Making Facebook Advertising Work for Your Business

At this year’s Southern C Summit, I had the honor of leading a pre-conference workshop on Facebook advertising. I was blessed to have 15 fabulous ladies sign up for this session and we had a fun time digging into Facebook ads.

Why should businesses invest in Facebook advertising? According to Buffer, “91% of marketers invested in Facebook advertising last year. And it’s easy to understand why when you look at the data: more than 1.18 billion people use Facebook every day, and on average, each person spends more than 50 minutes a day across Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram.”

If that statement doesn’t convince you, take a look at these statistics from Hootsuite –

• By the third quarter of 2016, Facebook brought in $6.8 billion in advertising revenue, up from $4.3 billion the year before
• On Facebook, desktop ads have 8.1x higher click-through rates and mobile ads have 9.1x higher click-through rates than normal web ads
• Social media advertising budgets have doubled worldwide over the past 2 years—going from $16 billion U.S. in 2014 to $31 billion in 2016
• Social media spending in the U.S. alone is expected increase to $17.34 billion in 2019
• Social media ad spending is likely to exceed $35 billion in 2017, representing 16 percent of all digital ad spending globally
• Over 50 percent of B2B marketers rank social media as a ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ low cost ad option

Social media advertising is the most cost-effective way to advertise in this day and time, with Facebook leading the way with the various, and amazing, options available to businesses.

Now that you’re interested, let’s take a look…

When starting a Facebook ad, there’s a process you walk through in the Ads Manager to help you set up the right ad, and maximize it for the best results.

Step 1: Figure out what you are promoting and select an ad type.

When running a Facebook ad, you need to know what you are promoting and why you are promoting it.

Then there are three decisions to make –

1. What are you promoting?
2. Will your ad run via auction or reach & frequency?
3. What type of ad will you choose? (Hint: Awareness ads are best for small budgets)

Step 2: Select an audience

Selecting your audience is the most important part – more important than the ad itself. When selecting your audience, you are narrowing in to target the ideal customer/client.

Your choices are to either –

1. Create an audience from the options you are given (which can make unlimited combinations).
2. Use a custom audience.
3. Use a lookalike audience.

Step 3: Ad Placement

Source: Facebook

Your choices for placement are:

• Desktop
• Desktop Right Side
• Mobile
• Instagram
• Audience Network (this lets you extend your ad campaigns beyond Facebook to reach your audiences on mobile apps, mobile websites     and videos. We use the same Facebook targeting, measurement and delivery to make sure each ad on Audience Network helps you reach your campaign goals at the most cost-effective price.)
• Instant Articles (See more here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/825186870955247 )
• In-stream Video

If you’re not sure, Facebook will recommend using the default placements for your objective:

• Brand awareness (including Reach & Frequency buying): Facebook and Instagram
• Engagement (including Reach & Frequency buying): Facebook and Instagram
• Video views (including Reach & Frequency buying): Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network
• App installs: Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network
• Traffic (for website clicks and app engagement): Facebook and Audience Network
• Product catalog sales: Facebook and Audience Network
• Conversions: Facebook and Audience Network

For more information on ad placements, visit: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/175741192481247?helpref=related

Step 4: Set an ad budget and schedule

Ah, the budget. Here’s where you determine how much you are going spend for your ad. You have two choices: daily budget (how much you spend per day) or lifetime budget (how much you want to spend for the entire campaign).

Yes, you can run an ad for as little as $1/day but not every ad will let you do that. Here are the spend minimums:

•      If the ad set gets charged for impressions, its daily budget must be at least $1 a day
•      If the ad set gets charged for clicks, Likes, video views, or post engagement, its daily budget must be at least $5 a day
•      If the ad set gets charged for low frequency events like offer claims or app installs, its budget must be at least $40 a day

For more information on ad spend minimums, visit: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/203183363050448

Step 5: The ad

Now the second-most important part of the whole process – creating your ad.

You can choose an existing post as your ad or you can create one from scratch.

If you are creating an ad from scratch, you have 5 formats to choose from –

Note: Formats will vary based on the ad objective you have chosen.

And after that is done and your ad is running…

Step 6: Track your ad

How do you know if you Facebook advertising is working (or did work)?

You can view the results of your ads in the Campaign Dashboard and view each ad (as shown above). You can customize your reports through Columns and Breakdown.

It’s really an easy process and once you’ve created and successfully run your first ad, you can start over with your next promotion.

The content above was taken from my workshop guide I created, “Making Facebook Ads Work for Your Business.” If you’d like your own copy of the 23-page guide, please click here to download your FREE copy!

What has been your experience with Facebook ads? Share with us below!