Imagine having an advertising tool with a simple setup, creative features, and immense customization. A platform that offers different, detailed ways to reach your ideal audience based on their interests, gender, age, location, and behavior on your site. And if there’s such a tool that could give you excellent results, it’s Facebook.
Recognized as one of the top advertising channels online, Facebook has become a vital part of our lives, both personal and professional. And for a variety of businesses, this has been the perfect platform to reach media-marketing success.
With its impressive reputation, it’d be a foolish idea not to use this essential tool for your advertising campaigns. It really is tough work to obtain a competitive advantage in today’s market. But with Facebook by your side, creating a profitable and strong customer base and boosting brand awareness will be a lot easier.
However, getting desired results utilizing Facebook Ads does not happen overnight. There’s no magic formula to instantly convert your audience into paying customers or to deliver high ROI in every campaign you roll out. But there are strategies to make that happen, like learning the basics of Facebook Advertising.
In this guide, we’ll discuss the first steps on how you can start creating high-converting ad campaigns on Facebook and other important things you need to know.
How to set up your Facebook Advertising account
Let’s first dive into creating your own page, and that is setting up your Facebook Business Manager. This section is basically designed to help users manage their ad accounts and Facebook pages and see who has access to them. Creating, managing, and combining multiple ad accounts are also possible with this tool.
To set up a Facebook Business Manager account, head over to business.facebook.com and click Create Account. You’ll then be requested to enter your Facebook business page, your company’s name, billing address, email address, and other relevant information.
Quick tip: Make sure to provide the right information as some can’t be changed afterwards. Also, it’s better to add multiple payment options in case your primary card gets blocked for some reason. Let the platform do the billing for you.
Furthermore, bear in mind that there are certain limitations when it comes to managing a Facebook account. For instance, an ad account can have up to twenty-five users, while a user can manage a mix of twenty-five ad accounts. As for a regular ad account, it can hold up to five thousand campaigns, five thousand ad sets, and fifty ads in each set.
How to set up your Facebook Ad campaign
With the use of Facebook Ads Manager, you can set up new campaigns, create new ads for each one, and target different groups/audiences, as well as optimize and improve the campaigns. This professionally designed tool doesn’t just make reaching potential customers easier but also allows you to monitor your campaigns simultaneously.
In case you haven’t used or accessed the Ads Manager before, be sure to take some time to familiarize yourself first. You will basically see four tabs on your screen:
- Account Overview—where you can view your ad campaigns’ overall performance
- Campaigns—where you can create and analyze all your Facebook ad campaigns
- Ad Sets—lets you create and analyze the ads (text, videos, images, and call-to-action buttons) that your targets will see
- Ads—allows you to create and analyze ad sets (tell your ads how to run)
Here’s an overview of the certain steps that you need to do in setting up your ad campaigns:
- Go to Campaigns to create a new Facebook Ad campaign and select the marketing objective you prefer.
- You will then be directed to the Ad Set tab and select Create Multiple New Ad Sets.
- In the Audience section, you can add audience or age range variations that you want to target for every ad set.
Managed advertisers can create up to ten thousand campaigns, ten thousand ad sets, and fifty ads in each set. To learn more about these in detail, check the following sections.
STEP 1: Pick your Facebook Ad campaign objective
Selecting an objective helps Facebook determine other elements of your campaign such as bidding options, available ad formats, and optimization. Go for the one that best suits your desired outcome. Here are the available Facebook campaign objectives:
Awareness objectives
- Brand awareness
- Reach
Consideration objectives
- Traffic
- Engagement
- App installs
- Video views
- Lead generation
- Messages
Conversion objectives
- Conversions
- Catalog sales
- Store traffic
STEP 2: Name your campaign
We suggest utilizing useful naming conventions for your Facebook Ad campaigns so it will be easier for you to organize as you run them. You can create your campaign names using these elements:
- Campaign run date range
- Client name or website
- Target audience or location
- Customer audience
- Creative type
STEP 3: Set up your budget
Still, in the campaign creation, you have the option to use Facebook’s recommended campaign budget optimization (CBO). This basically simplifies the campaign management process and gives flexibility to how the budget will be distributed across the ad sets.
To start, you just need to turn on the CBO toggle and select if you want it to be a daily budget or a lifetime budget. You can then set your campaign bid strategy, choosing from the following items:
Spend-based bidding
- Lowest cost
- Highest value
Goal-based bidding
- Cost cap
- Minimum ROAS
Manual
- Bid cap
STEP 4: Set up ad sets
The ad set level is where you can set up your target audience and placement. Depending on the campaign objective you select, Facebook may request more information.
