Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising

With 1.56 billion daily users, you can never skip Facebook in your digital marketing plans. In fact, many people consider Facebook the internet. That's why you need to think of its influence and how to make use of this platform in your online advertising strategy.

To master using Facebook in advertising, you need to fully understand how it works in all its dimensions. Lucky for you, we are here to help.

Start Marketing on Facebook

Create a Facebook page

You need to establish your online presence so, at first, create a Facebook page that represents your business/organisation. Just remember that if you create a personal profile instead of a page, it will likely be shut down by Facebook. You have to choose between two categories; "Business or brand" or "Community or Public figure." Of course, you will choose "Business or brand." The second step is to choose the name of your business page. Your personal information won't appear unless you choose to add it.

Set up your business account

Start with the visual content. Add a relevant profile picture (maybe your logo) and cover photo. Remember that first impressions matter. Regarding the cover photo, we recommend using a simple image with a pattern or a landscape shot of your products to capture attention. Add a short description to introduce your business with a maximum of 255 characters. This description will appear on the business account, as well as the search results. Try to be consistent across all your social media channels to avoid any conflict. Try to choose a unique username to stand out from your competitors, with a maximum of 50 characters. At the same time, choose a simple username so people can remember and find your page easily.

Assign Page Roles

After filling the basic information of your page, assigning page roles is an essential step before publishing the page. One advantage is that multiple co-workers can edit and share posts without sharing login credentials. On adding "Page Roles," there are few options to choose from:

• Admin: An admin has all the permissions on the page as the account creator. He can comment, share, and publish posts. He can also assign page roles and create a sponsored advertisement. So, you need to double-check before choosing the admin

• Editor: An editor has the same permissions as the admin except for assigning page roles

• Moderator: A moderator can only respond and delete comments and send messages. They can't publish any content but they can create sponsored ads

• Advertiser: An advertiser can create advertisements and view insights

• Analyst: An analyst can only which admin has published content and view insights. He doesn't have any other permission

• Jobs Manager: A job manager can create advertisements, view insights, and publish jobs

Check the rest of the settings

You can customise your notifications from the "Settings" menu. This tab allows you to choose how you want to receive alerts upon any activity. For example, you can choose whether to be notified every time there is an activity or get one notification every 12 to 24 hours. Also, choose a convenient Call-to-Action button such as visit website, send message, book a service, keep in touch, make a purchase, or learn more.

Verifying your page

It is not necessary to verify your page. However, it adds some sort of authenticity to your page. E-Commerce businesses and online applications may want to verify their account to build trust with potential customers. The blue check badge is limited to celebrities, public figures, and famous brands. An online business or organisation will be awarded a grey badge only.

Now your page is ready to be published to the world. You just have to know one thing; don't ever buy Facebook likes. Facebook's algorithm depends on the engagement rates not the number of page likes. If there are no likes, comments, or shares, despite the great number of fake fans, your post won't appear in the News Feed. Also, your potential customer will doubt your page and questions its credibility.

Start building an engaging community

1. At first, consider inviting your Facebook friends to like your business account.
2. Invite your colleagues to like your page and encourage them to share it with their friends.
3. Finally, start conducting creative content; images, texts, videos, or GIFs and post them regularly.

Determine your goals

There is no "right" goal when it comes to digital marketing. You can also have a set of goals that you want to achieve.

Why did you think about Facebook advertising? – Your answer is your goal.

Start by setting up goals that can be achieved. Be realistic.

Examples of business goals:

• Increasing your brand awareness

• Driving more traffic

• Promoting your services or products

• Building trust

• Lead generation

Identify your Facebook audience

Before you start advertising, you need to study your target audience and build a specific buyer persona. Consider some factors such as age, gender, income, motivations, interests, and location. You can also take a look at your competitors' accounts and search who may be interested in your business, products, or services. Also, "audience insights" is a free analytics tool that helps you obtain demographic and behavioural data about your target audience. On exploring the demographic tab, you can see a breakdown of job title, marital status, and college education. You can also dig further and find more information about the location, device type, and when they are most active. All of this together helps you identify the target audience that is relevant to your industry

Create a compelling content

Sharing quality content is the core step on Facebook advertising. Without a consistent flow of content, you run at the risk of falling behind. When you start posting content, you extend your reach to potential customers. Subsequently, they will be interested in your content through likes, comments, or shares. That's the time you engage your audience, build relationships, and express your brand personality through compelling content.

