Advertise on Facebook

There are over a billion people using Facebook, and Facebook lets you put up ads to reach just about any group of people you can imagine. Some people prefer to advertise on Google, where you can find more active buyers. Yet, Facebook allows you to reach any segment of people, anywhere, with a very short setup time. Anyone can create a Facebook ad, whether it’s for a Facebook Page, Event, App, other destination on Facebook, or your own website. Read the article below to find out how.

Steps

Setting Up Your Ads

  1. Register as a user on Facebook, if you don't already have an account. While your event or business does not need to have a Facebook presence, you do need to be a registered Facebook user in order to advertise on Facebook.
    • You may want to create a new login ID, and not use your personal account. In particular, if you have someone who you need to submit receipts to, it is much better to set up a new Facebook account so that you don't have to share passwords.
  2. Choose a category and a page name to represent your company or service. A page is a profile for your business. You don't need a Page in order to advertise of Facebook, but most — if not all — big businesses have an established Page. On your Page, you can promote items or services, interact with established customers, and create opportunities to reach new customers..
  3. Upload a logo or picture that you want to associate with your business. Often, this is the logo that people associate with your brand.
  4. Upload a cover photo. This is the first thing that people will see when they view your business's Page. Your cover photo spans nearly the entire width of your Page and, again, should be something that customers might associate with your business.
    • For example, you're making a page for your business, Barbara's Catered Cupcakes. You might want to showcase a close-up of cupcakes, or perhaps a picture of Barbara working behind the scenes, baking her wares.
  5. Create a sentence about what your business does.This can also be a slogan of your choice.This goes right beneath the company logo and category. Customers who come to your Page should be able to glean right away what services or products you offer based on this sentence.
  6. Set a web address for your Page. Choose an available web address in order to use on other promotional material.
  7. Begin reaching out to your customers with posts. Posts can be anything ranging from a notice of a summer sale to the announcement of a new product line. Your posts can be in the form of updates, photos, or videos. People who like your product will sometimes see your post show up in their news feed.
  8. Optimize your post. Advertisers have realized that not all posts are created equal. If you want more business driven by Facebook posts, and you want that business to grow in the right direction, be sure to keep the following tips in mind when posting:
    • Keep it short and sweet. According to Facebook, posts that are on the shorter side — between 100 and 250 characters — get about 60% more likes, comments and shares.[1] That's a big difference.
    • Appeal to the visual sense. Not everyone processes information better through words. In fact, a lot of people learn by seeing, tapping their visual sense. Photo albums, pictures, and videos drive engagement on Facebook Pages.
    • Use Page Insights to help you learn. Page Insights is a function that allows you mine your analytics so that you can better reach out to customers.

Targeting Your Ads

  1. Make sure you have all the information you need for creating your Facebook ad. Depending on what you plan on advertising, this can include a website URL; event times, dates or places, such as the details of a special performance at a nightclub; or a photo or logo to include with the ad.
  2. Go to your Facebook home page and on the right-hand sidebar, look for the section marked “Sponsored,” where ads appear. Next to the word “Sponsored” is a link that reads, “Create an Ad.” Click on that button.
  3. Design your ad. Note that for each choice you make when creating your ad, Facebook automatically generates a preview at the bottom of the page so you can see instantly what your ad will look like before proceeding.
    • Destination: Choose between an external URL (website) or a Facebook page you have created.
    • For pictures you choose to use in your ads, be careful they are not owned by someone else. You want to either use your own pictures, or pictures in the public domain.
      • For an external URL, you’ll need to include the URL in the proper field. Then enter the title of your ad, the body of your ad copy and an image or logo.
      • For a Facebook page you can choose between Sponsored Stories, which includes either a story about the viewer's friends or a story about your Facebook Page posts, or Facebook Ads, which includes a specific message and call to action written by you.
        • For a Sponsored Story, you’ll need to choose between a Page Like Story and a Page Post Story. A Page Like Story will show the user a friend who likes your page, with the call to action being a “Like” button. A Page Post Story shows the user an excerpt and image from your last post on Facebook; here, the call to action includes a comment button, a “Like” button and a Share button.
        • For a Facebook Ad, you will need to choose the Destination Tab or which tab of your Facebook page the link in your ad will direct the user. Then you can include the body of your ad copy and an image or logo.
  4. Choose your goal. Facebook ads offer the company or service provider a lot of versatility. What do you hope to accomplish with your ads?
    • Get More Page Likes. People who like your page will be likelier to see posts that you create on your Page. The more likes you have, the larger your audience becomes when you create a post.
      • Advertising for likes is controversial. Some people think its great, others think its of limited usefulness and will tell you it's a waste of money.
      • Look at where your likes are coming from. Some ad campaigns have ended up getting a business tons of likes from some 3rd world country where the business doesn't operate.
    • Promote Page Posts. Promote a specific post you've created, increasing its chances of reaching your intended audience.
    • Get New Users. Target people who are more likely to download and use your app.
    • Increase Attendance. Target people who are more likely to attend one of your functions.
  5. Select the audience you wish to reach. Don't just advertise blindly. Advertise intelligently. Who you target in your ads could affect your bottom line. If you're not targeting the right demographic(s), you're taking a stab in the dark.
    • Location: Choose a specific city, state/province or country where your ads will be seen.
    • Demographics: Choose an age range and whether you want to target men, women or both.
    • Likes & Interests: Enter a specific interest, and Facebook will match your ad with the home pages of users who have included that interest in their profiles.
    • Connections on Facebook: Choose whom you’d like to target; choices range from only your friends to people who are or are not fans of your page, to all of Facebook.
    • Advanced targeting options include level of education of the user, whether to target people on their birthdays, language and relationship status.
  6. When you choose your targeting, Facebook will tell you how many people you will reach with that ad.
    • If you choose beer drinkers in Germany, you may find you are reaching most of the population.
    • If you choose fans of pesticides in the north of Portland, Oregon, you may find you are reaching only a few people. Reaching this targeted group (whatever your target may be) is the best strategy, but if too small, think of ways to expand the target group.
      • Perhaps the people you are trying to reach are not telling you they like pesticides, but you might be able to reach those same people by choosing, say, landscapers or apple farmers.
  7. Select whether you will pay per clicks or per impressions and set your price. You can choose to either pay per click (CPC) or pay per impression (CPM). If you don't know exactly how you're going to budget your CPM, you should be prepared to pay more money for CPM than CPC.
    • Campaigns, Pricing and Scheduling: Here, you can choose the currency you want to use when paying for your ads, your daily or entire campaign budget, and when you’d like your ad to appear.
  8. Review your ad. Make sure that all of your information is correct. On this page, you have the chance to go back and edit any part of the ad you’ve designed.
  9. Place your order. You can pay by credit card or by PayPal. You've officially started an ad and boosted your chance of seeing a return on your investment.

