A Visual Step by Step Guide to Facebook Advertising

It goes without saying that Facebook is a huge website! In fact, according to similarweb.com, it is the 3rd biggest website in the entire world, behind Google.com and Youtube.com. On average, each user spends 50 minutes per day on Facebook.

80% of people who use the internet, use a Facebook account and it has a potential reach of 1.9 billion people. In 2019, the average cost per click (CPC) was $0.80 globally, and the Cost Per Reaching 1,000 Impressions (CPM) was on average - $5.12. These costs will depend on demand, i.e. the industry and the location but they certainly outline that there is an opportunity when compared to other advertising platforms such as Google Ads.

The problem with Facebook advertising often has to do more with advertisers than the platform itself. With a lack of specialists in the advertising industry, Marketing professionals often don't have specific, high-level knowledge when it comes to Facebook Advertising and make the mistake of treating the platform somewhat like another Google Display Network.

Facebook Account Hierarchy

If you are new to Facebook ads, it helps to get familiar with how the platform is structured.

Business Manager > This is basically a tool to manage everything related to Facebook & Your Business. It creates a level of distinction between your personal Facebook account and your business account. It helps teams work together and helps to manage multiple Facebook Ads accounts if you work with different organisations.

Ad Manager > Ad Manager helps users to organise campaigns separately. It's a place to create, manager and analyse Facebook Ads campaigns. You can also add users at the Ad Manager level.

Ad Account > The ad account helps agencies to create separate profiles for each organisation or company that they work with.

Ad Campaign > At the campaign level, you set your objective for example "Traffic" or "Lead Generation". The Ad Campaign contains ad sets and ads.

When "CBO" is turned on Campaign Budget Optimisation - the budget is optimised at this level. Otherwise, the budget is optimised and set at Ad Set level.

Ad Set > The most important element of the Ad Set - is the audience that you are targeting. It is crucial to get this right to implement successful Facebook campaigns.

Ad> The actual ad and what it looks like etc.

Other Facebook Jargon

Custom Audience:

A custom audience is a collection of Facebook users that have specific things in common. For example, a common custom audience might consist of people who have already visited your website, or a specific page on your website.

Lookalike Audience:

Enables you to take a 'small audience' and make a 'big audience'.

People often refer to the small audience as the 'source audience' and the bigger audience as the "lookalike audience".

For example, if 1,000 people visit your website but you want to reach 1,000,000 relevant people, you can take the 1,000 source audience and Facebook will find the other 999,000 by matching them as closely as possible to the original 1,000 using all the data that Facebook has available. For example, they could match users on their interests, demographics, places they've visited, even other websites that they have visited.

Facebook Pixel:

This is a piece of code that goes on your website, allowing you to target them again on Facebook Ads. This is called retargeting or remarketing, which is one of the most profitable forms of advertising in general.

Split Testing:

If you want to succeed with Facebook Ads, you will almost definitely need to split test your ads and audiences. In fact, I've heard several Facebook marketing professionals state that the people who split test the most, will be the most successful in terms of their Facebook Ads campaigns.

Getting Started with Facebook Ads

Do some quick research. Start off with the mindset of an analyst, not an advertiser. Before you do anything - here is a great tip for getting started.

Go to your biggest competitor's Facebook page and click on the "see all" text on the "Page Transparency" box. Then, on the next popup click on "Go to Ad Library".

Here you can see your competitor's ads. This will give you a good idea about how to get started with your own ad creatives and designs.

The older the adverts that are still enabled, will tend to be the most profitable and successful.

Understand "why?" - why are competitors using certain types of ads and "what?" what are they saying - what is their hook and who are they targeting.

Remember that you have about 5 seconds to hook someone's attention on Facebook - how are your competitors doing this?

Before you start, you will need a Facebook page for your business.

You can do this from your personal Facebook account, in the top right corner, click "Create" or the "+" sign and then choose "Page"

Creating your account.

Now you've had a look at your competitors, you need to get started and actually create an ads account.

- Go to https://business.facebook.com/ and click "Create Account"

- Fill in the details when prompted - Business Name, Your Name and your business email address then click "Next"

- Enter in your Website URL (if you don't have one, paste in your Facebook profile URL)

Now you have your Facebook Business Account in place, go to Ads Manager.

