In today’s digital age, Facebook advertising has become an indispensable tool for businesses looking to reach their target audience and drive results. Harnessing the potential of Facebook ads can be a game-changer for your online presence.
I am Jane from Influence Agency, the leading marketing agency in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In this comprehensive blog, I’ll walk you through the essential steps and tips you need to create an effective Facebook advertisement.
What are Facebook ads and what are their benefits?
Facebook advertisements are paid promotional content that businesses use to showcase their products or services to the Facebook user base. These ads are typically directed at users depending on factors such as their demographics, location, interests, and profile information.
Facebook ads are integrated into various sections of the Facebook app, such as user feeds, Stories, Messenger, Marketplace, and more. They share a visual resemblance to regular posts but always carry a “sponsored” tag to distinguish them as advertisements.
What sets Facebook ads apart from regular posts is their additional features, which include call-to-action (CTA) buttons, hyperlinks, and product catalogs.
For broader brand exposure, it’s advisable to incorporate advertising into your Facebook marketing strategy. When you put up a paid ad on Facebook, you get to choose exactly who you want to see it, which is pretty cool.
Here are some benefits of Facebook ads:
Expand your audience reach
By running a Facebook ad campaign, you have the opportunity to connect with an extensive audience. To put it into perspective, in 2021, Facebook had more than 2.9 billion users who actively engaged with the platform. It means that when you advertise on Facebook, you can showcase your brand to a vast audience and potentially uncover even more individuals who could be intrigued by what you provide.
Target specific audience segments
Facebook gathers a wealth of useful information about its users. Marketers can leverage this data to connect with the customers they’re aiming for. When you create and launch a Facebook ad, you get to decide who sees it based on factors like age, gender, location, and more demographics.
What makes Facebook stand out from other platforms is its ability to let you target aspects of people’s lifestyles, such as interests, behaviors, education, previous purchases, income, languages, etc.
Easily track performance
Facebook’s present analytics toolbox enables you to integrate a Facebook Pixel on your website. Adding this with just a simple line of code will empower you to effortlessly monitor how well your Facebook Ads are performing.
You can gauge metrics such as engagement, reach, conversions, etc., and observe these statistics as they happen in real time.
Implement cost-effective marketing
You can set your budget so you don’t spend too much. But if you want to run big ads all across the country, it will be more expensive than running a short ad that only reaches people nearby.
Figuring out when, where, and how often to show your ads is a bit tricky, and it needs experience and know-how. Also, the cost can change depending on how many people you want to reach – it can be less or more expensive.
To optimize your budget for Facebook ads, you can contact Influence Agency for consultation.
How to make Facebook ads
Create a Facebook Ads Manager account
If you already have a Facebook business page, you can go directly to the Ads Manager to start making your Facebook ad campaign. But if you don’t have a business page yet, you’ll need to create one first. Just remember, you can’t run Facebook ads using a personal account.
Facebook Ads Manager is where you begin when you want to run ads on Facebook. It’s like a toolbox that has everything you need for making ads, deciding where and when they show up, and keeping an eye on how well your campaign is doing.
After you navigate to the Facebook Ads Manager:
- Click on “Go to Ads Manager.”
- Double-check the details you provided on the setup page.
- Input your payment information.
- Save your changes.
Now you’re all set to use Ads Manager for configuring your campaigns and monitoring your advertisements.
Begin a new campaign
In the Ads Manager, you’ll find your own control center for keeping an eye on your campaigns. But if you’ve never made an ad before, this control center will be blank. To set up a campaign or ad group, pick the type of ad you prefer and hit “Create.” In the next steps, you’ll discover more about how to put an ad on Facebook.
Choose your objective
Log in to Facebook Ads Manager, go to the Campaigns tab, and click on Create to start a new Facebook ad campaign.
Facebook offers 11 different marketing objectives based on what you want your ad to do. Here’s how they relate to business goals:
- Brand Awareness: Introduce your brand to a new audience.
- Reach: Show your ad to as many people in your audience as possible.
- Traffic: Send people to a specific website, app, or have conversations on Facebook Messenger.
- Engagement: Reach a wide audience to get more likes, comments, or followers, increase event attendance, or promote special offers.
- App Installs: Get people to download your app.
- Video Views: Get more people to watch your videos.
- Lead Generation: Find new potential customers for your business.
- Messages: Encourage people to reach out to your business using Facebook Messenger.
- Conversions: Get people to do a particular action on your website, in your app, or on Facebook Messenger, such as subscribing or making a purchase.
