Would you like to advertise on Facebook to increase your sales and improve your current results?
However, you do not yet know how to go about advertising and targeting your actions. I’m not talking to you about pressing the “boost publication” button but about creating ad campaigns via the Facebook ad manager.
Here is the complete guide to advertising on Facebook. An article that reveals everything about Facebook Ads to have the elements in hand and start your campaigns well.
Why advertise on Facebook?
As you probably know, the Facebook Reach, or organic reach, keeps dropping until it maybe totally disappears at this rate! The only alternative to declining reach on Facebook is often the use of advertising to gain visibility.
Many people have used advertising for their Facebook pages that lack engagement to relaunch them and reach new customers, readers, etc. However, advertising is also used for all companies that have mastered the creation of audiences and who manage to benefit substantially from it.
Some structures manage to achieve the greater part of their turnover thanks to Facebook advertising. Advertising on Facebook is above all about seeking visibility, gaining traffic, and increasing your business. The 3 key elements that we regularly find in the digital strategy for its website.
Facebook advertising: what you need to know before you start
It may seem difficult or intimidating, but creating a Facebook Ads campaign is much easier than you think. In fact, you will be able to learn in just a few hours with this guide article, which should help you. This guide on Facebook advertising is intended for beginners and community managers in charge of Facebook ads.
We will see together the essential elements for the success of a Facebook advertisement such as:
- Goal.
- Your target.
- Investments.
- Your advertising.
- Budget.
1. Know your goal before creating your Facebook ad
To create a Facebook Ads campaign, you must go to this Page: the Facebook ads manager, and then create an advertising account if yours has not yet been created.
If you’ve already created it, you should be familiar with “goals.” Goals are a must before doing anything in advertising.
Facebook gives you the different objectives that we will seek to achieve via its platform. To start on the right foot, you need to be very clear about your marketing objective. Depending on the goal you choose, Facebook will optimize your ad delivery differently.
In other words, it will not be the same people in your audience who will see your ads on Facebook, depending on the objective you have chosen.
Example 1
Are you a community manager looking for more engagement on your Facebook posts?
Choose the “interactions” goal. Facebook will display your ads to the people most likely to like, comment on or share your posts!
Example 2
Are you a blogger and want to boost your blog traffic? So choose the “Traffic” objective. Facebook will then show your advertisements to people who click on links often.
Choosing your goal is, therefore, not very complicated in itself. You need to know that this choice will determine who will see your ads.
Note:  A common mistake is to make a mistake between target traffic and conversions.
Indeed, for the 2 objectives, you send people on a web page but with a different result.
- With the Traffic advertising objective, you want people to visit your website, that’s it!
- With the Conversions ad goal, the result is different. You also send traffic to your website but with a specific goal, conversion.
Conversions are also different from each other. You might want traffic to reach these different conversions, for example:
- Subscribe to your newsletter.
- Download an ebook or white paper.
- Purchase a product from your store.
- Request for information on a service etc …
It’s up to you to make the right choice according to your final objective! You will also be able to bring closer to your advertising objectives, your objectives in terms of Facebook interactions to be privileged: like, click, comment or share.
This will help you gauge the traffic directed to your site based on the number of clicks recorded. To make the conversion pixel Facebook and Google Analytics coupled to your site will help you track your prospects.
2. Who are you addressing through your Facebook ads?
Now that we’ve chosen your goal, it’s time to find your target. When you still have little experience, it is best to test the socio-demographic targeting by interests.
If you choose only the basic socio-demographic targeting options, you will get an audience of this size! (1,900,000) Suffice to say that it is far too important and that you do not risk affecting all the people behind this target!
1,900,000 people, did that sound good to you?
I hope you answered “no” because we want a well-targeted audience!
Indeed, you compete with 6 million advertisers according to Facebook statistics and an auction system. Choosing too large an audience is like shooting yourself in the foot since you are competing with a larger number of advertisers.
How to decrease the size of your audience on the Facebook ad manager?
You will need to interact with advanced targeting according to interests and behaviors through the Facebook ad manager. Hence the importance of having a clear idea of ​​your ideal client and your market.
- Their hobbies or interests
- What magazines/blogs does he read?
- Their problems or frustrations
- Who are its competitors?
- Are there communities in its market (and therefore Facebook Pages)?
Know how to put yourself in your target’s shoes and define as many areas of interest as possible. Not all of them will be useful at first sight because it will be necessary to proceed by elimination. Some areas of interest will be much more meaningful than others in the context of advertising targeting.
By adding or removing some interest, you will see that the Facebook audience gauge increased or decreased more or less quickly in all cases. The goal is to obtain an ultra-targeted audience!
