most likely to find it helpful.

People you choose through targeting: You can select the audience for your ads based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. You can also exclude specific demographics, interests, and behaviors based on your requirements.

This option is one of the most popular audience selection methods and helps entrepreneurs and small businesses target specific audiences according to their needs and budget.

People who like your page: An option that helps you target customers who have liked your page. It's an excellent option for presenting your latest products/services/offers to people interested in getting updates about your business.
There is also an option to target the friends of people who have liked your page. That helps you expand your audience among like-minded people and communities.

Retargeting Ads: Using this option, you can target customers who have visited your website. It's perfect for targeting customers who have visited your website in the past 30 days or have added something in their cart but haven't checked out the cart.

Custom Audience: If you are looking at presenting a specific offer or value add-on to your existing customers, then this is the option you should select. All you need to do is upload a list of your customer's numbers, email addresses, etc.

Then, Facebook matches the same with its database and shows your ads to this select audience. You can also select an option to show your ads to lookalike audiences.

It is the perfect option to interact with existing customers and update them on your latest products/offers.

Step 6: Placements

With Facebook, you can even decide which channels you would like the ad to be visible. Automatic Placements is the best option to get maximum mileage from your budget and reach a broad audience.

For those looking at more detailed targeting features, you can select options for placing your ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network. You can also place your ad based on Stories, Feeds, Search, Device Type (Desktop, Mobile, or Both), Operating systems, Mobile models, etc.

Step 7: Setup Payments & Launch your campaign

Once you create and set up your ads, you need to add funds to your advertising account to run the ads. You can use your Debit or Credit card to add payments or Net Banking.

Once you have added the required funds, all you need to do is click on the "Place Order" or "Promote" button to launch your campaign.

Facebook will typically review your campaign (it should take anything from 4 to 12 hours) and activate it.

Tracking Your Facebook campaign

Now that you've got your Facebook ads up and running, it's time to track and evaluate the results. Following the ad's campaigns performance is very important, as it will help you finetune your ad for better results. You can also replicate what's working and disable the campaigns that don't show results as per your expectations. FB ad library can provide valuable insights into the performance of different campaigns, allowing you to make informed decisions about which ones to develop and which ones to disable.

To track and monitor your campaigns, you need to visit the Facebook Ads Manager and select the campaign you would like to check the metrics. Based on the campaign, you will get the following options;

Overview: The Overview tab shows you the number of link clicks, cost per link click, and the amount spent on the campaign to date.

Additionally, you can check the Reach of your campaign and the number of Impressions your ad has given so far.

Further insights available in the Reach tab are quality, engagement rate, conversion rate, frequency, and unique clicks.

Reach: The Reach tab gives you a breakdown of the campaign reach across different demographics. It also shows you the ad placements across other devices, i.e., Desktop & Mobile and Locations.

The Locations options will show a detailed breakup of the numbers for the regions/areas the campaign is running.

Key Performance Factors

The critical factors that you need to consider while monitoring the performance of your campaigns are;

Engagement: This metric will help you understand how many people interacted with your ad, liked it, and shared it with others. High engagement rates indicate that your audience finds your content helpful, engaging, and informative.

The Number of Clicks: The number of people who clicked on the ad to get more information about your brand/product/service. Obviously, the higher the number of clicks, your campaign is more effective.

Click-Through Rate (CTR): One of the most important metrics you can calculate by dividing the campaign's Reach by the number of clicks. While 0.90% is considered the average CTR across different industries, as per a survey done by WordStream, you would be better off comparing the CTR v/s your previous campaigns since the judgment parameters for your enterprise would definitely be different. While we provide insights on boosting your CTR on Facebook, it's crucial to enhance your search engine visibility as well. You might find the CTR manipulation service highly beneficial, particularly in promoting Google search results, Bing, Etsy listings, and YouTube videos.

What's important to note is that a higher CTR will result in a lower cost per click, which translates into a better ROI on your advertising dollar.

As per Neelesh Rangwani, of Wishup one of Facebook's advertisers in the US markets, brands should aim for a CTR of 2.5% to 5% before considering it a success. Small businesses & entrepreneurs should keep tweaking their ad creatives, headlines, etc., until they achieve these CTR numbers.

Tracking the cost per lead is also essential to track your ad spending and ensure that they are justified.

Another effective way of tracking the success of your campaign is to use the Facebook Pixel.

What is a Facebook Pixel?

Simply put, the Facebook pixel is a piece of code similar to the Google Analytics code that you can place within the HTML coding of your website.

Facebook pixel helps you track all the conversions you have got from your ads, build customized audience lists, and remarket your ads to people who have visited your website during a specific period.

You can use Facebook pixels for tracking various actions undertaken by a visitor on your website, such as purchases, add to cart actions, payment updates, signing up a contact or registration form, searching for specific products/content, subscriptions, etc.

While Facebook Pixels are reasonably easy to set up, you can also seek the assistance of digital marketing virtual assistants for installing the same. They are trained in all aspects of social media marketing and can help you in all the stages, from conceptualizing the campaign to final execution and tracking the results.

To know more about the benefits of hiring one, you can read our blog: 30 Benefits of hiring a digital marketing virtual assistant.

How to improve Facebook Ads performance?

Once you've got your ads up and running and the performance metrics have started flowing in, it's time to relook at your ads and see which ones are performing.

All your Facebook campaigns should drive sales and generate good quality leads for your business at the end of the day. But, no matter what the CTR or Reach of the ads, if they don't help you grow your business, then it's all a colossal waste.

A few simple tips to make your ad campaign more effective are;

1. Use eye-catching, attractive visuals that draw Facebook users’ attention towards them as they scroll through their newsfeed. Getting the attention of your target audience is half the battle won when it comes to online advertising.
2. Stick to one primary product/service. Cramping up your ad with multiple messages, promoting numerous products/services (unless you are a retail store) will only end up confusing your target audience.
3. Use an obvious Call-To-Action so that your targeted audience knows what they need to do to make their purchase or get more information.
4. Make sure the link attached to your Call-To-Action works. Please test it and ensure that there are no broken links. Nothing frustrates a customer more than clicking on a "Know More" button and encountering a page that does not load or leads to another unwanted page.
5. Create a Landing Page specifically for your campaign, with all the relevant info. Ensure that it has a form or contact details through which the customer can get in touch with you.
6. Create a Special Offer that makes it worthwhile for the potential customer to click on your ad.
7. Create more of the campaigns that work. That will help you drive higher CTR, which will help improve the economics and efficiency of your campaigns. In addition, a higher CTR will directly translate into lower ad spending per lead you generate on the platform.
   

Facebook ads are highly effective, provided you execute them properly.

18.3% of US adults made a purchase through Facebook in 2020, while 48.5% of B2B decision-makers used Facebook for research. These stats show the high business potential of Facebook and the influence it carries with potential customers.

As such, entrepreneurs and small businesses could do pretty well by advertising on Facebook, provided they select their target audiences correctly and ensure that the creatives they use for their ads are high-quality and designed to capture the target audiences' attention.

As a Facebook advertiser, you should also make it a point to collect & track all the critical metrics related to your advertising campaign and analyze the data to improve your advertising campaign and make it more effective.

Facebook advertising can help your brand get the desired results once you use it consistently and give it the adequate time and resources it deserves.

Please share your feedback/comments on our blog and let us know how to improve it further to help small businesses and entrepreneurs build more substantial companies.

If you are looking for assistance in planning and managing your social media campaigns, we suggest you contact our team for a free consultation on how our social media virtual assistants can add value to your business.