In choosing your target audience, you have the option to create a new one or use a saved one. Available options for selecting a new audience include age, location, gender, and language. You may also add detailed targeting based on interests, demographics, and behaviors. Or you can create a lookalike or custom audience in which you’ll target users based on the gathered data from Facebook’s products or from the details you provide.
Lastly, ad sets also allow you to choose where you want your ads to appear. The selection includes the following:
- News feed
- Marketplace
- Right column
- Video feeds
- Stories
- In-stream videos
- Search results
- Feed
- Stories
- Explore
Messenger
- Inbox
- Stories
- Sponsored messages
Audience Network
- Native, banner, and interstitial
- Rewarded videos
- In-stream videos
STEP 5: Set up your creative
Next you will need to select the ad format you prefer (single image, video, carousel, or collection) or utilize existing Facebook page posts. You can then upload the media by choosing a video or image or creating a slideshow or video using a template.
STEP 6: Optimize the campaigns
Your job doesn’t end in creating the ad campaigns. You also need to measure their overall performances to check if they’re yielding the best results and optimize them over time. Note that Facebook Ads require time to optimize, so don’t instantly turn off your ads or modify your targeting just because you’re not seeing purchases on day one. Be patient.
In addition, Facebook recommends looking into different metrics such as performance (frequency, reach, impressions), website (purchases or checkouts), engagement (post engagement, page likes), percentage of video views, clicks (click-through rate, cost per click), and so on.
How to create winning ad creatives
In every Facebook campaign that you run, the ad design can be a deal breaker. Remember that aside from engaging with family, friends, and pages, Facebook users are also bombarded with numerous advertisements every day. So if you want to be noticed, you need to come up with an incredible design. Here are some tricks to help you with that:
Design Tip #1: Keep your ads colorful
You can surely catch the attention of anyone by using the right colors. In fact, you can even initiate different types of emotions using colors, from reducing the perception of waiting time to enhancing mood. Here are some of the associated effects color can have:
- Associated with mood—red inspires aggression, blue creates calmness, and yellow promotes happiness.
- Associated with different meanings—farmers see green and think about vegetables, while investors see green and think of money.
- Associated with cultural influences—Eastern culture believes blue is an evil or sinister color, while Western culture thinks it’s a calming and cool color.
Analyze your target audience and choose the colors that would be most appealing to them. You can use this research on color psychology for further information.
Design Tip #2: Use high-quality images
Using a low-quality stock photo or art will make your ad look unprofessional. Create or look for high-quality illustrations and photos that you can legally use. Avoid using ones from Google image search as you might find yourself facing copyright violations. There are various resources out there that require no attribution and are free for commercial use. For instance, on Pexels.com, you can readily see the licenses of the stock photos.
Moreover, it’s recommended to use complementary and contrasting colors. You can use polls and surveys or just refer to your competitors’ posts for reference. As for the image size, the recommendation is 1200×628 pixels.
Design Tip #3: Use actual photos of the product
Most consumers want to see what a product actually looks like before making a purchase. Having a photo of your product on the ad will help you generate higher quality traffic, boost product awareness, and set customer expectations.
Depending on the product or service you’re advertising, you can also use before and after pictures if you’re offerings require preparation. For example, let’s say you provide meal planning and grocery pickup services—you can use two images relevant to both actions.
Writing the copy
Another essential part of an ad is the copy itself. To grab the attention and interest of your audience, you need to create copy that can convince them to take action. To start with this, create different headlines and descriptions that are catchy, clear, and succinct. They should be able to evoke emotions, encourage people to click on your ad, and convince them that you have what they need. Offering freebies and discounts often helps too.
Don’t forget to consider a call-to-action button as well. This can help prospective customers take the action that you want them to. Some of the available CTAs you can pick from are Sign Up, Book Now, Contact Us, Shop Now, and so on.
Other practices to take note of when writing ad copy are to create a consistent voice, write with urgency, use testimonials and reviews, tie it to your visuals, and utilize emojis on your posts. Go to this page to see further information regarding the recommended character count and other relevant specs.
Grow your business by using Facebook Ads today
With this guide, we hope that you now have a clear idea of how to create your new campaigns, target the right audience, and set up the right creatives. If you’re an absolute beginner and require professional assistance in creating and running a successful ad campaign, get in touch with us here at Feedback Systems. We offer a Facebook Ad management service that is professional, personal, and tailored to your specific needs. To know more about our results-driven approach, you can check out our page or reach out to our strategists.