3. Where to position your Facebook ads?
Advertising on Facebook is also like advertising on Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network (Facebook’s partner app network).
Fortunately, Facebook gives you a choice to select the placements of your ads that seem most consistent to you. By default, you have the automatic placement of advertisements, which is recommended by Facebook.
Therefore, Facebook recommends the option “automatic placements,” which consists of letting it show your advertisements everywhere on its network and where they are the most powerful.
Which option (s) to choose for the placement of your Facebook ads?
Mostly, it is best to start with the “automatic placements” option so that you can analyze which placements are the best performing a few days after the launch of your ad.
You will never be able to know in advance what works best. To advertise on Facebook, it takes a lot of testing before you find the right audience … to target at the right time. It’s permanent A/B testing.
Once the best locations have been determined, you will have to go back to the settings to modify them and choose to exclude those that don’t work.
Generally, I find that “Audience Network” placement gives you a low CPC (cost per click). Facebook will then broadcast your advertising mainly on this placement.
The problem? These clicks can be low quality or accidental (people click and exit the page just as quickly). So it’s up to you to see if this placement could work better for you.
4. The anatomy of a Facebook ad
For a Facebook ad to work well, it’s not just about targeting your audience well, although this part is the main part of the job. It is also necessary to have the right visual, the right information, and the right message accompanying it.
Facebook ads must contain at least these 5 elements:
- A teaser (text above the image).
- A creative element (image, video).
- A title.
- A description (text below the link).
- A call-to-action button (Call-To-Action or CTA).
The most important element of your advertising is certainly the image. It must grab the user’s attention and, therefore, be of good quality while also standing out in the news feed. Choosing a visual can take a long time, but you need to make the right choice to attract your target.
Sometimes it can be interesting to play with the colors that quickly catch the eye when they stand out in the news feed, but it’s up to you depending on your activity and what you want to promote.
On Facebook, the main colors are blue and white, so an image should stand out easily. The catchphrase of your ad is supposed to grab the user’s attention and spark their interest. Look for the right image if you plan to advertise on Facebook.
5. How much money should you invest to advertise on Facebook?
One of the most frequent questions regarding the budget to invest in your Facebook advertising campaigns is: How much will it cost me to advertise on Facebook?
My response:Â As much as you are willing to pay.
Indeed, you can start with $1 day for some advertising campaigns, which is the minimum on Facebook. For example, “interaction” campaigns are inexpensive at all, and you can, if you wish, run interaction campaigns for just $1 per day.
Obviously, the cost will be higher for a website traffic campaign because a click is more valuable than a simple interaction. Facebook charges you more because the person who clicks on an advertising link leaves Facebook.
As a general rule, I like to set a daily budget of $ 5 per audience and then increase the budget on audiences that perform well.
The choices of advertising budgets offered by Facebook
Facebook gives you the choice between 2 solutions:
- A daily budget
- A budget for the duration of the campaign
At the same time, you can decide when your ads will run (set a start and end date or stream without an end date).
What should you choose between daily budget and budget over the duration of the campaign?
There is no clear correct or wrong answer but let me explain how these 2 methods work because it is not possible to change it once you have determined it:
- Daily budget: If you set $ 20 per day for 7 days for your advertising campaign, Facebook will ensure that you don’t spend more than $ 20 per day. In the end, you will have spent 140 € over the week, distributed equally.
- Budget over the duration of the campaign: if you set, for example, 140 € for your advertising campaign, Facebook will divide the total budget more or less equally on the dates set but with days when you will spend more and others less. You will always be close to an average / day.
If you settle for the second option, you will be forced to set a start and end date, which I don’t like to do.
Personally, I prefer to choose the daily budget, which gives you a little more control over how Facebook will spend your budget.
6. Know how to analyze the performance of your Facebook ads
It is very important to know how to evaluate the performance of your Facebook ads. Otherwise, you will waste your budget unnecessarily as you advertise on Facebook. When it comes to Facebook Ads, you have to ask yourself a moment and calculate what it costs you what you are looking to promote, compared to the budget you will spend.
Think about thinking in the margin and not in turnover because the budgetary expenses for advertising are net.
Conclusion
If you have gone through this guide carefully, you know that the first thing to do before advertising on Facebook is to determine your objective:
Traffic, engagement, or conversions?
It’s for you to see!
With the regular updates of its algorithm, Facebook will favor (even) more of your friends’ publications than those of the brands and the media. You will probably have to let interaction advertising campaigns run.
Then, think about refining your targeting, choosing your investments, and determining a budget to start. Finally, all you should do is create an advertisement that grabs attention and generates interest, as I have shown you. It is that simple. You should now start planning how to advertise on Facebook.
