Ultimate How-To Guide on Facebook Ads [2023]

Facebook Ads Introduction

In the modern age, social media has become the most used and effective platform for advertisers and marketers as more turn to their smart devices for entertainment and work purposes. According to a Blue Corona article, consumers spend at least 5 hours a day on their smartphone with an 88% growth rate year over year on time spent watching videos on a smartphone.

Thanks to these network platforms (Facebook Ads) with massive user bases, advertisers can reach billions of people, increase exposure for their brands and products, and drive more traffic to their websites! While there is a variety of platforms one can advertise on, Facebook Ads have proven to be the most popular social media platform among digital marketers worldwide.

A worldwide email survey carried out by Statista found that 94% of digital marketers used the network to promote their business! Instagram -another Facebook product- is in 2nd place with 76%. This was based on data as recent as January 2020. With this information and millions of businesses taking advantage of this unique opportunity, we believe that now is the best time to learn and incorporate Facebook Ads into your arsenal!

Leveraging paid social ads, especially Facebook Ads, is one way to potentially see an immediate impact on your business and should be an integral part of every business’s advertising strategy. In this article, I’ll be detailing everything you’ll need to know to run your Facebook Ad campaigns.

Starting, I’ll give a brief introduction and the benefits of Facebook Ads. Following that, a couple of How-To guides will be provided so you could familiarize yourself with the platform and navigate it. In this step, we will show how to research your audience and how to target them. We will discuss what constitutes a successful strategy, which includes budgeting, messaging, etc.

Benefits of Facebook Ads - What are Facebook Ads?

With all the benefits that come from using it, Facebook Ads have proven to be one of the most effective social media tools to scale your business, attract customers, and generate leads and sales. One BIG benefit is the vast number of people that use the platform for various purposes. With roughly 2.85 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2021, Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide!

Not only is Facebook ads an attractive option due to its sheer size, but the platform also commands a small but significant portion of each user’s day! A blog post published by Tech Jury found that a user spends an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media and 38 minutes on Facebook per day in 2020!

Despite witnessing a slight decrease from the previous year along with an increase in competition, you should be able to boost your brand and business with the correct implementations and procedures. With Facebook’s analytics and ability to target specific audiences, you’ll reach far more people than any organic post might!

It’s no secret that social media operates on a pay-to-play model and Facebook ads is no different as they prioritize posts from family and friends more frequently. According to a Hootsuite blog post, the average reach of an organic page post is about 5.2%, meaning that only 1 of 19 customers sees a business’s non-promoted post!

So, if you’re thinking about run Facebook Ads, incorporating ads into your strategy is probably a good idea for your business. You may need a budget, but you can set its price! With careful targeting, we promise it’ll be worth every penny!

The final benefit of using Facebook Ads is the ability to target your ad campaign based on a variety of factors, a feature that’s customizable to your preferences. You can choose from a variety of factors such as location, demographics, interests, behavior, etc. However, if you’re reading this in 2021, keep in mind of how Apple’s iOS 14.5 will affect your results.

How-to Guide - Facebook Ads

Before we get started with the actual platform, it’s important to develop a strategy and contemplate some of the important questions:

• Why are you advertising?
• Who should I target?
• What should I expect from this?
• What are your aims?
• Who is your Facebook Ads audience?

The list goes on. Arguably, it’s beneficial for you to have these questions answered beforehand, so you could measure your actual success/results with your expectation. Remember that to improve your results you need to constantly be testing new methods. Try out what you think will make a successful campaign and alter it on Facebook Ad Manager to your preferences to optimize it.

You will find several strategies that you could implement near the end of this article. First, let’s get you started on establishing Facebook Ads Manager and researching your audience!

Step 1: Setting Up Ad Manager & Reaching Your Audience

Setting up Ad Manager:

Creating your Facebook Ads Manager account is fairly simple. All you need to do is go to Facebook Ad Manager and create your account or add the information from your existing account that you will be used to create this ad campaign. Once you’ve done that, you will just need to fill out the relevant fields about your business purpose and billing information. Once that is filled out, you are ready to create your ad campaign! But first, you need to figure out your target audience.

Researching Your Audience:

When trying to reach your relevant audience for an ad campaign, you want to target a very specific market. This is easier said than done because it involves a good amount of research. Concluding that your audience likes sports or is interested in a certain TV show is too broad to target when creating an ad campaign. You want to go even more specific than that. The reason for being so specific when trying to figure out your target audience is because you don’t want to have to spend more money than you need to tap into a bigger audience than necessary.

First, you need to identify your niche. Identify the other brands that are in your niche and go through all of them to get a better understanding of your audience. What specific brands are they buying from? Are they similar to yours? How are they different and what can you do to either persuade those people or tap into that other half that isn’t purchasing from that specific brand?

