Facebook Marketing Part 5: How to Advertise on Facebook
When you advertise on Facebook and run a Facebook ad campaign as part of your Facebook marketing efforts, there’re a lot of questions to answer. What audience should you target? Is your ad relevant and eye-catching? Is your call to action clear and enticing?
Facebook ad campaigns if run correctly are a great way to drive more sales leads for your business than other digital advertising channels. Today, we’ll walk you through the steps on how to run a successful Facebook ad campaign for your Facebook Business Page.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
How To Create A Facebook Ad
To advertise on Facebook, you first need to choose a marketing goal for your Facebook ads. It could be sales on your website, downloads of your app or increased brand awareness.
Secondly, you select the audience by targeting your ad with the following tools when you advertise on Facebook.
- Core Audiences to define an audience based on demographics, location, interests, behavior, and connections.
- Custom Audiences to retarget people who have visited your website by using Facebook Pixel, have used your mobile app by using Facebook App Events, or are your current customers using your customer list.
- Lookalike Audiences to reach new audiences whose interests are similar to those of your customers.
Thirdly, you decide where to run your ad – whether that’s on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network or across them all. You can also choose to run ads on specific mobile devices.
Fourthly, you set your daily or lifetime budget, and when you want your ads to run.
Fifthly, you pick one or more of the ad formats as shown below.
Sixthly, you place your order which goes to Ad Auctions which helps get it to the right people.
Lastly, you can track performance and edit your Facebook ad campaign in Ads Manager. Facebook measurement optimizes your ads, understand your audience, and grow your business.
Best Strategies
When you advertise on Facebook, you should show your ads to only those who will find them relevant and are likely to convert. Besides, you should write different ads for different audiences. Facebook delivers each ad to a viewer based on relevance. Relevant ads cost less and see more results. Use Facebook ad relevance diagnostics to diagnose whether your ads were relevant to the audience you reached.
Your Facebook ad campaign should always include an appealing and relevant image or video because visuals are more engaging and favored by Facebook algorithm. Make sure your ad text matches the image or video. This leads to better ad performance due to higher relevance and hence better engagement and conversion.
If you want viewers to click on your ad, it should tell your readers why they should click on your ad. For instance, a discount or social proof may help.
Your ad should have only one clear call-to-action (CTA). Your CTA should encourage people to click on your ad.
When you advertise on Facebook, your priority is to write an ad that’s easy to understand. When a person reads your ad, they should immediately know what you’re offering, what benefits they get, etc.
If you’re promoting a product, your audience want to know how much it costs or how much is the discount if any.
Before running a full-fledged Facebook ad campaign, you should run do A/B testing by spending a small amount of money on two different ads to see which gets the most likes, comments, and conversions.
Places of Facebook Ads
To advertise on Facebook, you need to consider how the advertisement will look on desktop and mobile devices. Here are different places you can advertise on Facebook.
A right column Facebook ad appears on the right side of a user’s Facebook News Feed. These ads often result in less expensive clicks and conversions. A right column ad should be relevant, convey value, have an appealing visual, and have a CTA.
A desktop News Feed advertisement appears directly in a user’s News Feed when they access Facebook on desktop. These ads have a higher engagement rate than right column ads, but they can be more expensive. These ads must follow organic Facebook posts best practices and be both engaging and visual.
A mobile News Feed appears in the user’s mobile News Feed and displays like an organic post from the people and Pages they follow.
Facebook Ad Formats
If you want to advertise on Facebook effectively, you first need to know what ad formats are available.
You can use high-quality and engaging image ads to tell your story and drive people to your website or app. Follow Facebook image ad specs when you advertise on Facebook.
Video ads showcase product features and draw people in with sound and motion. You can create an ad that plays in the videos people watch. These in-stream ads can deliver targeted brand messages to drive ad recall, brand awareness and intent lift. Follow Facebook video ad specs when you advertise on Facebook.
Slideshows ads can build an engaging video story using only photos and text.
You can add videos to Facebook Stories ads to express your brand creativity and inspire action. Stories advertisements are optimized for a vertical, full-screen mobile view on Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram.
Boosting a popular post even further with a video to reach a bigger audience is a great way to advertise on Facebook.
Carousel ads show different images of the same product, or create one long photo that people can swipe. Display up to ten images or videos, each with its own link. Follow Facebook carousel ad specs when you advertise on Facebook.
Collection ads encourage shopping by displaying items from your product catalog customized for each visitor. Each collection ad features a video or image with three smaller images below in a grid-like layout. Follow Facebook collection ad specs when you advertise on Facebook.
Messenger ads work across Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram. People will see these ads in the Chats tab on Messenger. When they tap on a Messenger ad, they’ll be sent to a detailed view within Messenger with a call-to-action that will take them to your website, app or Messenger chat.
Conclusion
Now you’ve learned how to create a Facebook ad, what are the best strategies, and what ad formats and placements to market your Facebook Business Page. Next week, we’ll continue with our Facebook Marketing series by looking at how your Facebook Business Page can benefit from Facebook pixels.
