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I might not know you but for a fact, I know that you have an account on Facebook. No matter how busy we stay, we always take out some time from our busy schedule to scroll our Facebook feed.
Our Facebook feed has a number of things to show. Apart from our friend’s update, we get to know about current affairs and about the pages that we follow. In between all this, you must have noticed that we do come across Facebook ads as well and are tempted to click on them.
They navigate us to a different page or website depending upon the content of the ad. Do you have a product and have no clue how to use Facebook ads to your advantage? Already know about Facebook ads but don’t know how to create one? Don’t know your options?
No matter what question you have in mind, we are here to solve it for you. This is the ultimate place where you are supposed to be and we are sure of one thing. By the end of the blog, you will be able to create a successful Facebook ads campaign and be glad about the result.
Types of Facebook Ads
Before moving to the procedure, it is very important to know your options. In this way, you will know what suits you best and what will compliment your product.
Image ads
These are the basic types of ads are a great way to start with Facebook advertising. You can either create a new ad or simply boost a current post from your Facebook page. Even though they are simple, they can get highly creative and captivating.
Video ads
They usually come up in News feed and stories so you might see them as in stream ads in Facebook videos that are of a longer duration. You can play around if you feel like it and keep it as creative as possible. You can try to make a video around the demo of the product or you can also utilize GIFs to communicate with the audience.
Video poll ads
This mobile-only Facebook ad setup integrates an interactive section with video polls. It is relevantly a new type of Facebook paid advertising. However, Facebook’s early data shows that these ads can upsurge brand awareness more efficiently than regular video ads.
Carousel ads
A carousel ad can have up to 10 images or videos to show your products or services. You can use this format to focus on different pros of one product, several other products or even use all the photos together to create one large panorama images.
Slideshow ads
Slideshow ads bid a relaxed way to create short video ads from a collection of still photos, text, or prevailing video clips. If you don’t have your own images then you can pick stock photos unswervingly from Ads Manager.
Slideshow ads have eye-catching motion but use five times less bandwidth. Therefore, they load well even for people who have a slow internet connection. They’re an easy and a low-impact way to draw attention.
Collection ads
These Facebook paid campaigns are available only for mobile devices and allow you to showcase five products that customers can click to purchase.
Collection ads pair with Instant Experiences to let people buy your products without even navigating outside Facebook. This makes online shopping simplified when people are on-the-go and may not have a stable internet connection.
Instant Experience ads
Instant Experience ads used to be known as Canvas. They are a full-screen ad format that loads 15 times sooner than a mobile website outside of Facebook. You can also link to an extra Instant Experiences so people have access to even more immediate mobile content.
Lead ads
Lead ads are only available for mobile devices because they’re precisely intended to make it easy for people to give you their contact information without typing a lot. They are great for gathering newsletter subscriptions, signing someone up for a trial of your product or otherwise letting people ask for more information from you.
Messenger ads
Facebook Messenger ads provide you access to the 1.3 billion people who use Messenger on a monthly basis. When making your ad, just select Messenger as the wanted placement. You should also select Facebook feed.
You can also run “click-to-Messenger” ads in the Facebook feed. These ads have a call-to-action button that opens a Messenger chat with your Facebook Page. This gives people a place to have a one-on-one conversation with one of your salespeople or customer service agents.
Stories ads
Stories ads are a full-screen upright video format that allows you to make the most of screen real estate without supposing viewers to turn the screen.
These ads have proven to be highly beneficial. A Facebook-commissioned survey showed that more than half of people said they were making more online purchases, all thanks to the Stories ads.
Playable ads
This is relevantly a new ad format that includes interactivity. You create a game experience that inspires people to interrelate with your resourceful content.
Steps to create Facebook ad campaign
If you don’t know how to create then you might think that it is a really tough task. You will be relieved to know that it is not as tough as it sounds to be. If you don’t know how to run an ad then this is the best place to be. Just follow this detailed step by step guide and get ready to have your Facebook ad up and running!
Step 1- Have a strategy
Before hopping onto the journey of ads, it is very important to have clarity of thoughts. If you don’t know what you want to achieve then how will you be able to map out the route?
You will get so overwhelmed with the options that you might end up creating a campaign that might have nothing to do with what you want. Before getting to the process of creating a campaign, make sure that you answer these following questions:
- What product or services am I precisely promoting?
- Who is my target audience?
- Will they be a cold or a warm audience?
- How are they going to use the product?
- What is their low point and what objections can occur?
- Which phase of the funnel are they in?
- What is the aim of the campaign?
- Do I want leads, brand awareness, site traffic or sales?
Step 2- Pick your objective
When you get down to business, you will be asked to pick an objective. It is vital to pick the correct one as Facebook will optimize ad placement on the basis of the objective. It is also a slight possibility that the correct objective will lower the CPC and have a positive effect on the results.