Next, you need to go through some different demographics. Where does my audience frequent? Are they men or women? Is there a certain ethnicity that is more interested in this specific product or service? What part of the world does my audience live in? These questions are important to ask especially if you’re interested in selling your product/service in a specific area of the world.

Lastly, you want to find out what makes your audience stand out from the others. This is a very open-ended question. This isn’t as simple as just finding out that your audience is a fan of the New England Patriots. You want to go even more specific than that.

What Facebook pages does your audience frequent? Do they read newspapers or a specific publication online? Are there any websites that they visit daily? To find out some of these more specific questions, you might need to consult the ‘Facebook Ads Audience Insights’ tool within Ad Manager.

You might think that some of these questions are getting too specific and that other people outside of the variables that you’ve tested will be interested in your product/service and they may very well be. But, when first creating an ad on Facebook you don’t want to cut corners and waste valuable time going too broad. If you find after the fact that you want to target a more expansive audience, then you can always run another ad campaign since it’s assumed the first was successful.

‍

Step 2: Ad Campaign Purposes

Now that you’ve inquired about your specific audience, it’s time to nail down the specifics of your ad objective. When running an ad campaign, there should be one thing that you want your audience to do when they see your ad. There is a multitude of different things that companies want from the consumer when creating their ad but that ad should also represent a specific purpose to maximize its effectiveness in driving traffic. Check out this Buffer post to learn about each objective:

Do you want people to visit your site after seeing your ad? Is it just to increase awareness around your brand? Would you like people to visit the site and purchase a product or service? These are just a couple of several questions to ask yourself before you start your ad campaign because you don’t want the consumer to be guessing what they should be doing once they see your ad. You want one singular objective that will not confuse them or drive them away from your campaign. Just check here is the how to check consumer psychology into your Facebook Ads.

Once you’ve figured out the objective of your ad, Facebook Ads Manager will input the necessary parameters to track the traffic going in and out of your ad involving clicks, conversions, downloads, etc. that you are trying to accomplish with your ad campaign. We recommend browsing this blog post to learn about selecting the best Facebook Ad option for your objective(s).

Step 3: Creating an advertisement on Facebook

Finally, we will get our hands dirty by creating an ad! You probably have had some experience navigating Facebook Ad Manager already, following Step 1. To begin, select the proper tab for the type of ad you want and click the “Create” button in the top left corner.

Ads Manager will prompt you to choose an objective for your campaign before you move on to anything else. There are a variety of objectives to choose from general brand awareness to increasing your online store’s traffic, as well as others. This may seem like a trivial decision, but choose carefully since you aren’t able to alter it later on!

For this example, let’s say that you’re trying to drive engagement with your content. So, select “Engagement” and name your campaign. Once you’ve selected this option, Facebook will require you to input the URL link that you wish to promote. You have created your first Facebook campaign! Refer back to the previous step to learn more about these objectives.

The next step is vital to your campaign.

Step 4: Configure your Audience and Set your Budget

Although we talked about your target audience, we must bring it up again because it’s imperative to the success of your campaign, along with your budget. We want you to always keep your target audience in mind since the more you know about them, the better the results! However, if you’re starting with paid ads, we recommend experimenting with the different options until you’ve found the correct audience.

With Facebook’s massive reach and data collection, it’s best practice to be as specific as possible about your target audience to maximize the impact of your ad(s). The audience of your ads can be customized based on various factors such as location, age, gender, education, hobbies, etc. Furthermore, Facebook can remarket to customers and create a custom audience on Facebook Ads; the latter allows you to target your business contact database, previous website visitors, etc. Read more on Custom Audience, here.

One of the great features of Facebook Ads is that the platform allows you to take control of your budget for each ad. First, decide how you want ad delivery to be optimized, then decide on your budget. There are two ways to spend your budget: daily and lifetime.

Daily budget refers to the average dollar amount you’ll spend a day on a specific ad. Facebook set the default daily budget to $20, but you can adjust it, even when the campaign is live.

Lifetime Budget refers to the amount of money you’ll spend over a set duration of time on an ad. It’s best to select this when you have a specific amount of time you want the ad to run; Facebook Ads will spread your budget out over the specified time duration.

To specify your budget, even more, click on “Advanced Option”.

Here, you will find additional functions. Facebook gives you the ability to schedule your Facebook ads. You can run it whenever you want! If you feel like running them on specific hours or days, you can even set up parameters. Furthermore, you can decide how you want to optimize and deliver your ads!  

Step 5: Create your Facebook Ads

This is the final step! Assuming that you don’t have any existing ones, click on “Create Ad” and choose the proper format. If you have just one specific offer, select “Single image or video”. If not, go with the multiple image formats.

Next, choose the image(s) or video(s) you would like to use. You can choose up to 6 items when creating a campaign, which also creates 6 different ad variations. By creating different ads, you can identify the best-performing one and pause the others. We recommend checking out Facebook’s recommendations for specific about the size of the image.