Making the Most of Your Ads

  1. First, make sure you have a budget cap. So if you want to spend no more than $20 a day on your Facebook ads, set your cap at $20 daily. Very important!
  2. The most important way to maximize the effectiveness in Facebook ads is to target narrowly. Examples:
    • If you are selling beer in the state of Oregon, target your ads to show only to those people who live in Oregon, who also like beer (have beer as an interest in their profile.) Probably, you'd want to choose age over 21. You might even choose to show your ad to men only!
    • If you are promoting a band, you will find it very effective to promote to people who like your band, your band's genre of music, and similar bands to yours.
  3. Facebook shows ads based on how often they get clicked on. (It's called CTR, or Click Through Rate.) If your ads are showing, but all of a sudden don't show any more, it is because your CTR was too low. Try swapping out the picture in your ad and trying it again.
  4. Pictures are the biggest leverage you have other than targeting. Its worth trying your ads with different pictures at any time.
  5. Edit ads with mobile and tablet in mind. According to some sources, 60% of users accessing Facebook do so on their phones and tablets.[2] In fact, Facebook's mobile ads earn more than 2.5 times than its desktop ads, and the market for mobile is growing: In the first quarter of 2013, mobile-ad sales rose close to 25% from the last quarter.[3][4] What practical impact does this have? For one, it means no right-hand column, which is where ads are shown on desktop. In order to make the most out of your ads, edit them with this in mind.
    • Use Facebook's Power Editor in order to select ads that translate to mobile. You need to have Chrome downloaded in order to download and use Power Editor. In order to download Power Editor:
      • Open a Chrome browser
      • Navigate to the Ads Manager page on Facebook.
      • Go to the Power Editor tab on the left hand side
      • Install the Power Editor application
      • Once the app is launched, click "download" and follow the remaining instructions
    • In the Power Editor, pay attention to the ad placement. Some people suggest placing the ad on both desktop and mobile in the news feed in order to optimize click-through rate. You can try different combinations of placements and experiment with how it affects your bottom line.
  6. Create more leads with Offers. So you want to connect with more potential customers and grow your customer base? You can create relationships with new customers by listing an Offer, where you give away something free. Customers love free stuff, and enticing them to buy goods and services with free things is a great way to connect with new users and drive repeat business.
    • If you're trying to generate leads, set up a landing page with a space for name and email. When customers input their name and email, email them a redeemable code for or copy of your Offer. Customers get their free stuff, you get your lead.
  7. Save money by customizing your target audience. If you're able to build up a sizable corps of fans, target ads directly to them. Customers who are already a fan of your product or service can be cheaper to advertise to and have higher click-through rates. This translates to less money spent by you and better conversions.
  8. Make sure you don't get penalized on ads that feature images. Facebook recently revised its image policy on ads, stipulating that text can't take up more than 20% of the total ad image. In other words, Facebook is trying to guide ad creators to make better use of images of ads. Make sure you follow suit when you create an ad.
  9. Consider using videos to generate likes. Facebook allows you to make ads that target non-fans in the hopes of generating more likes. These ads are perfect opportunities for videos. Well-done videos can communicate excitement, recognition, and — most importantly — trust, something you need in order to generate more fans.
    • When doing a video, keep it short and sweet, like picture ads, and know who your demographic is. At the end of the video, include a call to action. A good video can help build trust more than almost any other media or promotion; use them wisely!



Tips

  • Facebook sets a maximum pay-per-click rate based on your targeting options. You can set a different bid if you’d like to pay less, which Facebook will review and approve or deny.
  • If you’re unsure of what to write, click on the “Suggest an Ad” button and Facebook will generate ad copy for you, which you can edit as you wish.
  • Make sure you follow Facebook’s advertising guidelines so your ad does not get rejected.
  • Take advantage of Facebook’s many useful tools to help their advertisers, including budget management tool performance tracking.

Warnings

  • Facebook is better for relationship building with your customers than it is for stimulating direct sales. Advertisers are warned not to expect an immediate increase in sales from Facebook ads. Keep this in mind when setting your budget.
  • Facebook's Engineering Manager Hong Ge has said Facebook is changing it's advertising algorithm to factor in how many people choose to hide particular ads which is designed to increase effectiveness of advertisements.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/business/build
  2. ↑ http://www.amyporterfield.com/2013/03/7-tips-to-create-facebook-ads-that-convert/
  3. ↑ http://mashable.com/2012/06/19/facebook-mobile-ads-study/
  4. ↑ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324766604578457232890560890.html
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