Introduction
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade or so, you already know how huge Facebook is. They claim to have over 1 billion daily active users, and many of those people spend close to an hour a day using the site, on average.
The biggest problem with Facebook in recent years is that their organic reach—the people you can reach without spending money—has declined to nearly zero. Even if you have a fan page with thousands of fans, you still have to pay to reach your own fans. Crazy, right?
It’s not all that crazy if you think about it. Most people are fans of dozens, if not hundreds of pages on Facebook. If all those pages shared several articles per day, most of the posts would just get lost, anyway. There’s just too much content being posted.
So, Facebook has implemented some changes that make it so that only a small fraction of a page’s users ever see each post.
We all know this wasn’t done solely to keep Facebook’s users happy. It’s pushed a lot of people to spend money on ads, despite having a huge following on the site. It’s a wonder they don’t have a mutiny on their hands! But since they’re such a huge source of traffic, we all do what we have to do, which is paying for ads even if we already have thousands of fans.
Yes, it sucks for those of us who paid for advertising to obtain those fans in the first place, because we then have to pay again to have our posts reach those fans we already paid for. It’s double-dipping at its finest. But if you wanna play, you gotta pay. And it’s their site, so it’s their rules.
In this guide, you’re going to learn how to basically beat Facebook at its own game by learning how to create ads that will get both paid and organic reach, as well as how to get the most bang for your buck by learning how to create widely successful ads at the lowest prices possible.
We’ll also cover the best ways to target the right audience
for maximum profitability, how to keep your costs down, and how to use
re-targeting to pull in potential lost sales.
So, let’s get started!
Getting Started
The first thing you need to do is log into your Facebook account, or create one if you don’t already have one. You can use your personal Facebook account for this if you want, because your ads are in no way linked to your name. They’d be linked to your Facebook fan page, if anything.
It’s highly recommended that you do all your work with Facebook Ads on a desktop computer or laptop, not on a mobile device. If you don’t have a desktop or laptop, see if you can borrow one, or use one at a library or internet cafe. The dashboard is buggy at times on mobile.
To get to your dashboard, click the small arrow at the top
right of your Facebook profile to bring up the drop-down menu and click on
“Manage Ads”.
You can also just type in the URL if you can’t find this
option easily:
>> http://www.facebook.com/ads
If you’re using an ad blocker, they’ll ask you to turn it off or add the web page to your exception list. Once this is done, you should refresh the page.
You may find this dashboard a little confusing at first.
There are a lot of available options, and sometimes they can seem a little
redundant. The same information may appear in multiple locations. Take a little
time to familiarize yourself with the dashboard before jumping into ad
creation.
You’ll notice there’s a Guided Creation mode that will help
guide you through the process and a Quick Creation mode for people who are a
little more familiar with the Facebook Ads creation process.
Once you’ve got a hang of the basic options, let’s take a
close look at the different types of ads that are currently available.
Guided Creation
If you’re new to Facebook Ads, you might want to try out
their Guided Creation mode.
In this mode, you’ll have three different categories of
options (Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion) and multiple selections
within each category.
Under Awareness, you will see Brand awareness and Reach.
Brand awareness is basically when you want to target people as tightly as
possible for the best conversion rates, and Reach is when you want to get as
many views or visitors as possible.
Most of the time, Brand awareness is the better option,
because most businesses want to focus tightly on their niche.
Under Consideration, you will see six
different options:
Traffic, Engagement, App installs, Video views, Lead
generation and Messages.
Traffic is used to drive traffic to a particular
destination. Engagement is to help increase elements such as likes and shares
of your content on Facebook. App installs will help you get more people to
install your app. Video views will get more people to view your video content.
Lead generation will help you build your list, and Messages will help you get
more direct messages sent to your Facebook page.
Under Conversion, there are three
options:
Conversions, Catalog sales, and store visits.
Conversions will help you get various types of actions on
your website or app, such as opting in to your email list, signing up for a
membership, or watching a view. Catalog sales will display various products
from your online store to increase sales. And Store visits will drive foot
traffic to a brick-and-mortar location.
Confused, yet? Don’t worry, I’ve got your back.
Let’s say you have an online store selling pet supplies. You
want to get more people to buy your products, so you would choose “Catalog
sales”. This will allow you to add items from your online store to a catalog of
merchandise that let you make different types of ads that focus on selling
specific items.
In order to use this type of ad, you’ll need to set up your
catalog. There are four types of catalogs you can create: E-commerce, Travel,
Real Estate, and Auto. The other three categories are self-explanatory, and the
E-commerce category covers anything that doesn’t fit into those three (anything
sold online.)
