Facebook has come a long way since its humble, college-focused beginnings as a tech startup. While the platform’s user base has grown substantially, the opportunity to advertise to these users has as well. As of Q3 in 2017, Facebook passed over two billion monthly active users. With different demographics to select, page likes, content shares, audiences, and more, the targeting possibilities for advertisers are virtually endless. Let’s go through some of the basics today to help get you familiar.
First off, you’re going to need a public page to advertise. Personal profiles aren’t able to advertise, so you’ll need to either create or use a Facebook page instead. Even if you’re advertising your personal brand, it’s as easy as creating a “public figure” Facebook page. If you’ll be managing only your business’ Facebook ads, a basic Facebook Ad Account will suffice. Facebook Business Manager comes in handy if you’re an agency looking to manage more than one ad account.
The next piece of basic knowledge to keep in mind is the differences between organic and paid posts or ads. Facebook allows communities to be built around pages, which include public figures, brands, websites, and more. Typically, a user will like your page and will, in theory, become subscribed to it. Although, Facebook doesn’t show this user every post or update you make, and the algorithm is based on different factors. You can also make posts and boost them by paying. These are called Boosted Posts, and are the most basic form of advertising on the platform. When boosted, posts show higher and show as sponsored.
Paid ads are a more advanced form of advertising. This is content you design strictly for advertising, like ad copy, photos, videos, calls to action, and more. As mentioned briefly above, you’re able to create audiences to target demographics, location, interests, likes, and others. When you combine these, the audience targeting becomes very powerful. Paid ads also come with the capability of including a call to action button at the end, inspiring more clicks.
The Facebook Ads platform is based on an auction system, where advertisers compete for the ad space. Advertisers are charged for an impression when they win the auction. Relevancy is taken into account, so creating more relevant ads for target audiences can help stack the odds in your favor, and help you save budget. Facebook wants to show its users ads that are as relevant as possible, and you’ll be rewarded handsomely for it. Campaign objectives include traffic, conversions, lead generation, engagement, and others. Facebook’s system will help optimize for your particular campaign objective.
There are two main strategies when first starting your Facebook advertising campaigns
- The first being targeting very specifically, setting strict parameters, and filters such as demographics, creating lookalike audiences, and more.
- The second would be targeting more broadly, and relying on the Facebook ad delivery system to help narrow your targeting down for you. If you’re unsure of your audience, this is a great way to get more data, and build your more specific targeting metrics over time.
Last but not least, creating a remarketing campaign can be one of the most efficient, cost effective ways to use Facebook Advertising. If you’re already using other forms of marketing and advertising to attract traffic to your website, adding the Facebook pixel onto your web property and creating a website visitors audience can help you reach back out to these visitors. Not only does this allow you to remarket to visitors who have already visited your website, but you’re also able to create lookalike audience campaigns, where Facebook will match up similar users and create an audience for you, based on the visitors who have already seen your website. It’s another way to target extremely relevant audiences who are more likely to be interested in what you have to offer.
We’ll be continuing this educational Facebook Advertising Series over time here on the blog, so please make sure to check back to keep yourself in the loop and to continue to learn more about using Facebook Ads for your business. Once you master it, you’ll be surprised how easy it can be to build out ads, audiences, and remarketing campaigns.
Of course, if you need assistance with any of your Social Media campaigns (paid or organic), be sure to reach out to our MGR Team and we’ll be glad to help.
Thank you for reading. Until next time, this is Bradley Barks.