- Catalog Sales: Link your Facebook ads to your product catalog to show people ads for products they are likely to buy.
- Store Traffic: Drive nearby customers to your physical stores.
Select a campaign objective that matches what you want to achieve with this specific ad. It’s important to note that if your objective is more about getting people to do something specific, like making a purchase, you’ll be charged for each action they take. However, if your objective is more about getting exposed to people, like driving traffic or views, you’ll be charged based on how many times your ad is seen.
Set a budget and schedule
Facebook offers the choice between setting a daily budget or a lifetime budget. Let’s explore how these two options differ:
- Daily budget: If you want your ad set to run continuously throughout the day, the daily budget is the option you should go for. When you choose a daily budget, Facebook will distribute your spending evenly over each day. It’s important to note that the minimum daily budget for an ad set is $1.00, and it should be at least twice your CPC (Cost Per Click).
- Lifetime budget: If you have a specific timeframe in mind for running your ad, then the lifetime budget is the suitable option. With a lifetime budget, Facebook will spread your spend over the duration you’ve set for the ad to be active.
You can explore additional options to exert more budget control. It’s beneficial to investigate how your competitors use these settings to optimize your advertising campaigns.
Optimizing your Facebook paid ad schedule can be the most effective approach to budget allocation. This allows you to display your ad solely during periods when your target audience is expected to be active on Facebook. It’s important to note that you can only establish a schedule if you opt for a lifetime budget for your ad.
Select a target audience
Your next step is to pick the right people you want to see your ads. You can do this for each ad group in the same campaign. If you’re new to advertising on Facebook, you may need to try different target options to find the best audience for your ads.
Facebook provides a tool to help you with this. It’s a gauge that shows how many people your ad might reach based on the criteria you’ve selected. If you’re not sure whether to target a specific group or a broader one, think about your goal.
If you want to get more visitors to your website, focus on people who are likely interested in what you offer. But if you’re trying to make your brand known or have something appealing to a wide audience, you can target a broader group.
Facebook’s targeting options include the following:
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Education
- Languages
- Relationship status
- Home situation
- Work details
- Behaviors
- Connections
- Financial attributes
- Ethnic affinity
- Generation
- Life events
- Parental status
- Political affiliations
- Interests
To keep it simple, there are three main types of target audiences to think about:
- Saved audiences: These are the audiences you aim your ads at based on where they live, what they like, how much money they make, and other similar things.
- Custom audiences: These are people who already know about your business. You might want to catch the eye of the people on your customer list or those who’ve checked out your website before.
- Lookalike audiences: If you know who your source audience is, you can target lookalike audiences. These people have the same characteristics as those who already buy your stuff, but they haven’t really connected with your online content or brand yet.
Begin by picking where you want your ads to be seen, the age, gender, and language of your target audience. When it comes to location, you have the option to include or exclude cities of a certain size.
You can also give priority to people who have recently shown interest in what you’re offering.
To narrow down your target audience, you can set rules to make your ad focus on people with one or two interests. It’s a good idea to use only one or two interests or demographics for each ad group. If you use too many, it becomes hard to figure out which ones are helping your ad work. If you want to reach more interests, you can simply make new ad groups.
If you have trouble identifying your target audience, you can contact Influence Agency for assistance.
On the right side of the screen, the “Audience definition” indicates the size of your audience depending on the criteria you’ve selected, and the Estimated daily results show you an approximate number of people you might reach each day based on your budget. These estimates are more reliable if you’ve run campaigns before because Facebook has more data to use. Remember, these are estimates, not guarantees.
After identifying a group that engages positively with your ads, Facebook gives you the option to save these audiences for future use. As a result, you might not have to go through this process again once you’ve been running Facebook ads for some time.
Choose your Facebook ad placements and set your brand safety
Scroll down to pick where your ads will show up. If you’re new to Facebook advertising, the easiest option is to go with Advantage+ Placements.
When you choose this, Facebook will automatically put your ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network when it’s most likely to give good results.
As you gain more experience, you might prefer Manual Placements. With this choice, you have full control over where your Facebook ads appear. The more places you choose, the more chances you have to reach your desired audience.
Your choices will depend on your campaign objective. They might include things like:
- Device type: Mobile, desktop, or both.
- Platform: Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, Messenger.
- Placements: Feeds, Stories, Reels, in-stream (for videos), search, messages, overlay, and post-loop ads on Reels, search, in-article, and external apps and sites.
- Operating systems: iOS, Android.
- Only when connected to WiFi: The ad only shows when the user’s device is connected to WiFi.
