Facebook is the go to place for businesses to advertise. With over 1 billion users worldwide, your target audience is on Facebook, all you need to do is find them. 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook every day, it’s clear that Facebook users want video, so it’s easy to say your target audience want video too.
So here’s quick guide to get the best out of Facebook advertising for your business.
1. There are multiple campaigns that can be launched on Facebook but we’ve focused on the following:
1. Page post engagement
This allows you to boost a post that you have posted to your Facebook business page. If you really like a post that you have added to your page, you can click the ‘boost’ button at the bottom right hand corner of that post. This can gain more people liking, commenting and sharing your content. Choose the location, age, gender and interests of your target audience and this ad will display in this audience newsfeed.
2. Page like
This is a way to gain more likes for your business page and build your community. This will also give you insights into the type of people who like your business. Create an ad you think your potential customers will like. Pick the location, age, gender and interest of your target audience and your ad will be shown in the news feeds of potential customers. People can interact with your ad and ‘like’ your page.
3. Clicks to website
You can create an ad with text and images or text and video, that will take people to your website, whether it be the homepage, shop section or any other page you want your customers to see. This type of ad has many targeting options including, age, gender, location, interests and much more. This is a great way to get people to your website rather than just to your Facebook business page.
4. Website conversions
This type of ad allows you to track what a user does on your website. For this type of ad you can use both text and images or text and video
You can track:
-Checkout
-Registration
-Leads
-Key web page views
-Adds to cart
-Other web conversions
In order to create an ad like this you will need to add the Facebook pixel to your website HTML code. This will then track what users do on your website. If you don’t manage your website don’t worry, you can directly email the person who looks after your website with the code to add the Facebook pixel. You can see everything you want to track in Facebook ads manager, which you automatically have access to when you set up a Facebook business page.
Once Facebook Pixel is installed you can create an ad in the same way as ‘clicks to website’ above.
5. Video views
Use this type of campaign to get more views for a video you have posted to your Facebook page. You can target by age, location, gender, interests and more. This is a great way to get more views for your video.
- Create your ad
Once you decide what type of campaign is best for your needs, go to Facebook Adverts Manager. This can be found in the promote section of your facebook business page. When you are in Adverts Manager you can create your ad with text and images or text and video. Here you can add your headline text and the ad content text. Choose an image or add your Viddyad video that you want to use to grab the attention of your audience.
- Target your audience
Then it’s time to set up your targeting. As mentioned above you can target in many different ways. You should always choose a specific location, gender (male, female or both) and age range. You can then target as follows:
More demographics: This section allows you to be more specific with your audience, so you can choose the level of education, specific schools they have studied at and even what year they graduated in or when they will graduate.
Interests: interests can include pages they’ve liked, other ads they’ve clicked on and things they’ve shared on Facebook, to name a few.
Behaviors: these are things people do on and off Facebook. These include purchase behaviours and intent, device usage and travel preference, if they are working and where they work again just to name a few types.
Connection targeting: Use this to target people who already have a connection with you on Facebook.
Exclude audience: You can choose to exclude certain categories. So for example, if you know you don’t want to target people who already like your business page then you can exclude these people.
4. Set a budget
After you complete the above you should then set your budget. Pick how much you want to spend and how long you want your campaign to go on for. Depending on your ad campaign type, you can choose a minimum spend of $1 per day to $5 per day. You can spend as much as you like on your campaigns, and obviously, the more you spend, the more you are likely to gain in returns.
- Ad location
Facebook allows you to decide specifically where you want your ad to serve. You can set it to only serve on desktops or mobile or have it on both. Ads serve within the Facebook newsfeed but they also serve at the side in smaller boxes and text. Obviously, if you use a video ad it can’t be shown to the right of the timeline.
You can also opt in or out of advertising on Instagram. If you do want your ads to serve on Instagram as well, just click a button to opt in.This doesn;t involved setting up a separate ad campaign.
Some phrases you’ll want to know
Impression – When an ad is seen by a user of Facebook it’s referred to as an impression. One view is one impression.
Cost per mile – in this case mile stands for a thousand impressions. So this is cost per thousand impressions. Most ads on Facebook are charged on a cost per mile basis. So you are charged every time your ad is seen or, in industry terms, every time your ad is ‘served’ to a user.
Cost per click – this is when you are charged every time your ad is clicked.
Advertiser bid – This is the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to spend in order for their ad to be served. This can be set manually when you set up your campaign or you can allow Facebook to set the maximum advertiser bid for you.
How are ads served?
Facebook ads are based on an auction based system. Facebook are user centric, in other words they always put the user first before a business. For this reason they keep the amount of ads shown on a user’s Facebook page to a minimum so as not to interrupt the user experience. Because there are several advertisers trying to target similar audience groups an auction is used to decide what advertisers ad is served at any time.
When you create your ad and set it up to serve to users your ad will be given a total value score. This score is made up of the advertiser bid, ad quality and relevancy and estimated action rates. Quality and relevance is determined by how good your ad is, that is if your text images or video is of high quality and is of interest to your users. Estimated action rate is how likely a person is to click, like, comment or share your ad.
These three factors are all taken into account when the auction is deciding if your ad should be shown before another advertisers ad. You can monitor these throughout your campaign and make changes if you feel it is necessary.
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