Run Successful FB Campaigns with Freelance Digital Marketer

Why start advertising on Facebook?

Facebook is always recognized more like a social platform to make new friends and share your thoughts and probably the most neglected platform for advertising and making conversions.

It says that Instagram has 10 times more engagement rate than Facebook. Then why choosing Facebook as the advertising or promotional platform?

Well, this is the hater’s perspective.

Let us give you a handful of reasons that will make you fall in love with Facebook ads:

• If you know what you are doing, the result will reflect it, and you can’t argue with that
• Facebook ads are super profitable (even Neil Patel used this term to describe FB Ads!)
• Facebook is an open market with more than 2 billion active users. Size matter!
• 96% of social media marketers believe and recommend Facebook advertising as one of the most effective digital marketing options of all social networks.
• Billions of active people in Facebook spend almost an hour each day scrolling Facebook feeds (definitely some of them could be your prospects)
• Facebook budgets have risen to $31 billion and counting!
• If used wisely, Facebook ads will give a competitive advantage to the smaller companies
• The best alternative of Google Ads till now is Facebook ads and the best part is – it is less expensive!

Google Ads definitely holds the best place when it comes to marketing and generating leads but when you wish to do the same but have a budget issue, the Facebook ad could be your savior.  

What is Facebook advertising?

Have you stopped by some brands promoting your favorite products or the similar products that we are interested in?

This is Facebook advertising.

When you are scrolling your Facebook feeds sometimes you will recognize these brands offering products that you may be interested in. But, how come they are coming to your feed?

This is the trick of Facebook ads.

Not like Google, but with 2 billion active users Facebook has already a huge resource of data. Data that they are voluntarily offered by the users while creating their profile. You may hide your age, location, and interest in your profile restricting others from checking it, but Facebook has its access and it is showing you products of your interests (as mentioned in your profile!).

Well, this image is an example of a Facebook ad that you may confront while scrolling the feed. Now the thing is, my profile interest includes “Vlogging”, which is definitely triggered that I may have an interest in animated video making. Hence, Facebook is prompting this ad in my feed.

Facebook ads running in the feeds differ based on your profile data and these are the information also helping the marketers running targeted Facebook ads.

Now, when you say, “a Facebook ad”, you need to specify which “type” of Facebook ad you are talking about because there are 5 types of Facebook ads. These 5 types are:

1. Ads running inside the news feed (desktop)
2. Ads running inside the news feed (mobile)
3. Right-hand sidebar (desktop)
4. Audience network (mobile)
5. On Instagram

Whether it is a Facebook desktop ad, mobile ad, or Instagram ad, the basic rule followed and adhered by the consumers as well is – “Do not interrupt the user experience!”

Who should run Facebook ads?

Many businesses nowadays are considering Facebook ads seriously for digital marketing. However, not everybody is succeeding! In this blog, being a digital marketing expert, I will show you how to run a Facebook ad successfully and make maximum profits just like Google Ads.

While running Facebook Ads, remember that it is more like display ads rather than search ads. Because people on Facebook are there to connect with friends and not to find products (they have Google to find products!).

• Conversion

Most of the businesses that bring success in Facebook do not ask the user to “Buy” their products but go for low-friction commitments like “Sign up”, “Get coupon” or “subscribe”.

A Facebook user tends to hop back to the newsfeed rather than wasting time in researching your products or filling up long forms. A big commitment like “purchase” mostly discourage the users. Instead, stick to simple conversions like an email subscription, signing up, or filling up a short lead form.

Try to collect the email IDs as much as possible and start alluring users through email marketing with problem-solving content.

• Business Model

It is important to consider that when you are collecting mere email addresses, you will eventually start doing business in the long run. Facebook users provide longtime conversion rather than Google Ads that provide instant results.

On Facebook, after collecting prospective email addresses, you just cannot expect 100% conversion or 70%.

This is a long-term process and you need to start building trust with the user on Facebook and then you will get payback starting from ~20% of the first ad spend on 1^st day. A well-planned Facebook Ad takes ~6months to 7months to get 100% payback.

But, it’s all about branding. Do not run after one big purchase. Instead, multiple smaller purchases will boost your ROI as well as branding.

How to set up a Facebook Ad campaign?

