How to Run an Effective Facebook Advertisement

So your company is interested in doing some advertisement but not exactly sure where to begin. Facebook advertising can be a great way to start. It is low cost and can be highly targeted with Facebook’s vast access to individual user’s information. In this post, I will go over how to set up a Facebook advertisement and show you some techniques for targeting specific individuals interested in your product or service.

• 1. The first step in running an ad on Facebook is to set up a Facebook page for your business. Most businesses nowadays already have a page created, but if you don’t, no problem! Make sure the page is set up as a business page and not a personal page. This will allow you to have access to the business manager and ads manager functions. To see the step-by-step process of verifying your Facebook business page, click the link below.

 https://www.facebook.com/help/100168986860974

• 2. Now that you have a Facebook business page and ad account, it’s time to start creating relevant advertisements for your business. Before entering the ads manager, come up with an overall goal for your advertisement. The goal should focus on creating content that the ideal customer would find interesting and engaging. Whether it is attracting people to an event, getting more followers, or getting more clicks to your website, all advertisements should have an end goal in mind.

• 3. Facebook is formatted for you to choose a certain type of ad depending on your end goal, as shown by the screenshot below. Different types of advertisements promote different activities. Some options are more effective and less costly, whereas some are expensive and don’t work well with your end goal. It is your job as a marketer to play around with what works and what doesn’t for your specific industry.

• 4. After you choose the type of advertisement that you are going to run, it is time to choose who you want to see your advertisements. Shown below is Facebook’s customization function targeting your ideal customer.

The red box highlights Facebook’s location-targeting service. In this particular example, I chose to target my ads within a 25-mile radius of 3 major Pennsylvania cities. Your ad exposure can be as small as a 10-mile radius of a specific area to the whole United States if you so choose. You also are given the option to exclude areas in which you don’t want your ads to be shown. This can be useful if you don’t provide service in a selected area near you. Under the red box in the above graphic, you can see a purple box. This function allows you to target people depending on age, gender, and language. This is useful if you are in an industry that may have customers from a particular generation or specific gender. For example, if you sell wedding dresses you would target women ages 21-50. This will allow only people who fall into those categories to see your ads.

• 5. After you get the basic targeting down, it is time to go into some advanced targeting techniques that enable you to detail your targeting even further.

In the red box above, Facebook enables you to select people from certain demographics, behaviors, and interests. In the example above, I attempt to attract people interested in purchasing restaurant equipment. For the demographics section I selected Work -> Job Title -> then selected job titles whose owners would likely be interested in purchasing restaurant equipment for their business. Next, I targeted behaviors. To do this, I clicked Behaviors -> B2B -> Industry -> Restaurant. This allows me to get in front of everyone who has any association with the Restaurant industry. The last area of focus was Interests. To target interests, I clicked Interests -> Additional Interests -> National Restaurant Association. This gives my ad exposure to all people who like or follow the National Restaurant Association.

With advanced targeting, Facebook provides you with an “and, or” option when targeting. This function allows you to become more or less focused in your targeting. An example might look something like this:

Your selected Audience:

Purchasing Agent (or) Restaurant Industry (and) National Restaurant Association

Similar to a library database or other similar web engine, “or” represents a choice, and “and” represents an essential. The above-targeted audience therefore must be either a purchasing agent or involved in the restaurant industry, but must like/follow the National Restaurant Association. In the above screenshot, the area surrounded by the purple box tells you exactly how many people your targeted ad will reach. Be careful not to be too specific with your Facebook ad, as you may reach very few due to poor targeting selections.

• 6. After fully utilizing the targeting tools to decide who exactly you want to see your advertisements, it is time to set the pricing options for your ad.

In the red box above, you can choose how much you want to spend on your advertisement. Depending on the type of advertisement, you may select your budget daily or over the lifetime of the ad. In the purple box above, you can select the beginning and end dates, in between which your ad will run. The green box above highlights the ad scheduling function. If you have chosen a lifetime budget, you can select the time and day of the week you want your advertisements to be seen. A good example of someone who might be interested in this is a restaurant owner who is trying to get a larger lunch crowd. She or he can select that their ads only be seen from 9:30 am to 1:00 pm if they so choose. This would allow the ad to be seen around the time people start to think about lunch. The yellow box highlights the area where you can play around with the type of delivery for your ad. For example, do you want your ads to appear sporadically throughout the day, or do you want the ads to be seen by people as quickly as possible?

• 7. Facebook is always changing. Sometimes it is hard to know exactly what is changed if you are not working with the ads manager every day. Recently Facebook added the Placements section to the ad set.

 In the screenshot above, you can see that you have the option to pick which platform on which you would like your advertisement to be seen. Options include Mobile, Instagram, Audience Network, Desktop Newsfeed, and Desktop Right Column. Play around a choose a platform that works for your specific ad and industry. Some industries would get little use out of an Instagram ad, whereas others will see a lot of engagement.

• The final section allows you to set up what your advertisement is going to look like. You can select your image/ video, caption, and where a click on your ad will lead a potential customer.

Shown on the right-hand side of the screen above, you can preview what your advertisement will look like on each potential platform. After you have designed the advertisement, and everything looks how you want it, you are now ready to submit your ad to Facebook. Facebook takes around 15min – 30 min to approve an ad. For reasons why your advertisement may not be accepted, click the link below.

https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/

After your ad is accepted by the Facebook team, you can then monitor its success through your Ads Manager. The ads manager allows you to stop or restart your ad at any time. It also provides you with a variety of analytics to help improve your ad targeting the next time around.

The main point of this blog post was to show you how specifically Facebook advertisements can target an audience. These types of ads may not work for every business or industry but can generate great success if set up correctly for the right type of business. If you are trying out Facebook ads for the first time, or are confused in any way, click the link below and one of our specialists would be happy to guide you through the process.

If you are a business owner who wants to start some social ad campaigns, but just don’t have the time, Avanti Vision offers social media services that will get your campaign up and running with excellent results.