If you want to opt for digital paid advertising, Facebook is a convenient platform to get started. Although Facebook ads are pretty easy to create, there are many details to manage in order to get it right. Choosing the right target audience, ad objectives, and ad type comes with a lot of confusion, especially if you’re a beginner. 

Fortunately, Facebook ads’ features are quite easy to use. You just have to determine your budget and business goals then choose the ad type accordingly.

Let’s learn how to utilize Facebook paid ads to turn your business around with this step-to-step guide.

Setting Up Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads Manager allows advertisers to create an ad according to their business objectives. It includes a dashboard with a campaign overview, showing your spending, reach, frequency, and performance reporting all in one place.

To use the Ads Manager, you need to set up a Facebook Business Page. Then, navigate to the Ads Manager page, provide your ad account setup information, choose your payment method, and click save.

Once done, you can now determine and manage your budget, campaign objectives, and target audience.

Determine Your Budget

Facebook ads offer you two types of budgets:

• Daily budget. If you choose this option, Facebook ads will run each day until the daily budget limit is reached. The minimum daily budget for Facebook ads is $1.00 and needs to be at least double your cost per click (CPC).
• Lifetime budget. If you go for this option, Facebook will ask you to choose a specific period you want the ad to run and the money you want to spend. The campaign will run until the budget limit is reached, rather than resetting each day.

You can also use the advanced budgeting options mentioned below.

Determine Your Campaign Objective

Facebook Ads manager offers you 11 different campaign objectives to choose from. By selecting one, you’re letting Facebook know what you want out of your ads, and it will run them strategically to maximize the chance of meeting your objective.

You may choose a campaign objective from among these options:

• Reach
• Brand awareness
• Engagement
• Website traffic
• App installs
• Lead generation
• Video views
• Messages
• Conversions
• Store traffic
• Catalog sales

Establish Your Target Audience

Now you need to establish who your target audience is and where they are located. If you’re creating multiple ads for similar campaigns, Facebook lets you configure your target audience for each ad set.

If you’re a beginner, it’s better to experiment with different targeting options until you find the right one. 

Facebook offers you an audience definition gauge option to help you narrow down your potential target audience. The tool will display the potential reach of your ad campaign based on selections you make about your desired audience.

If you still can’t choose between a specific or broad audience, make choices based on the campaign objective you selected earlier.

For instance, if you want to increase site traffic, focus on the audience you think will be interested in your business. Similarly, if you’re looking to create brand awareness, you can target a broad audience.

Facebook’s built-in targeting is vast. It helps you segment your audience based on:

• Age
• Location
• Education
• Gender
• Languages
• Relationship
• Financial Details
• Profession
• Home Life
• Behaviors
• Ethnic Affinity
• Parents
• Generation
• Politics (U.S. only)
• Interests
• Life Events
• Connections

Custom Audiences

You can also choose Custom Audience to target people who visit your website, use your app, or are present in your company’s database. This way, Facebook helps you keep in touch with a group of people who interacted with you in the past so that you don’t have to find potential customers again.

Learn more about Custom Audiences here.

Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike Audiences use Custom Audience as a source to target new potential audiences who “look like” your existing customers. 

Learn more about Lookalike Audiences from here.

Choose Your Ad Type

Based on your objectives and budget, you can choose from the following ad types:

Image Ads

Image or photo ads give you a simple way to showcase attractive imagery, high-quality pictures, and illustrations to tell your potential audience about your brand.

To use image ads, Facebook paid ads give users specific recommendations:

• Text: 125 characters
• Ad Headline: 25 characters
• Photo ratio: 1.91:1
• Photo resolution (such as CTA): 1080 x 1080 pixels

Video Ads

If you want to convey your brand message via sound and motion, video ads are your best bet. You can choose from a range of different video styles and lengths.

Facebook recommendations for video ads are:

• Video duration limit: 1 second to 241 minutes
• File type: MP4, MOV or GIF 
• Video Ratio: 1:1 (on desktop and mobile) or 4:5 (mobile only) 
• Video settings: stereo AAC audio compression at 128 kbps or higher, H.264 compression, fixed frame rate, square pixels, and progressive scan
• Resolution: At least 1080 x 1080 pixels 
• Video captions: Optional
• Video sound: Optional

Carousel Ads

Carousel ads help you tell a story to your customers through multiple images and short videos in a single ad. 

Facebook recommendations for carousel ads include:

• Recommended photo size: 1080 x 1080 pixels
• Photo ratio: 1:1
• Text: 125 characters
• Headline: 40 characters
• Link description: 20 characters

Careful that the visual space of your ads is not more than 20% text.

Create The Ad

The Ads Manager will now ask you about how to display your ad. Facebook ads provide options for:

• Desktop News Feed
• Mobile News Feed
• Desktop Right Column

If you don’t have a Facebook page, you can only run Desktop Right Column ads.

Use Facebook Analytics to Track Success

Once your ad campaign starts running, you can then track its success and make any necessary changes. Evaluate if your ad is delivering what it should be. 

The Facebook Ad Manager will give you detailed analytics about key metrics, including:

• Performance. Shows reach, frequency, and impressions
• Videos. Analyzes views on video and the average percentage of views
• Website. Evaluates website actions (all), payment details, checkouts, purchases, and adds to cart
• Engagement. Shows Page likes, Page engagement, and post engagement
• Apps. Shows credit spending, app engagement, and cost per app engagement
• Settings. Shows start date, ad set name, end date, ad ID, delivery, and objective
• Events. Displays event responses and cost per event response
• Clicks. Shows you unique clicks, CTR (click-through rate), and CPC (cost per click)

When Should You Use Facebook Ads in Your Marketing Strategy?

If your business is trying to grow its online presence, Facebook paid ads are the best way to kickstart your digital advertising journey. 

Moreover, if you want to find new customers, Facebook ads can help you develop your marketing strategy.

The advertising tools offered by Facebook are flexible, aligning with any and all business goals to serve the needs of any advertiser.

Once you identify your business goals, set a budget, determine your target audience, and define your campaign objectives, it’s time to add Facebook paid ads to your marketing team.

If you’re still unsure how to get started with Facebook ads, consult a marketing agency like GrowthHit, and start achieving your business goals now.