How to Advertise on Facebook - HilyftDigital

Facebook is a beast when it comes to social media marketing. It has the most targeted system of all social media platforms. Facebook has over 2 billion users, if you are not advertising on Facebook, then you are missing out on a large number of potential customers. 

In this article, I’m going to show you how to advertise on Facebook and create Facebook ads that work if you are a beginner.

It’s going to be a little bit technical but I’m going to break down the process into simple easy to do steps. You might want to bookmark this page for future reference; you can also take a breather if you feel like it.  Without further ado, let’s dive right into it.

Create a Facebook page

Before you can create an ad on Facebook you need to have a Facebook page. If you have a page, then you don’t have a problem but if you don’t, you need to create one. It’s not hard creating one, just follow the procedures below: 

 1. Go to web.facebook.com
 2. Locate the “create” link on the top menu bar and click on it

     3. A drop-down menu will appear, click on the “ create page” link.

You can either create a page as a business, brand, or a public figure. Either way, follow the procedures and include necessary details and you’ll have your page up or running in no time.

Creating an ad

Similar procedure also applies to create an ad on Facebook.

   1.  Locate the create link on the top menu bar and click on it.

   2.  On the drop-down menu click the “ create ads” link and you’ll be redirected to the ads manager

                        10 TYPES OF FACEBOOK ADS

When in the ads manager, you will have to choose a marketing objective. The type of ad you will go for depends on your marketing objective.

Brand awareness

This ad is basically used if you want more people in front of your brand. In Facebook words, it “increases awareness for your brand by reaching people who are more likely to be interested in it”.

Reach

You can use this type of ad if you want your ads to be shown to as many people as possible.

Traffic

This is probably the most used type of ad on Facebook. The purpose of this ad is to drive and send traffic to a destination you want, either on or off Facebook. It could be a website, landing page, etc.

Engagement

The main purpose of the engagement ad is to get your posts more engagement in terms of more page likes, more comment and offer claims.

App installs

If you want to drive application downloads, then this ad is the one to do it.

Video views

The main aim of this ad is to get more views for your videos on Facebook and it is relatively the cheapest compared to other types of ad on Facebook.

Lead generation

The lead generation ad collects and gathers customer’s phone numbers, emails and other information that you want on Facebook.

Store visits

This is to basically send more traffic to your online store.

                         CHOOSE A CAMPAIGN NAME

After you’ve chosen your marketing objective you need to choose a campaign name. For whatever business that you want to advertise, try to make the campaign name as specific as possible. For the sake of this article, I’m going to create an ad that drives traffic to a website as a case study.

                               SET YOUR AUDIENCE

After choosing your campaign name, you need to set an audience for your ad. There are three types of Facebook audience namely:

• ·         Custom audience: Custom audiences are audiences who have already in one point or the other interacted with your business. Here, you can use email addresses, phone numbers or user IDs of people who have either opt into your email list or have signed up on your website or app. You’ll need to save the audience that you want your ad to be shown to.

• ·         Lookalike audience: From the word “lookalike” I believe you can guess what it means. Lookalike audiences are audiences who have characteristics that are similar to your original audience.

• ·         Saved audience: Saved audiences are the audience you decide to show your ads to, based on their interests, location, age, and gender, demographics and behaviors.

Location-based targeting: Here you choose the location of the people who you want to view their ads. When choosing the location where you want your ads to be viewed, you can also set the age of your target audience. For example, it could be set to the age range of 18-64 years.

You need to also set the gender of who you are targeting; it could be either men or women. You also have the option to include the languages you are targeting.

Detailed targeting: In detailed targeting, you can include people who match at least one of the demographics, interests or behaviors you are targeting. What this means is that you can exclude or include people who you want your ads to be shown to, based on some details. For examples, you can target people who are interested in fitness and wellness, entertainment, shopping, and fashion or based on their education, income or based on their behaviors.

                                   CHOOSE PLACEMENT

Placements show your ads to the right people in the right places. You can set your ads to be automatically placed. Here Facebook will place your ads where it thinks they will likely perform best or you can edit placements to suit your needs.

                           SET BUDGET AND SCHEDULE

Your next step is to set the budget for your ad. You have the option to select either a daily or lifetime budget.

A daily budget is how much you will spend per day on Facebook.  For example, you can decide to spend just $5 per day.

In a lifetime budget, you need to input the total amount of money you are willing to spend for the ad campaign and Facebook will decide how much it is going to spend each day, depending on the day your ads perform best. You also have the option to set a start and end date for your ad campaign. At this point, you can click continue.

                          CONNECT A FACEBOOK PAGE

After you have set your budget, you need to connect your Facebook page. If you have more than one Facebook page, you’ll need to choose the one that will represent your business when the ads are being displayed.

                                      CHOOSE FORMAT

 Here you’ll choose how you would like your ad to look. There are three types of formats you can choose from:

    1. Carousal: Use the carousel if you want to create an ad with 2 or more scrollable images or videos

    2. A single image or video: you can use this format if you want an ad with one image or one video.

    3. Slideshow: The slideshow format is used if you want  an   ad with a looping video with up to 10 images.

Depending on the format chosen, you need to choose the image or video you’d like to use in your ad.

                         ADD LINKS AND CALL TO ACTION
At this point, you need to enter the text for your ad. You can enter a website URL if you want to send people to a website. After this, you can add a call to action button. There are many calls to action you can include like, apply now, book now, contact us, and learn more, among a host of others. You need to choose the one suitable to what you are advertising.

Hit the set up button and you’re done, your ads will now be shown to the people you targeted with your budgeted amount. See sample below:

Conclusion

You can track all your conversions using Facebook pixel (I highly recommend you do so to know how your ad is performing). Drop a comment below if you have any questions, I’ll love to hear from you. Also,share this article with your friends. Sharing is caring.