Move down to the Brand Safety part to prevent your ad from appearing alongside any content that might not be suitable.
You can also make block lists to avoid certain websites, videos, or publishers.
When you’re ready with all your choices, click “Next.”
Create your Facebook ad
Start by selecting your ad format, and then input the text and media elements for your advertisement. The available formats will differ depending on the campaign objective you initially chose.
You have a range of ad formats to pick from, suitable for various devices, and you can even tailor them to specific connection speeds. For instance, you can opt for an image or video in your ad, or you can opt for a multi-image layout. To decide on the appearance of your ad, think about your original objective.
If you’re curious about how many ad formats there are, you can explore them in the FAQs section of this blog.
Use the preview tool on the right side of the page to confirm that your ad appears appropriately. Once you’re satisfied with your selections, click the “Publish” button to activate your ad.
Monitor your ad’s performance metrics
Once your ads are up and running, it’s important to monitor their performance. To check their results, you should focus on two places: the Facebook Ads Manager and your marketing software.
Facebook provides several key metrics to assess your ad performance, including:
- Performance: results, reach, frequency, and impressions.
- Engagement: Page likes, Page engagement, and post engagement.
- Videos: video views and the average percentage of video viewed.
- Website: website actions, checkouts, payment details, purchases, and adds to cart.
- Apps: app installs, app engagement, credit spends, mobile app actions, and cost per app engagement.
- Events: event responses and cost per event response.
- Clicks: clicks, unique clicks, CTR (click-through rate), and CPC (cost per click).
- Settings: start date, end date, ad set name, ad ID, delivery, bid, and objective.
You can access the data for these metrics in the Ads Manager, regardless of which ones you use to evaluate the effectiveness of your advertising efforts.
If you’re not sure what these metrics mean, you can use Influence Agency’s Facebook ad service to have a full insight into what your campaign has achieved.
Report on Facebook ad performance
You can have custom reports delivered to your email. Here’s how to set it up:
- Go to “Analyze and Report” in the main menu.
- Click on “Ads Reporting.”
- Choose “Create Custom Report.”
- Open a saved report.
- Click on “Save As” next to the save icon, give your report a name, and select “Schedule Email.”
Follow the instructions to modify and confirm your reporting preferences.
While there are many details to manage when planning a paid Facebook ad, it’s crucial not to lose sight of the overall picture. Reporting on clicks and conversions from Facebook is very important.
Tips for posting ads on Facebook
Pay attention to Facebook ad specs
To ensure your Facebook ads don’t appear stretched, cropped, or distorted in any way, it’s essential to ensure your chosen images and videos adhere to the correct dimensions. Here’s a quick summary:
1. Facebook Video Ads:
- Facebook feed videos:
Minimum width: 120 px
Minimum height: 120 px
Resolution: at least 1080 x 1080 px
Video ratio: 4:5
Video file size: up to 4GB
Minimum video length: 1 second
Maximum video length: 241 minutes
- Facebook Instant Article Videos:
Resolution: at least 1080 x 1080 px
Video ratio: 9:16 to 16:9
Video file size: up to 4GB
Minimum video length: 1 second
Maximum video length: 240 minutes
- Facebook Stories Ads:
Resolution: Highest resolution available (at least 1080 x 1080 px)
Video ratio: 9:16
Video file size: up to 4GB
Maximum video length: 2 minutes
2. Facebook Image Ads Size:
- For Facebook feed images:
Resolution: at least 1080 x 1080 pixels
Minimum width: 600 pixels
Minimum height: 600 pixels
Aspect ratio: 1.91:1 to 1:1
- Facebook Instant Article Images:
Maximum file size: 30 MB
Aspect ratio: 1.91:1 to 1:1
Resolution: at least 1080 x 1080 px
- Facebook Marketplace Images:
Maximum file size: 30 MB
Aspect ratio: 1:1
Resolution: at least 1080 x 1080 px
Create a headline that’s interesting but easy to understand
Your headline is usually the first part of your Facebook ad that people notice. If it fails to engage them, it can have a detrimental impact on your click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate.
When it comes to headlines, it’s best not to force your offer aggressively. Instead, be clear and friendly, and if you can, emphasize the advantages of your product.
For better headline performance and improved outcomes, conduct split tests. These tests can assist you in identifying which messages encourage people to take action.
Conduct A/B tests
The best way to make your Facebook ads better is by trying out different versions of them. You can test various elements, such as the headline, ad text, images, and call-to-action buttons. Sometimes, an ad may not do well because the words aren’t persuasive or the images aren’t appealing.
