FaceBook advertising is one of the more powerful business marketing tools with more than 1.5 billion users and 900 million daily visitors. Creating your first FaceBook ad can be a little overwhelming trying to navigate the options.
FaceBook ads have three distinct components:
- Campaigns – The campaign is the overall theme and contains all properties specific to that campaign.
- Ad Sets – A group of ads composed of the same targeting, budget and bid information.
- Ads – Made by applying creative ad copy and engaging imagery.
What Are The Steps For Creating A FaceBook Ad?
- Login into your Facebook Account and navigate to Create Ad.
- Select your marketing objective.
- Name your campaign.
- Choose the target location.
- Select age, gender and language to target.
- Create the audience.
- Set the budget and ad schedule.
- Select the FaceBook Page associated with the campaign.
- Choose image format.
- Select image(s) for the ad.
- Enter the URL for the landing page.
- Create the headline, text, call to action, news feed description and display URL.
- Place the ad.
Login to your Facebook Account
In the upper right hand corner there is an upside down triangle. Click on it to open the drop down and find Create Ads.
Select your marketing objective
Facebook advertising offers several marketing objectives to choose from. For the purpose of this example we will select Traffic. This simply drives traffic to a specific landing page of your choosing.
Name your campaign
Name your campaign with something unique as you will likely have multiple campaigns accumulate in your account over time. This will help you identify them rather than having to look at the ad sets and ads later on.
Choose the target location
Unless you are running a nationwide campaign you will want to remove the default entry of the United States. Once you have done that you can begin adding your target locations. As you begin to type FaceBook has an autofill feature that populates the drop down with choices that closely match what you have typed. Select your location from the list. You can add as many locations as you want.
Once you add a location you can also target based on radius around that location. Then select age range, gender and language that you wish to target. English is the default so if it is an English only target audience then you can leave that blank.
Create the audience
Facebook provides a very rich and robust demographic targeting tool. For the purposes of this post I recommend that you spend time digging through the various interests and behaviors that closely match those of your target audience. For more details on how to use FaceBook targeting check out audience insights and custom audiences.
Set the budget and ad schedule
You can choose a daily budget as little as $5.00. I recommend starting out with the minimum and test your ad. You can always scale it up after it is optimized and running as you want. You can also set a scheduled start and end date.
Select the FaceBook Page
You will be prompted to choose the FaceBook business page associated with the campaign.
Facebook offers several choices for the way and the number of images that will be displayed in the ad. If you haven’t created a FaceBook ad before stick to the Single Image selection.
Select image(s) for the ad
Upload your image(s). Notice the Recommended image specs on the right side. Follow that image size recommendation for best results.
Enter the URL for the landing page
This is the page that you want visitors to land on when they click your ad. It should be unique and relevant to the ad copy with a call to action.
Create the headline, text, call to action, news feed description and display URL
You have a limit of 25 characters for the headline. Make it engaging and attention grabbing. Facebook allows up to 90 characters for the ad text. Again it is important that you clearly describe your offer in a concise manner that engages the viewer. Choose your call to action button from Learn More, Shop Now, Sign Up and many others. Whatever is most relevant to the offer. Add a description that will appear in the news feed link area and then add a display link. The display link should also be descriptive and is a way of shortening long landing page links.
Summary
Learning how to implement Facebook ads can take some time and practice. Once mastered Facebook advertising can be a great marketing channel for businesses. The most important points to remember are targeting the right audience and demographics, create engaging ad copy and give visitors an eye appealing image that is relevant.
After a few attempts and tests of your ads while learning what works for your business, you’ll be able to generate conversions and leads.