How to use Facebook Ads: A step-by-step guide for beginners
Every day, an estimated 2.1 billion people log onto Facebook every day and browse thousands of posts. Because of this, Facebook has become a lucrative opportunity for businesses and individuals to market their brands using Facebook Ads. In this blog, you will learn how to set up a Facebook business account, targeting your Facebook Ads so they land in more home pages, and tips on designing an effective Facebook Ad.
Why use Facebook Ads?
There’s a multitude of reasons why you should use Facebook to advertise your services.
You might wonder how many people are registered on Facebook. Facebook has been the king of social media for decades now, housing over 3 billion active users registered. This means even after targeting your advertisements you will still expose your business to potentially millions of users. This differs compared to a platform like X (Formerly Twitter) that only has 600 million users signed up where your targeted ads will land in less feeds.
Facebook ads offer one of the most cost-effective ways to promote ads on their network. Typically, the Cost Per Click rates are generally much lower compared to other platforms, especially Google. This is down to the nature of the two platforms: people on Facebook aren’t generally there to buy in comparison to Google where they are actively searching for products. Therefore, running Facebook ads with a low budget is often more feasible, which can save you a lot of money.
These are all typical queries our marketing specialists receives on a day-to-day basis. If you have further questions not covered here, book a free 15-minute call today to answer any questions you may have.
Setting up a Facebook business account
In order to begin marketing your business, you need to set up a Facebook Business page on your personal account. Below are a few tips on how you can create a Facebook Business Page:
A typical question you may have at this stage is "Should I create a new Facebook account for my business? Generally, it is recommended that you create a business page as opposed to a separate account, as Facebook prohibits multiple accounts relating to the same person. A business page is linked to your personal page and is used for all things marketing including Facebook Ads and targeting.
If you are concerned about the privacy surrounding business pages, be assured that Facebook personal pages are not publicly linked to business pages, and only internal team members will be able to see these connections. Although, we recommend that advocating for your business on your personal page is an effective way to garner trust in potential customers.
To start, you must create a Facebook business page. It’s important to note that in order to create a business page, you must have a personal Facebook account to link it to.
Setting up and optimising the business page:
To begin set up, log into your personal account and click the three lines to access the menu. Then, click on Create -> Page to start set up.
You’ll be brought to the page creation section.
Here, you need to select the category of business that represents you best. For example, if you run a beauty products business select the “Health/Beauty” category. This helps potential customers interested in beauty products find your page, so avoid using a broad category like “Retail” and instead be as specific as possible.
After categorising the page, next it’s time to make it look professional and optimised. Much like any search engine, it is vital that you optimise your page for maximum SEO so it appears in Facebook search more often. To achieve this, make sure you upload a clear business logo and appealing image, an engaging description, and fill out the correct contact information such as website, phone number and email.
Within the description, make sure to include as many SEO keywords related to your business you can. To find these keywords, use a free online tool called keywordtool.io and incorporate as many of these keywords into the description. Don’t keyword stuff, however, as this can discourage search engine crawlers from indexing your page which is how your page will land on search results.
After your page has been created and optimised, it’s time to create your first post and invite people! For your first post, we recommend a brief welcome post for now. Invite any previous customers to this new page through any communication channels you already have set up such as an email chain.
Targeting and demographics explained:
Once you have created an optimised business page, now it is time to begin the ad creation process! One of the most important steps is demographic research.
Understanding your current and target audience is crucial when creating Facebook Ads for eCommerce or service businesses trying to drive sales.
How to find my target audience and increase my Facebook ad reach:
The best way to find your target audience is to look back on your previous customers and jot down any similarities they all have between each other. Are the majority male or female? What is the average age range? Are all customers based in a similar area? Noting down these similarities will help tremendously when targeting your ads later, however if you are just starting out and have no previous customers, you’ll have to brainstorm these traits to the best of your ability. Returning back to the beauty business example, the majority of shoppers in this field will be female and if you specialise in anti-aging products, the average age range may be 30-60.
Defining the above traits will narrow down your ad targeting a ton, but more can be done to help your ads land in the right feeds. You need to take a step further, and wonder what your ideal customer looks like and what they are interested in. You can do this by creating a simple customer persona, where you outline all their personal traits and interests. Sticking with the beauty example, we can assume that people interested in these products are interested in Skincare, Anti-Aging, Self-Care, and Fashion. By defining these interests, we narrow the ads down even more to individuals that are more likely to find interest in your products.
These interests are often listed under Facebook ad targeting options, which include demographics, behaviours, and interests.
Ideally, you would like your ad audience to be in the “Broad” section as opposed to narrow, so it’s important to be specific but not so specific that only a narrow amount of individuals see your ads. Once you are confident with the targeting, you can then begin creating your ad!