But first, you need to know the different post types:

• Facebook images: Posting an image is an effective method of increasing engagements. Any visual content attracts the audience and is likely to get 2.3 times more engagements than text posts. Try to use a consistent theme across all the images you post on your account. It makes it easier for the audience to identify your content on their news feed and also across other social media networks. Keep it simple and focus on image resolution. It will be better if you use an image that expresses your story without the need for a caption.

• Facebook links: Share reasonable blog posts that might interest your audience. Also, don't forget to write a compelling description and you will be lucky if people go past "see more'' and clicked to read it. Additionally, this drives traffic to your website. However, don't include a URL in the text of your post.

• Facebook videos: Videos are among the most successful formatted for published content on Facebook. Marketers can use videos in product promotions, branding, or raising awareness. Keep your videos short between 60-90 seconds; otherwise, people will stop watching. The first 5 to ten seconds are the most important. They can encourage people to watch the whole video or bore them until they dismiss the video. Also, about 90% of videos are watched without sound. Your content must be understandable without sound and include captions that sum up your ideas. Create GIFs or other animations that catch the eye.

• Facebook Live: Use Facebook Live to engage your audience, promote a product, or to answer questions. Always reply to your audience's comments to build a nice relationship with them. Some companies use Facebook live to show behind the scenes, the company's environment, or show an event. People actually like to see the team behind this business account and know them. It gives a sense of authenticity. Before you go live, write a catchy title that will show alongside your video.

• Text posts: Use text posts for various reasons; announcements, asking questions, or simply posting famous quotes. Keep the post between 100 and 250 characters and share significant information that is related to your business. Facebook stated that posts between 150 and 250 characters gained 60% more likes, comments, and shares than posts greater than 250 characters.

• Facebook virtual reality: Virtual reality is a feature that offers a 360-degree video on Facebook. Marketers can leverage this video in telling stories or sharing experiences with their followers.

Use the feature of "Pinning the post"

You can choose a specific post to stay at the top of your timeline by pinning the post. It is an effective way to make sure that the important post is the first thing your visitors see whenever they open your page. It is like highlighting an event or significant information, ensuring their visibility without being pushed down when you post regularly.

Create a social media content calendar

Posting regularly is the best way to stay on top of your marketing strategy. So, it is important to conduct your content and schedule them for specific times. Use the insights to know the best times to post. Some studies stated that it is better to publish between 1 p.m and 4 p.m during the week. If you're posting on weekends, go for between noon and 1 p.m. Remember that it is better to spend more time conducting creative posts than spending less time crafting a lot of posts. Over-posting or overflowing your followers' timeline might lead to unliking your page.

Choose from the different types of Facebook ads

• Image ads: Image ads are simple, yet interesting. Start posting a relevant image and within few clicks boost an existing post with the image from your Facebook page.

• Videos ads: From meet the team videos to product promoting, videos are the best choice for creating an advertisement. Videos can be used in regular news feed or stories. 64% of users give their attention to watching videos on Facebook.

• Video poll ads: Video polls are a new type of Facebook paid advertising, displayed only on mobiles. According to Facebook, Video poll ads raise awareness more effectively than regular videos.

• Carousel ads: Through the carousel feature, you can add up to 10 images and videos, highlighting their benefits. You can also use all the photos to conduct one large panorama image.

• Slideshow ads: Slideshows are easy to draw attention but less than regular videos. They offer another way to create a video from several images or video clips.

• Collection ads: Collection is a type of paid Facebook ads, allowing you to showcase up to five products. Then, customers can purchase through clicking.

• Instant experience ads: Collection ads are used with instant experience so that your customers purchase without leaving Facebook. They have a full-screen ad format that loads 15 times faster than a regular website.

• Dynamic ads: Dynamic ads target the customers who are likely to be interested in your products. For example, if someone was navigating a product page, added a product in their shopping cart, and then left the page. Dynamic ads keep showing this product in their news feed.

• Messenger ads: Through messenger ads, you can access 1.3 million people who use Messenger monthly. Also, select a Facebook feed. This feature includes running a "click to messenger ads" which has a call-to-action button. The CTA button automatically opens a conversation with one of your sales or customer service teams.

• Stories ads: Stories advertisements are highly effective. You can use stories in promoting products or services and in answering questions. Besides, you can publish how-to videos, explaining the products' mechanism.

• Stories augmented reality ads: Several people admitted that they prefer augmented reality brand experience. Augmented reality ads use various filters and animation that engage your followers.

• Playable ads: Playable ads offer a game experience that interacts and engages your followers. I think the ads are creative, don't you?

Start advertising on Facebook

After you gather all the previous information, you can now start advertising on Facebook. All paid advertisement can be broken into the following elements:

• Campaigns: Your campaign houses all your assets

• Ad sets: They are a group of ads, targeting a specific audience. However, if you are targeting a different audience, you have to conduct separate ad sets for each.