The options that you get in objectives are:
- Brand awareness
- Reach
- Traffic
- Engagement
- App installs
- Video views
- Lead generation
- Messages
- Conversions
- Catalogue Sales
- Store Visits
You should an objective that closely supports your original goals. Let’s say you are running a video campaign that’s intended to drive sales, then select ‘conversions’ instead of ‘video views’.
You do want video views but not at the expenditure of more conversions. If you are not sure then you can also opt for A/B testing.
A/B testing lets you alter variables like your ad creative, audience or placement to control which plan performs best and advance future campaigns. For example, you might hypothesize that a Custom Audience strategy will outdo an interest-based audience strategy. The A/B test lets you rapidly compare both the strategies to see which one is the one for you.
After you select a variable that you wish to test, the budget will be allocated similarly and randomly exposed between each version of your creative, audience or placement. A/B testing can then measure the performance of each strategy on the basis of cost per result or cost per conversion lift.
A/B testing is recommended when you are trying to measure changes to your advertising or rapidly compare two strategies. You should use A/B testing to learn new strategies rather than testing casually, such as by turning on and off ad sets as this can lead to incompetent delivery and untrustworthy results. A/B testing helps to guarantee that your audiences will be consistently split and statistically similar while informal testing can lead to overlying audiences.
Step 3- Target the audience
You know the product, you know what you want to create but who do you wish to create it for? The options that you get are:
- Core audience
- Custom audience
- Lookalike audience
Core Audience
You get to set the rules as to where your ads will be delivered. You can adjust the following criteria for better targeting:
Location- Advertise in the cities, communities and countries as per your preference.
Demographics- Pick the audience on the basis of age, gender, education, job title and more under this option. You can have a track of the types of people your ads are reaching to
Interests– Add interests and hobbies of the people you want your ad to and make your targeted ads more pertinent.
Behaviour– Target your ads on the basis of consumer behaviours like earlier purchases and device usage.
Connections– Decide to comprise people who are connected to your Facebook Page or event. You can also leave them out and find new audiences.
Custom Audience
This is the best way to connect with people who are already aware about your business. It lets you get in touch with those who have earlier shown interest in your business. Your options are:
Contact lists- Connect with your customers and contacts on Facebook by using the details from your CRM system or emailing lists. You can even use information that you collect in store for digital retargeting.
Site visitors- Set up the Facebook pixel to create a Custom Audience of people who visit your site or take certain actions there on its own. You will be able to show people targeted ads for items that they’ve previously viewed on your website with the help of the pixel.
App users– If you are a developer then install the Facebook SDK to make more applicable ads that drive people to take in-app actions such as returning to a game or making a purchase.
Lookalike Audience
Lookalike Audiences are a fast way to connect with people who are expected to return to your ads. All you need to do is make a source audience of people you know. Your ads will then reach people with mutual interests and characters.
Step 4- Select the placement of the ad
You will now have to decide the placement of the ad. You can select just mobile, just desktop or both of them. You will get a number of options on Facebook, Instagram and the audience network.
You can run ads with nearly all the options or you can also disable or activate just some of them.
Step 5- Set the budget
This is the most crucial step. Select the budget, schedule the ads and choose an optimization method. You can select a lifetime or a daily budget. You can also have your ads run anytime or schedule a specific time and date. You can choose dayparting which lets you run the ads only at specific times or on specific days.
You can also decide whether you wish to optimize the ads or not. If you don’t know then Facebook automatically has a setup thing for you and if you don’t wish to take a lot of stress or get into the technicalities then you can go for it.
You can also select to change:
- What you’re bidding on like link clicks or impressions
- If you want to spend your ad budget as quickly as possible or spread it out over time
- If you want to set a cap on your bids or not
Step 6- Select the ad format
There are a number of ad formats that you get to create that perfect Facebook as campaign. They are:
- Single image ads
- Video ads
- Carousel ads that allow you to show numerous videos and/or pictures
- Canvas ads
- Collections that open up to be a full-screen mobile experience
Step 7- Don’t overlook the details
At the end of the creative section, there are a number of minute details that can be overlooked easily. It comprises of different sections where you can put copy along with things like CTAs and URL descriptions.
Try to use all of them. The CTA button will help you to drive conversions and take our word on this; the right copy in the right place will work like a charm which you will see for yourself.
Step 8- Observe your ads
It is very important to monitor the campaigns when you start them. You might notice an increase in the CPC after the frequency gets high and others might start out at a considerably higher CPC than you even expected. Others might not be up to the mark.
Facebook’s ad manager dashboard will give you all the details as per the campaign. You can see the CPC, frequency, and number of actions taken.
We hope that you will have a better understanding when it comes to creating ads. To sum it up for you, the 8 steps of creating a successful Facebook ad campaign are:
Step 1- Have a strategy
Step 2- Pick your objective
Step 3- Target the audience
Step 4- Select the placement of the ad
Step 5- Set the budget
Step 6- Select the ad format
Step 7- Don’t overlook the details
Step 8- Observe your ads