You can go to the Ads Manager by clicking the 3 horizontal lines in the top left of Business Manager and then choosing "Ads Manager" from the drop-down menu:

Arguably the trickiest part of the Facebook ads setup process is adding the Facebook conversion or tracking pixel. If you don't want to do this yourself, it's pretty easy to find someone to do it on a website like PeoplePerHour or a relevant Reddit forum.

- Click on the 3 horizontal lines in the top corner of Ads Manager

- Choose "Events Manager" (this may be listed as "Pixels" in the old interface)

- Click "Create a pixel" or "Set up a pixel"

- Give your pixel a name

- Next, you need to click and copy the code

- This can be installed with Google Tag Manager, or you can use a specific plugin with Wordpress websites. The "Insert Headers and Footers" plugin is generally the recommended plugin for Wordpress.

Creating Your First Facebook Ads Campaign

From the Ads Manager page - click on "Create":

- Choose a campaign objective - choose "Conversions" (this is what most marketers will use 80% of the time). Facebook also now to "Click to Call" ads. For certain business-to-business campaigns, these can work really well, and you can always try a call answering service to help collect leads 24/7 (at the time of writing Moneypenny offer a free trial with no payment details required).

- Give the Campaign a name

- Switch "Campaign Budget Optimization" on (this isn't required but suggested)

- Set a campaign budget. Since we are starting off - go for $10 per day

- Press "Continue"

- In the Conversion section of this page - choose your goal - e.g. "lead", "purchase" or whatever you want your ads to achieve

Audiences & Audience Insights

This is where you can choose custom audiences.

You can create custom audiences for example - for people who viewed your video, you can upload customer emails to create a lookalike audience, you can target people who like your own or a competitor's Facebook page and you can target people who have already visited a specific page on your website.

For your first Facebook Ads campaign, it is recommended that you go to "Audience Insights" which can be accessed by clicking the 3 horizontal lines in the top left of the screen and chosen via the drop-down menu.

If you are unsure of your target audience, enter a relevant interest. For example, if I am selling bodybuilding supplements, I can choose the "Fitness & Wellness" option and then "Bodybuilding". This shows me that for example, 40% of the bodybuilding audience on Facebook is men aged 25-34, most are married and have a university education.

Now I can go back to my Ads Manager and Audience and change the age range to 24-34 and target men only, with a university education.

Going back to the setup process and the Audience setup:

- Choose your targeted location

- Add the age range you want to target

- Choose the Gender(s) that you want to target

- Choose the language that you want to target

- Now target people by interest using the "Detailed Targeting" options. For my supplement shop, I would enter "Bodybuilding" in this section. So that instead of targeting all men aged 24-34, I am now targeting just men, aged 24-34, who are interested in Bodybuilding.

- Remember what you have targeted, as you will want to split test audiences at some point.

Placements

- Turn off all automatic placements

- Target just the Facebook Newsfeed. (this can be split test with other placements at a later time)

- Leave the rest the same and click "continue"

Building Your First Ads

- Keep in mind the ads of your competitors that you viewed earlier

- Go to the Media section

- For this example, we will use some Facebook images

- Click Add Image - Then Stock Photo and search for your niche - e.g. "Bodybuilding"

- Choose an image that stands out

- Click "Continue"

- Add your "Primary Text" - something that 'hooks' the audience

- For my Bodybuilding shop, my Primary Text might be "No Gym? No Problem - Download our Free Guide to Bodybuilding at Home"

- Enter a Headline - for example, "Download Your Free Guide Today"

- Add the website page/URL that you want to send Facebook users to. If you have a specific offer, remember to send users to a specific page, not just your homepage

- If you wish to - add Facebook URL Tracking Parameters. More info in this video.

- Choose the ad "Format" - in this example we will choose "Single Image or Video"

Split Testing

- The simplest way to split test is to take one this campaign and copy it, then change 1 element of it.

- Go to Ads Manager

- Click the "Campaigns" Tab (in normally defaults to this tab anyway

- Select a campaign to copy by clicking the checkbox to the left of the campaign name

- Next, click the button that says "Duplicate" which is directly above the list of campaign names

- In the popup window click "Duplicate" again

- Now change the daily budget to whatever you want

- In Ad Sets - look to change one element of the Ad Set - for example, change the gender that is targeted or the interest.

- Make sure you name the campaign to something that outlines what you have changed for example "Free Home Workout Guide - Women Only"

And that's pretty much all you need to get started. You can learn more by watching Youtube tutorials and reading articles, but the best way to learn is to set a small budget and have a go yourself.