Devote Digital

Facebook Advertising 101 - Digital Marketing Part 2

Have you, as a business owner, ever come across an impressive "sponsored" ad on Facebook, and thought "that must be difficult to do!". You'll be happy to hear the following: it's really not. Welcome to Devote Digital's digital marketing podcast - your knight in shining armour who will guide your business down the bright path of Facebook advertising! The previous instalment of our Digital Marketing crash course covered how to setup your own Facebook page. In this post we’ll dive deeper into the big wide world of Facebook advertising. The great thing about Facebook advertising is anyone can start for as little as $2/day! You can follow along here or listen to the Devote Digital Marketing Podcast.

Setting up your Facebook Business Account

Once you have a Facebook page you can go to business.facebook.com and sign up for a business manager account. It's possible to use a personal account but not recommended as Facebook limits you. You also should setup a "Facebook Pixel" on your website. This is a fairly straightforward process which integrates your website with your Facebook Business account. Now you're probably looking at three tabs under your ad account: Campaigns, Ad-sets and Ads. Don’t stress! We’ll walk you through everything. Don't stress: Devote Digital is here to help.

Campaign

The first step is to create a campaign and set an objective. It’s important to decide what’s most important to you. If you just want to reach as many people as possible use the "reach" objective. If you're looking for sales then optimise based on conversions. Although it’s important to note that Facebook needs fifty purchases to optimise a conversion based campaign. If this would take too long you might be better with a "traffic" objective. Test a few different objectives to see what works for you.

Ad-set

Once you have a campaign the next step is work out who you want to reach, your "audience." A good place to start is Facebook Insights, you can see the user profile of your page as well as information on other pages users. You can use this information to create an audience. It's important to target your "warm audiences" as they will be the most open to your message. If you have a Facebook page you already have a great, ready-made warm audience of people interested in your brand. Site traffic and customers are also good warm audiences. We also suggest you re-market to your site visitors and customers. On average only 1-2% of site visitors actually purchase. So if you're not re-marketing you're losing out on 98% of potential customers! Even if you don't have much web traffic yet you can re-market to your customer database. If you've run a business for a few years you likely have a customer database with information like names, email, phone numbers and home address. Facebook can use this information to target those users which gives you a great ready made warm audience. Once you’ve set up your audiences you need to determine budget, schedule and placements. You can schedule start and end dates or let it run continuously. If you don't check your ads much, scheduling an end date might be a safe precaution. You also should spend some time selecting your ad's placement which determine where your ad will show. Facebook feed and Instagram feed are the most common. Choosing a few placements can increase costs per impression but can also cut down on spend wasted on places not suited to your ad.

The Ad

So far you've chosen your campaign objective and picked your audiences, placements, budgets and schedule. Now it's finally time to create your ad! Your ad can show in the form of a video, collection, lead generation form and carousel. Carousels are the two and half picture squares you can click or swipe. They're the main ad used on Facebook and Instagram. If you're new to making ads they're a great place to start. Your ad's "creative" has two main ingredients: your imagery/video and your text or "copy." Keep in mind you're competing for users attention with hundreds of other companies. So try to make your creative stand out and be "thumb stopping-ly" good! Carefully select the images or video's you think best communicate your brand message. Often this will take some testing to figure out what works. The first image people see will always be the most important. Once you have your imagery write your headline and copy. Spend some time ensuring you're getting your message across concisely in a way that's interesting. Ensure your call-to-action button links to the most relevant page on your website. Don't just link to your homepage! At this point in our Digital Marketing Crash Course you should now know how to create and run a Facebook Page as well as advertise through it. If you have any questions feel free to shoot us an email or comment! You can also listen along to our podcast on Soundcloud: Devote Digital Marketing Podcast.