To be certain, make multiple versions of the same ad, changing one thing at a time, and then launch them. Allow them to run for a while, and afterward, see which versions get the most likes, comments, shares, and conversions.
Avoid using graphics with too much text
Facebook suggests that images with less than 20% text tend to work better. So, it’s a good idea to avoid creating graphics with too much text.
Images overloaded with text can cause distraction, which diverts a potential customer’s attention from your message. It’s better to let the images convey the message on their own.
If you find it necessary to include text in your image, you can use a longer ad caption, or use a smaller font and fewer words to reduce the amount of text in the image.
Use clear language
When writing your ad text, the key objective is to ensure that it’s straightforward for everyone to understand. When a potential customer views your ad, they should immediately understand:
- What your offer is.
- How it can help them.
- What action to take next.
Use a clear and direct call to action in your ad
A great Facebook ad should tell the viewer exactly what they should do. Some ads are made to let people know about a brand. Other ads are meant to make users install apps, download ebooks, or make purchases.
Ideally, ads can do both of these things. But to be safe and get results that help your business grow, make sure to be very clear about what you want people to do after they see the ad.
Phrases like “Sign up,” “Follow,” “Download,” “Install the App,” and “Shop Now” clearly tell the viewer what action to take. Without a clear call to action, people might see your ad but not know what to do next.
Feature social proof in your ads
When someone encounters your Facebook ad, especially if it’s their first exposure to your brand, they might not instantly trust your brand or offer. This is normal.
Your task is to persuade them that your brand is genuine. An effective method to achieve this is by using social proof in your ads.
Social proof can take various forms, such as reactions, comments, shares, testimonials, and reviews. Including these elements in your ads demonstrates to potential customers that others have engaged with your brand and made purchases without any regrets. When they observe this, they might become convinced to become your customers as well.
Make sure your Facebook ad and landing page match
When you advertise on Facebook, you’re basically telling people that if they click your ad, they’ll find exactly what you’re offering on the landing page that the ad takes them to.
If you send them to a landing page that has nothing to do with the offer they were interested in, you will lose the trust of your audience.
When you create your ad and landing page, make sure that the offer you talked about in the ad is the same as what’s on the landing page. You should also use the same colors, fonts, and images to make it easy for people to recognize your offer and take action. These common elements help potential customers feel like the landing page is a part of the Facebook ad, not a completely different offer.
FAQs
How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook?
There’s no fixed rule when it comes to setting budgets for Facebook ads. The expense of Facebook advertising is influenced by a variety of factors, including:
- Audience targeting: Narrower audiences typically incur higher costs compared to broader ones.
- Ad placement: Costs can differ between ads displayed on Facebook and Instagram.
- Campaign duration: The duration of your campaign, in terms of days and hours, affects the overall cost.
- Industry competition: Some industries are more competitive than others, leading to higher ad costs for products with a higher price point or more valuable leads.
- Seasonal fluctuations: Ad costs may vary during different seasons, holidays, or industry-specific events.
- Time of day: On average, the cost per click (CPC) tends to be lowest between midnight and 6 A.M. in any time zone.
- Location: The average ad costs can vary significantly from one country to another.
Why did my ad get rejected?
If your ad was not approved, it probably goes against Meta’s Advertising Standards. You can find the reason for the rejection on the Business Support Home page. After reviewing the reasons, you have the option to:
- Edit your ad or create new ones to align with Meta’s Advertising Standards.
- Request a review from Meta if you believe your ad was wrongly rejected.
Facebook ad formats
Facebook has many ad formats. The most popular ones are:
- Image ads
- Video ads
- Carousel ads
- Stories ads
- Messenger ads
Depending on your campaign goals, you can choose the appropriate ad format.
Final notes
As you can see, creating a Facebook ad is not too difficult. With the aforementioned steps and tips, you have a chance to boost your online presence and drive results for your business.
If you’re looking for expert guidance and support to take your Facebook ads to the next level, consider leveraging the Facebook ad services offered by Influence Agency. Our experienced team is here to help you create and manage successful ad campaigns, ensuring your brand reaches its full potential.
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to supercharge your advertising efforts – reach out to Influence Agency today and start achieving your marketing goals with confidence!
Head office: 1st Floor. KVBC Business Center, Keo Chenda St Phum 3, Sangkat Chroy Changvar, Khan Chroy Changvar, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Hotline: (+855) 67 74 00 00
Email: [email protected]