Designing an effective Facebook ad and budgeting
So, you have selected your target audience and narrowed it down to a niche subset of people. Now what?
Now, you should insert your ads into the campaign! If you are yet to create your ads, here are some pointers and advice:
The quality of the ads created plays a major role in the effectiveness of your Facebook ads. Put yourself in the shoes of a consumer: would you stop scrolling to read a plain black and white ad with mundane copy and no call to action? Most of the times, you wouldn’t and neither would most people.
If you have created successful ads in the past for different services, we recommend replicating these ads as much as possible in your Facebook ads. Using the same colour scheme, phrasing, and tones is a great starting point to test your Facebook ads. If you are creating ads from scratch, however, take a moment to reflect on your business and brand image and how you would like to market to your audience. You need to make sure that they align with your target audience, and this can go down to things like font type, colour, etc.
This can all be very overwhelming especially if you have never created or ran ads in the past. Thankfully there are a range of AI tools that assist in all things ad creation, like image generators and copywriting – click here to learn more!
Budgeting your Facebook Ads campaign:
Before you rush into budgeting, it's good to understand the what the difference between Daily and Lifetime budgets in Facebook Campaigns.
Daily budgets are essentially the average amount you’re willing to spend per day on your Facebook ad campaigns. The main strength behind daily budgets is the consistent exposure it brings which is ideal for ongoing ads that aren’t exactly time limited.
Lifetime budgets is the total spend over the entire campaign. Using advanced AI, Facebook spreads this budget out and shows your ads where it is most likely to perform well which is ideal for time limited campaigns surrounding a new product or service launch.
The biggest mistake anyone can make in their new Facebook ad campaigns is starting with a huge budget. You should always start out with a smaller budget, say £5 to £10 a day, to try our different audiences, formats, and so on. To assist you, Facebook have their own A/B testing tools which allow you to test and compare results.
Once you have found what works and performs the best, now you can slowly increase your budget by 10% to 20% every few days. It’s important to stress that being gradual is key, as a sudden jump in budget can disrupt Facebook ad performance negatively.
Analysing Facebook Ad Performance:
After the ads have been live for a couple weeks, it is important to schedule a meeting with your team members to analyse the effectiveness of the advertisements, especially if you are not using a daily budget.
Two important metrics to look out for are impressions and reach, and you may be wondering what the difference is.
Impressions are the amount of people that have interacted with your advertisement in total. Impressions count the first initial encounter with the ad and any other additional encounters. Reach is the number of individuals that the ad has been seen by and this does not count repeat encounters.
Therefore, reach is the number of individuals the ad was delivered too, and impressions are the amount of times it appeared on these feeds.
When it comes to analysing the two, reach is vital when you are building awareness for your business if you are a start-up for example, and impressions is crucial when trying to drive sales and conversions. It’s wise to take both into consideration however, as the more impressions and reach you have, the higher the chance of a successful ad!
CPC (Cost Per Click) and ROAS (Return On Ad Spend)
These two metrics will determine how successful your ad campaign has been. Naturally, a lower CPC is advantageous, but ROAS is definitely what matters more. You can have a low CPC but if you aren’t making enough in returns, what’s the point?
To calculate your ROAS, divide your revenue generated by your ads by the total spent on them. You should always try and aim for a ROAS score of at least 2.0, meaning you have made double the amount you have spent on the campaign.
A high ROAS is indicative of a successful Facebook ads campaign and suggests your ad content is resonating well with your target audience, making it a strong example to replicate in future campaigns.
These are two of the most common performance indicators beginners search for when discerining how successful a Facebook Ad campaign has been.
Why did my Facebook Ad fail?
There are several reasons as to why you didn’t achieve the results you were hoping for. The most likely reason is you weren’t targeting the correct audience, or your targeting was too broad. If you aren’t targeting the correct audience that correlates to the personas you made previously, it’s very likely that your ads will fail.
Another reason would be the quality of the ads. If the ads used in the campaigns aren’t visually appealing, have spelling or grammar errors, or uses uninteresting words and phrases, viewers are much more likely to skip the ads as they scroll. It is essential that you make your ads interesting visually and generally. A good rule of thumb is if you wouldn’t want to stop and read the ad, someone else won’t either!
Other factors outside the quality of the ads can cause your ads to fail. You can create very robust ads that generate lots of clicks, but if the website or storefront you redirect them to is poorly optimised or the price of your products are too expensive, this can turn down potential sales and leads despite the quality of your ads.
If you are unsure why your ads failed, book a call with a marketing specialist today and receive expert feedback and guidance on your Facebook ads!