While running Facebook Ad campaign you will confront two ad management tools, namely:

• Facebook Ads Manager (Free)
• Power Editor (Free)

Professional Facebook Ads users go with the Power Editor while the newbies are recommended to start with Facebook Ads Manager.

An introduction to Facebook’s Ad Manager

So, let’s introduce Facebook’s Ads Manager. Here is what will be the steps to create a Facebook ad campaign through Facebook’s Ads Manager-

• Creating a new campaign
• Create an ad for each of the campaign
• Manage your bidding price (the amount you are spending on each ad)
• Target different audience group
• Optimize and improve ads while running
• Test ad campaigns

So, how is this work?

Sign into your Facebook account and find the Ads Manager option in the upper right-hand corner. Then go to Manage Ads.

At the top, there is a menu bar including different tabs. This will help you to organize your ad. Here is the introduction of the tabs you will find there:

• Account: Holds the details of the campaigns, and ad sets. You can open only one account for your business.
• Campaign: Ad campaigns are created to fulfill two purposes – first, selling specific products or services and driving traffic to the website
• Ad Sets: Organizing different Ad groups or categories of ads based on target audiences/purpose. This part is almost similar to Google Ads.
• Ads: create ads that will be displayed on Facebook and reach prospective users.  FB also offers the option of using the post for your Ad campaign via the “Boost Post” option.

Follow the step by step guide to run a Facebook ad successfully.

1. Choose the objective

To choose the “right objective” you have to ask the right question – “What’s the most important thing I want from this Facebook ad”? the answer could be generating leads, selling products or driving traffic or simply branding.

When you are focused on the outcomes, Facebook ads work best! Hence objective is the first thing that you must have in mind. 

Facebook ads can play a pivotal role in brand awareness, by displaying ads to the interested people on Facebook and reach maximum people within a smaller budget. You can also specify the location where you wish to spread awareness.

 Facebook has already designed “ad types” to reach specific goals, such as:

• Dynamic Ads: Catalogue Sales objective + carousal (photo)
• Lead Ads: Lead Generation objective + any format with a lead form

2. Select your audience

This is one of the most interesting as well as an important part of running an ad campaign. Why? Because every business, every product or service has its specific audience.

Analyze the people you want to reach. You will need details like location, age, and other demographic factors. Always choose the interest and demographics that represent your audience best.  

You may have the aid of three audience selection tools:

• Core Audiences: Find the audience based on geography, age, interest, and more.
• Custom Audiences: Get back to those people who have an interest and engaged with business (directly or indirectly).
• Lookalike audiences: Target and reach new people who have similar interests like your audience.

Use the following criteria to set the rules to whom the ads will be delivered. Adjust the target audience from broader to narrow based on the following criteria:

• Location: Choose a specific location (urban/town/country) where you want to acquire the market.
• Behavior: Analyze the prior purchase, after purchase, devise usage, and more behaviors to determine your ideal consumers.
• Demographic: Age, gender, job, education are the most common demographic parameters that need to be followed. Although Facebook never discloses the personality identifying information but at least you can determine the types of people your ads should be reaching.
• Connections: Do not forget the people who already liked your Facebook page or any event. They are the real connections who can bring referrals. 
• Interests: People on Facebook enlist their interests in “bio”. Specify “interest” and Facebook will show the ads to the people who have similar interests enlisted.

3. Choose where to run the ad

Facebook offers the liberty to decide where to run the ads it could be Facebook, Messenger, Audience Network, or Instagram. Not only that, but you can also decide the type of mobile devices to run your ad!

In Facebook, the term “Placements” specifies the place where you can run ad campaigns. Either you can choose the ideal placement manually or choose the automatic placements option.

The automatic placement option is always recommended since it empowers the Ad Manager to choose the ideal placement and make most of your budget.

Your ads running in various placements may include the listed positions:

• Facebook News Feed: Ads will appear in the desktop feeds when people will access Facebook through the desktop or mobile app (here you can specify the device).
• Facebook Marketplace: The ad will appear on the home page of the marketplace. Users browsing marketplace will find these ads through Facebook ads.
• Facebook Right Column: Ads appear in the right column of the Facebook page (only on desktop).
• Facebook Video Feeds: Here only video ads could be placed and found between organic videos (only in Facebook News Feed and Facebook Watch).
• Instagram Feed: Ads will appear in the mobile feed while users are scrolling Instagram (will show on Instagram only). 
• Instagram Explore: Ads will appear on Instagram based on the browsing experience (the type of posts is clicked).
• Messenger Inbox: Ads will appear on the Home tab of the Messenger.  