If you’re using Shopify, Woo-commerce, Big-commerce, Magneto,
or Google to sell your products, they have a process that will help you import
your entire product catalog quickly. If you’re using the E-commerce category
for your catalog, you can save a lot of time with this method.
Each selection has a specific purpose, so you can choose the
one that’s right for your goals.
Once you’ve decided which type of campaign you’d like to
run, it’s time to start targeting your audience.
Ad Types
Once you get used to creating Facebook Ads, you might switch
over to manual creation. This will make everything a little easier to
customize, but it can be a bit daunting for new marketers.
There are many different types of ads, but almost all of
them will require some sort of image or video. Right now, we’re going to cover
three different types of ads that you’re most likely to create right now.
Link click ads are the most popular type of ad. They
can send people to your website, blog, landing page, squeeze page, etc. These
ads can be placed in the right column, desktop news-feed, mobile news-feed,
audience network, or on Instagram.
The recommended size is 1,200 x 628 pixels, 90 characters of
ad copy, a 25-character headline, and 30 characters for the description.
Video ads are also very popular on Facebook.
These can only be placed on the desktop news-feed, mobile news-feed, audience
network and on Instagram.
Videos should be in either 16:9 or 9:16 ratio, up to 4 GB in
file size, and no longer than 120 minutes in length. (The best performing
videos are 15-30 seconds.) Your ad copy can be up to 90 characters.
Boosted page posts will help you get more views, likes,
comments, and shares of posts on your Facebook page.
You can target your own Facebook page audience, or others
based on your targeting. They can appear on the desktop news-feed, mobile
news-feed, audience network and Instagram.
The recommended image size is 1,200 x 628 pixels, with
unlimited ad copy text, a 25-character headline, and a 30-character link
description.
A boosted page post will look just like the original post,
but it will have “Sponsored” at the top.
Carousel ads are great for selling multiple
products, so if you have an online store or if you sell many different
products, it can be a great way to showcase a few to a single user in one post.
They can appear on the desktop news-feed, mobile news-feed, audience network and
Instagram.
Recommended image size is 1080 x 1080 or 600x600. Ad copy is
90 characters, 25-character headline, and 30-character link description.
Lead ads are perfect for building your email
list. They can appear on the desktop news-feed, mobile news-feed, audience
network and Instagram.
Recommended image size is 1,200 x 628. Ad copy is 90
characters, 25- character headline. 30-character link description.
The context card can either be in paragraph format with
unlimited text, or as a 5-bullet-point list with 80 characters per point.
The context card headline can be up to 60 characters, with
30 characters for the button. You must include a privacy policy and link to
your website.
Canvas ads are a newer development and have
several major benefits. Because of their nature, they can only be shown on the
mobile news-feed, but they are remarkably effective. They allow users to swipe
through a carousel of images, tilt the image, and zoom in or out.
These ads load up to 10 times faster than most mobile
applications, so they’re great at grabbing attention!
The recommended image size is 1,200 x 628. Ad copy should be
under 90 characters. Headline should be under 45 characters. And there are many
different components you can include in a canvas ad, including header with
logo, full-screen image, text block, image carousel, auto-play video, and many
more.
Play around with different options until you find one that
converts well for you.
Page like ads will help you get more likes to your
page, but it’s important to keep in mind that this is probably not the best use
of your marketing dollars if you’re looking for pure ROI.
Remember, have a huge page on Facebook isn’t worth as much
as it used to be, because organic reach is next to zero these days. This means
you’ll have to pay for the same traffic twice, because you’ll have to pay once
to obtain the fans, and again to be able to reach those fans.
That’s not to say page likes aren’t valuable. If someone is
a fan of your page, it usually means they are at least somewhat interested in
what you have to offer.
This makes targeting your other ads a little easier. Just
keep in mind that page like ads should be considered a part of your overall,
long-term marketing strategy, and not a short-term source of traffic and sales.
Page like ads can be shown in the right column, desktop
news-feed and mobile news-feed. Choosing the right image is crucial, so be sure
to test a few different ones to find the most effective.
Page post photo ads are meant for increasing engagement on
your fan page. If you choose the right photo, you’ll get a lot of comments,
likes, and shares.
You can even drop a link into the description, but you
aren’t likely to get too much traffic to it. This type of post is meant
primarily to increase engagement.
Page post photo ads can be shown in the right column,
desktop news-feed and mobile news-feed.
There are lots of other options, as well, but the others are
meant for very specific purposes such as getting people to an event or getting
people to install an app. You can explore all of the other ad options if any of
them apply to you.