• Ads: The advertisements you post on Facebook.

Don't forget to name your ad or campaign. This name will be used only by you internally to track down the results if you have various campaigns.

At Social Receptionist, our dedicated team will help you through the next steps to ensure an effective Facebook campaign.

Choose your objective

From Facebook Ads manager, select the "Campaigns tab," and then click "Create" to start a new Facebook campaign.

Facebook offers 11 marketing objectives. Choose the most convenient one that aligns with your planned goals. Choose carefully.

• Brand Awareness: Establish your online presence and introduce your business to new customers.

• Reach: Increase your reach and expose your brand to as many people as possible.

• Traffic: Drive traffic to a certain website page, application, or Messenger conversation.

• Engagement: Increasing number of post likes, comments, and shares.

• App installs: Getting people to install your application.

• Video views: Getting more and more people to watch your videos.

• Lead generation: Leading new customers and prospects into your sales funnel.

• Messages: Getting people to contact your business through Messenger conversations.

• Conversions: Encouraging people to do a specific action on your website such as subscribing to a list or buying a product.

• Catalogue sales: Feature your product catalogue within your promoted Facebook ads that appear to people who may be interested.

• Store traffic: Convert nearby customers to brick-and-mortar stores.

Facebook Ads Manager offers an excellent marketing experiment or split testing named A/B testing. This tool allows you to experiment with your existing campaign or if you already have a draft campaign. The A/B test can be a good start to identify the content before publishing.

1. Set up your ad account

   If you have already set up an account, click "Click that to move to the next step."

   If not, click "Set up ad account," then enter your country, preferred currency, and time zone.

2. Choose your target audience

   Facebook Ads Manager offers detailed targeting options to ensure that your ad appears to the right people. Start by selecting your target location, age, gender, and language. You can include or exclude people according to their demographics, interests, and behaviours. You can also include or exclude the people who like your page or those who already know about your business. Besides, you can target people who are friends of your followers, people who responded to an event, or people similar to ones from a previous advertisement.

   At the right of the page, you can see the estimated number of page likes and reach according to your detailed targeting.

3. Choose your ad placement

   You get to choose where your advertisement will appear. The simplest choice is the "Automatic Placement," meaning that Facebook chooses the best places that get the best results. You have the option of choosing manually the desired locations through the following options:

   Device type: Mobile, desktop, or both.

   Platform: Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, or Messenger.

   Placements: Feeds, Stories, in-stream (for videos), messages, in-article, and apps, and external websites.

   Specific mobile devices & operating systems: iOS, Android, or all devices. You can choose specific phones with their types.

4. Set your budget

   You must decide about the amount of money you want to spend on your Facebook campaign. Choose between daily or lifetime budget, and then choose the start and end date of your campaign. You have the choice to start immediately or schedule the campaign. Remember that you can only schedule your campaign if you are on a lifetime budget. Control the overall cost of the campaign by adding optional costs and bid controls.

   The following factors affect the "Cost per Result" and "Cost per 1000 Impressions," which consequently affects the campaign cost.

   Your target audience

   The engagement level you plan and the relevance score of your ad

   The time of the year

   The campaign objective

5. Create your advertisement

   At first, choose a suitable ad format that differs according to the campaign objective. You can start a new post through the Facebook Ads Manager or simply choose an already published post. Use the preview tool to review the steps and make sure the ad looks good on the selected placements. The last step is to click "Confirm" to submit your order. Finally, Facebook will send you an email when your advertisement is approved.

6. Track & optimise your performance

   Monitor your performance through the Facebook Ads Manager dashboard. If your campaign isn't performing well, stop the ad and start a new one.

7. Always use page insights

   Facebook advertising without page insights will result in a lot of guesswork. Thankfully, the Facebook insights page helps you analyze your efforts and track the results. It offers metrics and data of the following:

   Number of likes (Organic and paid)

   Reach (Organic and paid)

   Page Views

   Posts (Metrics, graphs, charts that measure the advertisements' results. Also, it shows a graph of when your fans are online, which will be a great aid on setting a content calendar)

   Post Details (It allows you to see how one specific post is performing. For video content, it gives you information on the average watch time and in-depth metrics for 10-seconds views)

   Facebook reactions (How many people reacted on your posts and how they reacted)

Facebook has proven to be the largest social media with the most options and detailed targeting, always attracting new customers. It is actually among the best platforms to grow your business that over 3 million marketers consider it in their marketing plans.

At Social Receptionist, we guarantee the best results and make sure you'll never waste money on Facebook ads.