Also, the ads are placed in:

• Facebook Stories
• Instagram Stories
• Messenger stories
• Facebook in-stream videos
• Facebook Search Result
• Messenger Sponsored Messages
• Facebook Instant Article

4. Set up the budget

Creating a realistic budget in the Facebook ad campaign is one of the most important things. The goal is to create a reasonable budget and get maximum out of it. Here is what you need to analyze first:

• What is the cost of the service or product?
• How many products or services you want to sell?
• What is your current conversion rate?

Facebook offers the liberty to choose between lifetime budget and daily budget. Here is what you need to know about the daily budget and lifetime budget:

• Daily Budget: Opting daily budget is applicable when you are looking forward to running ads throughout the day. The minimum daily budget to run an ad is USD 1.00 and 2X your CPC.
• Lifetime budget: This option is for those who wish to run Facebook Ads for a certain period. The Ads Manager will take care of the spending over the period that you have set for the ad.

5. Select the apt format

Presentation of Facebook ads is extremely important as it not only needs to reflect your story but also catch the attention of the customers.

You can use words, images, and videos – or a combination of two/three to express your business best. Whether the medium is an image, video, or word, run your ads on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Audience Network and in every device.

Select the Ad format that suits you best:

• Photo: This is a clean and simple format to showcase engaging product images. For this format, you need high-quality images (possibly clicked and edited by professionals).
• Video: Describe your work with sound and motion. Video ads short as well as long could be posted. However, short videos gather more engagement than longer videos.
• Stories: Now you can share ads in stories too, which is now considered as edge-to-edge experience.
• Messenger: Messenger ads are quite new but engaging. It helps to get personalized and start a conversation with potential customers.
• Carousel: Here you can showcase max 10 images (pick the stunning images only) in a single ad. You can also place short multiple videos.
• Slideshow: This is similar to video ads where you can upload slides with motion and voice/music.
• Collection. This helps people to browse and discover more products in a short time with fast-loading experience. People promoting their eCommerce store can go for this ad.
• Playables: If you have developed a game (app) and pick this ad category, this ad type will offer an interactive game preview to the user before they download the game!

6. Place order

When you submit the ad, it is placed in the Ad auction. Billions of auctions take place to find out which ad should be displayed to a user based on his current activity.

The ad auction winner is determined based on the following factors-

• Bid: This is the amount fixed by the ad providers to achieve their goal.
• Action rate: This is an estimation of the number of users engaging with an ad type or converting.
• Ad quality: Quality of an ad is determined by various sources that include people clicking or hiding the ad. Low-quality attributes that are often marked are sensationalized language, withholding information, and excessive texts on the ad’s image.

7. Manage as well as to measure your ad

Tracking ad performance on Facebook is easy and can be done using the Ads Manager. The measurement helps you to understand the audience better and improve the ads’ performance/quality.

It is important to have an optimized fan page before you roll your ad. Since FB ads are like long term marketing strategies, you should be ready with follow-ups ads and in fact, you should be using more than one ad type, so that you can measure which ads are getting maximum engagements so that you can replicate the style for boosting conversion.

If you wish to draw more mileage from your FB page, it is essential to power it with Facebook ads. Your illustrations should be eye-catching, the layout and graphics should be such that the audience can relate to the idea immediately and above all, they should be entertaining. Surveys reflect those funny video ads are more powerful than poster ads.

As an entrepreneur and digital marketing expert, I can build your FB campaign, from creating video ads or simple illustrations to optimizing the best ones for amplifying your reach. With a high percentage of people spending hours on Facebook during the pandemic, you cannot ignore the power of FB ads when you are seriously thinking of brand awareness.

Today, Facebook ads are powerful instruments to gain more audiences and build brand intimacy. I hope this blog will help you to create a Facebook ad campaign from scratch. Need help with Facebook ads? Get in touch.