If you are a business owner, you have probably been told about the importance of Facebook. What you may not be aware of is how effective Facebook ads are at helping you reach your business goals. With Facebook Ads Manager, you can set up detailed campaigns, ad groups, and ads to gain page followers, increase sales, improve engagement, and much more. If you are new to the world of Facebook Ads, or if you want to improve your social media marketing, this article can help.

About Facebook Ads Manager

In order to run Facebook Ads, you will need to create an Ads Manager account for your business. Facebook has a funnel-type system that helps you keep your account organized.

The Account: the account is the business you are associated with. Under your account, you can create your Facebook Ads campaigns and ads. The account tab in Facebook Ads Manager lets you see an overview of all of the campaigns you run, and breaks down your audiences by demographics and location. You can also view overall spending as well as your total reach.

The Campaign: The campaign tab allows you to divide your Facebook Ads budget between products, goals, services, etc. When you create a new campaign, you must choose between 11 objectives.

1. Brand awareness - Get people exposed to your brand
2. Reach - Get your brand in front of more people
3. Website traffic - Drive people to your website
4. Engagement - Improve engagement rates on social media
5. App installs - Encourage people to download your app
6. Video views - Show your video to more people so they can view it
7. Lead generation - Get sales/leads
8. Messages - Get people to message your business
9. Conversions - Drive conversions and achieve goals
10. Catalog sales - Sell catalogs
11. Store traffic - Increase traffic to your store

Each campaign can contain one or more ad sets, and we recommend keeping all the ad sets within a campaign related to the campaign itself. For example, if your Facebook Ad campaign is called “Swimwear,” your ad groups should all be a subsection of your swimwear offerings such as “girls swimwear,” “two piece bathing suits,” etc.You should not include ad sets like “women’s dresses” because it has nothing to do with the campaign itself.

The Ad Set: Ad sets are the smaller subsections under campaigns. When you create a new ad set, you set your targeting for your Facebook Ads. This is one of the best things about Facebook Ads.

You can target people based on their demographics and interests so that your ads will be shown to those most likely to act on it. Though Facebook targeting has recently been getting more strict, it is still a very useful tool for getting the most bang for your buck. If you can laser target to consumers you know will like what you are offering, you get a much bigger ROI than if you were sending your Facebook Ads out to anyone and everyone. The ability to target by interests is very useful for smaller brands who want to improve brand awareness and reach. If you are selling swimwear and know that there is an interest for “swimming,” you can safely assume anyone with that interest will also be interested in your products. Another great thing about the Facebook targeting tool is the scale. As you input filters, restrictions, interests, and demographics, a scale on the side of the page will keep track of your expected reach. Facebook also included a slider that will track how many people of the audience you’ve selected will actually see your ads given the budget you set.

Speaking of budget, the ad set is where it is set. Each ad set has their own budget, either daily or lifetime. Daily budgets are how much you are willing to spend every day until the end of your campaign/ when you shut off the ad set. Lifetime budgets are spread out over the duration of the campaign and ad set. With lifetime budgets, Facebooks ads are run differently based on the time of day, day of the week, and other events. Facebook will optimize your ads to show them when it is most beneficial, and slow delivery when the audience is not active.

As we mentioned before, if you have a campaign for “Swimwear,” you can create many subsets in the form of ad groups. You could create groups for each type of swimwear, age of consumer, location, or competitive vs recreational swimming. All of these ad groups would consist of different targeting meant to get the most relevant ads to the people that would consider purchasing your products.

The Ads: Facebook Ads themselves are the creative and copy that people will see on their feed. When creating Facebook Ads you can choose to include a single picture or video, or multiple images in a carousel. Be sure you familiarize yourself with the regulations Facebook has on ads. One regulation to be aware of is the text limit. Facebook Ads that are 20% or more text see a much lower reach or may not run at all. Their are some examples of exceptions , but for the most part you should avoid text in your ads.

Creating Facebook ads is very straightforward once you set up the campaign and ad set. You can decide what type of ad you want to create (image, video, etc.) and upload media from your computer. There are spaces to include headlines to be shown directly under the chosen media, as well as copy that is shown above the image or video like a Facebook status. You can also include call to action buttons and link them and the images themselves to other webpages. If you are selling swimwear and decide to create a carousel ad, you can link each picture to the specific webpage you can purchase them from. This makes completing actions convenient for consumers, making it more likely that they actually interact with your Facebook ad.

Multiple ads can be created under each ad group, and Facebook optimises the campaign to show the best performing ads the most. You can see which ad is performing the best by the cost and reach, so you can model future ads after it in your next campaign. Generally speaking, video ads perform the best, but image ads are also popular because they include a visual aspect that grabs attention much more than a text-based ad would.

Once you get started with Facebook Ads you will find the process straightforward. Facebook has excellent customer support, so if you run into any problems, they can help. When you learn how to properly target your product to the right people, and create visually appealing ads with engaging copy, you will see a drastic increase in follower count, engagement, website clicks, traffic, or whatever else your Facebook Ads sent out to do. With a relatively low budget, Facebook will get your ads out to a huge amount of people. Another great thing? Facebook owns Instagram, so you can create one ad and run it on both platforms (if it meets the size requirements for Instagram.) Social media marketing has never been easier.

We promise that Facebook Ads are not as intimidating as they seem, but if you don’t want to learn the process and struggle to better your results, give us a call! BusySeed is a team of experts with years of experience running Facebook Ads. Our team is ready to help you achieve your goals on social media. We will help you figure out the best social media platforms for your business to make sure you get the most from your money. Give us a call at (888) 353-1484 today.