After you are done with the images, move on to the texts. For the “Primary Text”, you want to emphasize the value of your product to your potential customers and follow it up with a call to action. Lastly, you will want to add a link to your landing page. The headline should be short and describe your product, while the description is completely optional. According to an Orbelo blog post, Facebook’s algorithm will decide whether to show this depending on its relevance to the viewer.

Afterward, you will need to provide a URL of your store’s web page. You may be required to shorten it. Then, you have the option to add a “Call to Action” button.

Finally, we come to “Language” and “Tracking”. Under “Languages”, you can select whether you want your ad to be translated into other languages, which is only handy if you’re advertising to people in various languages in a single campaign. “Tracking” is useful to measure results that you can later use and analyze to improve on any future Facebook ad campaigns you may create.

When you’re happy with your work, double-check everything and click “Confirm”.

Pro Tip: Learn How to Create Good Looking Facebook Ad Graphics

Strategies/Tips:

Marketing costs associated with Facebook can be quite expensive, depending on how much you utilize their advertising platform. Therefore, it’s essential to implement cost-effective strategies and tips in order to maximize the benefits that Facebook advertising has to offer.

Here are the Do’s and Don’ts of Facebook Advertising:

Do’s:

1. Identify and Appeal to Your Target Audience

• Before you begin working on an ad, you must first determine who your target audience is and what type of content they generally engage with. Being knowledgeable about your target audience will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your campaign.

2. Decide on an Appropriate Budget

• Find the proper balance between limiting your spending to what you can afford while still allowing your campaign to attain its advertising goals.

3. Edit and Proofread Your Ad

• Always remember to review your campaign a few times before launching it because what happens on social media stays indefinitely. Even after removing your ad, viewers could have taken screenshots and shared them with others, leading to negative attention around your product/service.

‍

Don'ts:

1. Don’t Forget About Mobile Users

• On average, the number of mobile users on your page is about three times the number of desktop users. Make sure to enable the mobile option for your ad placements when creating an ad for your business. In addition, your landing page should be mobile-friendly as well.

2. Don’t Use Too Much Text

• Facebook has a 20% guideline which means that an image ad is rejected if the incorporated text takes up more than 20% of the total space. This guideline is put in place for the benefit of both advertisers and consumers. Generally, wordy ads don’t engage viewers’ attention, so we suggest advertisers keep it simple and straight to the point.

3. Don’t Promote Misleading Content

• This goes without saying but promoting advertisements that contain misleading, deceptive, or distasteful content can undoubtedly result in serious repercussions. In addition to tarnishing your brand image, you may also be temporarily or even permanently banned from Facebook.

For more, checkout this article: COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE DO’S AND DON’TS OF FACEBOOK ADS

Aggregated Events Manager and iOS 14 Updates:

Checkout this complete article: 5 tips to optimize Facebook Ads for IOS 14

If you’re reading this in 2021, I’m sure you’ve heard about Apple’s new iOS updates that have been sending shockwaves across the advertising and marketing world.  The new update allows users to choose whether or not to consent to third-party sites before any data is shared, impacting the way our devices receive and process conversion events from digital tools. Facebook warns that this will cause problems for digital advertisers on their platform, specifically when targeting Apple users.

In response, Facebook released Aggregated Event Measurement, “a protocol that allows for measurement of web events from iOS 14 users and limits domains to 8 conversion events that can be prioritized for conversion optimization.” We recommend that you apply this to your marketing strategy as soon as possible. The update has proven to be very impactful and implementing this will help your Facebook optimization. To learn more about the update and how you optimize your Facebook Ads, check out our blog post here!

For more, checkout this article: 5 tips to optimize Facebook Ads for IOS 14

Conclusion:

Social media websites have quickly become an effective and important component of marketing campaigns for a wide variety of marketing budgets, goals, and strategies. Leveraging paid social media advertising tool can be a way to quickly and positively impact your business’ bottom line.

Of the social networking websites on which to advertise, Facebook remains one of the best options for many kinds of businesses because its sheer size and preferability amongst its many users. While advertising on Facebook can be an incredibly lucrative investment for a business, it can also be a futile expenditure if the proper research relating to an ad campaign is not conducted and properly implemented.

It is incredibly important to establish why you are advertising, who you are advertising to, and what your goals and expectations are, regarding the particular advertising campaign. This is done through careful testing and tweaking, and when it is executed correctly should yield successful results for businesses of all sorts.

Regardless of a campaign's specifics, there are also a few blanket rules that all Facebook advertisers should try and follow as best they can, namely that ads should always be proofread, should be designed to appeal to their specific target audience, and should remain within budgetary constraints. Marketers would ideally avoid designing advertisements that promoted untrue or misleading information, use too much text, or that are not mobile device friendly.

‍