Back to Basics: How to Setup Your Facebook Ad Campaign

With organic reach on social media slowly dwindling, advertising on Facebook has been a topic of discussion and consideration for many businesses. Facebook has recently stepped up to the plate with an introduction of a few advertising options within the last year to help businesses reach the audiences they want. In this article, we’ll review how to create a Facebook ad campaign as well as the ad options available to revamp your advertising strategy and get the results you want.

What is Facebook Advertising?

Facebook allows businesses to pay Facebook to show certain ads or content to a specific target audience. The cost of these ads depends on the reach and engagement the specific ad created receives. Facebook ads can appear on a user’s News Feed on desktop, the News Feed on mobile, or on the right column of Facebook for desktop.

Facebook advertising allows you the opportunity to reach your audience and collect valuable data on the backend that allows you to improve your ad and make it more effective and efficient.

Setting Up Your Facebook Advertising Campaign

1. Create a Facebook Page (if you haven’t already)

In order to create any Facebook advertising, businesses must have Business Page. You can create a Page by going to facebook.com/pages/create; choose a page category and follow the step-by-step process.

Best practices to keep in mind when creating a Page:

• Enter in as much Page info as you can – this will help users understand what your Page and your business is about; be sure to include a website link, other social media profiles if you have any, hours of operation, phone number, and physical address.
• Include relevant cover photo and profile picture.
• Discover what your Facebook Page strategy is… what are you looking to achieve with your new Facebook Page? What type of audience are you looking to reach? What’s your brand’s mission? How does that tone of voice sound? This will help establish a foundation for ads and will help you spend ad money wisely.

2. Map Out Goals for Your Ads

Before beginning your ad campaigns, it’s always important to plan and outline what you are looking to achieve with Facebook advertising. We recommend applying the S.M.A.R.T. approach, that is, lay out objectives that are specific, measureable, attainable, relevant, and timely. For example, if you would like to increase the number of attendants for an open house on Facebook, an example of a S.M.A.R.T. objective would be: Acquire 200 RSVPs for the event between June and July 2015.

3.  Choose an Ad Objective

There are a number of ways to advertise on the platform to reach certain objectives. For example, if your goal is to engage your audience, promote your Page, send people to your website, get people to claim your offer, Facebook lays it out for you before you begin creating your ad. For example, if you would like to send more people to your blog, you would choose “send people to your website”. If you would like to promote a barbecue event at your location, you would choose “raise attendance at your event”.

4. Choose a Target Audience

After you select your advertising objective, Facebook will walk you through choosing a target audience. You will have the option to choose your target based on gender, age, language, geographical area, interests, and behavior. You can even choose to target users who have like your Page and/or those users’ friends. You also have the option to create a custom audience by uploading a customer email, website traffic, or app download list.

5. Choose an Ad Budget & Optimization Standards

Once you choose your target audience, you will be directed to choose an ad budget. The ad budget you set will be your maximum amount spent. If you choose to have a daily budget, the amount you choose will be the most you spend on a daily basis. If you choose to have a lifetime budget, the ad budget will be the amount you spend for the lifetime of the ad or the duration of the entire campaign.

Choose what you’re paying for – whether your objective is to get more clicks to your website or simply more reach, Facebook will ask you to set your bid and whether or not you want to run your ad everyday or between a certain period of time. You will then have the option to schedule your ads. This allows you to promote your ad when your target audience is most likely on Facebook and provides the most efficient, budget-friendly way to promote your ad.

6. Design Your Ad

Now we get to the fun part. Facebook lets you design how your ad will look. You have the option to choose a single image ad or a multiple image ad, which allows you to use up to six images in a single ad. You can then choose a headline (which is limited to 25 characters). So make sure you choose your words carefully. This text will sit at the top of the ad much like how text would look at the top of an image post. After your ad is designed, you can choose the ad placement; the choices are Facebook desktop News Feed, Facebook mobile News Feed, Facebook Desktop right column, and audience network.

7: Place Your Order

The last step in the process is the place your order. Once you have double-checked your ad information, click on the green button tat says, “place order”. Facebook will review your ad and you will receive an email notification from Facebook once your ad has been reviewed and approved.

Helpful Tips:

To make the most out of Facebook advertising, we recommend taking the time to determine your advertising objectives and specific target audience. This will not only make ad campaigns more effective, it will help you utilize your ad budget in the most efficient way possible. Just like any other advertising online, Facebook advertising is a complex process, one that will require planning, testing, and measuring to optimize and improve over time. You can monitor your advertising campaigns by clicking “Ads Manager” on the left column of your Facebook account.