Digital marketers everywhere are thankful for Facebook's focused targeting options. Most social media advertising platforms are a bit vague and generic, but not Facebook. With Facebook ads manager, you can laser target so that your content is shown to the people most likely to be interested in it. It's crucial to know who your target audience is before you build out a campaign. Even if you don't have all of the demographics nailed down, you should have answers to the following questions:

• What age group am I trying to sell to?
• Is my product or service targeted to one gender more than another?
• Is my product or service location-specific/do we only work in or sell to a certain area?
• What interests are our product/service related to?

Being able to answer these questions are key to setting up a successful Facebook advertising campaign. If you're just starting out, think about your product or service and who it's likely aimed towards and go from there. At the very least, know who you don't want to target. For example, if your business sells baby clothes, you can assume that you don't want to target anyone under the age of 18 or 20. Yes, there are mothers younger than that, but they are outliers. Targeting 16-year-olds will waste money because a large majority of them are not mothers and don't need baby clothes. Let's get specific here and come up with an audience.

Your business sells baby clothes. You ship all over the United States. Your audience could look like:

• Age: 20-65+ (capture both parents and grandparents)
• Location: United States (you can only ship to the US)
• Gender: All (mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and grandfathers)
• Interests: New Parents (0-12months), Parents with toddlers (01-02 years), Grandparent, baby clothes, infant clothing, baby shower, baby shower ideas, 

2. Create Engaging Content and Copy

Once you have your targeting set up, you need to make sure that your Facebook ads are worth clicking on. Facebook ads manager lets you choose from a variety of ad types during the creation process. You can supplement the copy (text) of your ad with a single image, a single video, a carousel of videos and images, or a collection of items that can be opened fullscreen. Generally speaking, videos perform the best. They're more eye-catching and often see more engagement and click throughs compared to images. Carousels are great for showcasing multiple items and providing links directly to each. Sticking to the baby clothes example, you could have a carousel of up to 10 items or outfits. Users can scroll through to see them all, and clicking on one they like will take them directly to the online ordering page for that item. For consumers, it's all about convenience, and carousels provide exactly that. 

     Regardless of the media type you use, it needs to be something that will catch attention. Images should be high quality, branded with your name or logo, and attention-getting. Avoid making your photos or videos too cluttered or viewers will get overwhelmed and keep scrolling. If you need some inspiration, take a look at the social media advertising efforts of your competitors. Find some styles you like and note things that make you lose interest. Then, put these things into practice and create your own Facebook ad that will perform well! Do the same for copy. While the media is what catches attention, you need your copy to give information that customers want. Showcase promotions or sales, highlight your unique selling points, and pull the reader in!

3. A/B Test All Ads

This is one tip that the BusySeed team swears by. At the end of the day, you'll never know how consumers will react to a Facebook ad until you send it out. For just about every Facebook advertising campaign we create, we test out different versions of the same ad. The A/B test option is available on ads manager in Facebook, making this process easier than ever. A/B testing involves trying a few different pieces of media and copy to see which performs better. Running these tests is especially important at the beginning of a campaign when you want to know what your audience responds well to. Copy and creative will be shown in different combinations and the results will show if a certain pairing does better than others. From this information you can better your current campaigns and set up better campaigns in the future. 

     A/B testing is one reason why many business owners look for Facebook ads management outside of their company. Creating multiple versions of an ad takes time, and interpreting the results is not something anyone can do well. Facebook ads management puts the ball in the expert's court. A team like BusySeed will handle all of the creation, testing, and analysing of ads, and will keep you in the loop about changes and findings. Even if you handle posting on Facebook, outsourcing your Facebook ads management can be hugely beneficial and time-saving. Social media advertising can get costly if you go about it without a plan, and you won't see the results that you could be. This is one thing that might be better left to the pros. 

4. Keep An Eye On Insights

Now you have your ads targeting the right audience, your creative and copy are engaging, and you've set up A/B testing. Now it's time to keep an eye on the insights and charts for your ads. Facebook ads manager has a lot of very valuable information that is meant to help you better your advertising efforts. You can use ads manager in Facebook to view how ads are performing at the campaign, ad set, and ad level. Give your ad at least a few days (a few weeks is best) to breathe and get going before you take the analytics too seriously. After the ads have been running, their performance will stabilize and you'll be able to see more accurate averages. If your results are not where you want them after the initial phases, then you can make changes to try to correct the issues. If you make changes immediately, you will never have accurate numbers about what ad performed the best. Facebook's algorithm needs to learn the ads and match them to people in your target audience. One more thing about insights; don't stop checking them just because you get an ad going well. Things can change, creative can get stale, and people can be looking for different types of content. Always check your charts regularly so that you can constantly better your Facebook advertising efforts. 

5. Understand That Results Don't Happen Overnight

This last tip is hard for many business owners to hear, but it's crucial if you want to have a positive experience with Facebook advertising. Although we wish they did, results do not happen overnight. As you can imagine, the process of setting up and testing a new campaign can take several days to several weeks. If you go in with an expectation of immediate results, you are guaranteed to be disappointed. When business owners set up their own Facebook advertisements, it's easier for them to understand why it can take quite a while to get the ball rolling. For companies who rely on Facebook ads management, it can be easy to forget all of the steps involved in creating a successful campaign. We promise that your social media marketing team is working at full speed to get things going for you, but some of the delay is not a reflection of them. Facebook must approve all campaigns, ad sets, and ads before they run, and then it needs to learn more about the ad and start showing it to people that seem to fit into the audience. Your Facebook ads management team is keeping track of the campaign and will make changes when it's appropriate. If they aren't seeing results, any good agency will reach out to you with a game plan for changes. You will start seeing results, just not immediately. It prevents a lot of tension and stress if you enter into the world of Facebook advertising with this understanding. The teams are doing everything they can to get your results, we guarantee it.

We hope you've found these five tips useful. With a little time and practice, you can become a master of Facebook advertising. If you'd rather leave it to the pros, find an agency that offers Facebook ads management. It just so happens that BusySeed offers management of all social media ads! We handle Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, and more! Our team is extremely well-versed in Facebook ads, and we have seen incredible results. Between our 300+ clients, we've seen 100,0000s of results from Facebook ads alone! We'll discuss our ideas with you before we build them out, and we always keep clients updated on changes we make to your ad account. Most of our clients see results within 3 months of starting an ad campaign, with some seeing results even faster than that! If you're ready to better your Facebook advertising game, call us at (888) 353-1484. We hope to hear from you soon!