Using Facebook Social Ads
Facebook offers self-serve advertising through their Ad Manager to help companies like yours increase the visibility of your Page and to boost the posts you publish. Over the last a decade, Facebook has become privy to an uncanny amount of personal information about its users, including not just demographic data, but also psychographic and behavioral data, personal preferences and interests, and connections to other Pages and people.
You are given access to advertising tools that leverage the intensive customer data on Facebook users and your Page followers when you purchase any one of their many ad offerings. Facebook ads come in a variety of categories and can be geared toward specific goals.
When you click to Promote your Page, Facebook can walk you through several options based on your business goals:
Get a Custom Advertising Plan – Answer a few questions describing your business so Facebook can automatically select the right advertising offerings from the two choices below with a recommended minimum amount to spend.
Boost a Post – If you select this option, Facebook presents all your most recent posts to easily click the Boost Post button and determine your budget and target.
Get More Messages – Use this option to encourage people to contact you through Facebook Messenger for immediate interactions.
Connect with People Nearby – This ad can target people within a specific mile radius from your business location.
Get More Page Likes – You can increase the number of people who see your Page who may click to Like it with this ad.
Promote Your Sign Up Button – With this ad, you can promote your Call to Action button on the top of your Page.
Get More Website Visitors – If you’re looking to drive more traffic to your company website, use this option.
Get More Customer Contacts – Get warm leads and contact details through this ad that prompts people to provide their information.
When you go into your Facebook Ad Manager, you’ll see these options for the types of ads you can run:
Awareness Ads
Brand Awareness
Reach
Consideration Ads
Traffic
Engagement
App installs
Video views
Lead generation
Messages
Conversion Ads
Conversions
Catalog Sales
Store Visits
Some of the more commonly used ads by small business are Brand Awareness, Reach, Traffic, Engagement and Conversions.
While Facebook ads can potentially drive sales, chances are you first need to build awareness and relationships before someone buys from you or hires you. Start with easier advertising goals such as getting more Page Likes, then work your way up to activities requiring more actions, like signing up to receive emails, responding to polls, entering contests, and registering for events.
As you upload images and modify text, Facebook generates a preview of how your ad will look. You can specify criteria for targeting your ad including Countries, Interests, Age Range, and Gender. You can upload your contacts and create ads that target those specific people. You can also create a “Lookalike Audience” that helps your ads reach new people who are more likely to be interested in your business because they're similar to your top current customers.
While the default daily budget for ads depends on how large a following you have, you can usually pay as little as $10 to $20 for ads and boost a post for as little as $5. Facebook calculates how much reach your budget will buy so you can estimate the impact of your ad spend.
Ads contain a Headline and Text and can have a Call to Action button. Facebook makes recommendations on image sizes for your ads. In addition to ads with images or graphics, you can create ads with videos that you upload. You can choose to run your ad continuously until you manually stop it or run it for a custom schedule of your own choosing.
Once you've filled out the social ad insertion order, you can review your ad, make modifications, and submit it for Facebook's approval. Note that the more text you have on the images you use in your ads, the less likely Facebook will show the ad. The Facebook ad tool even warns you if there is too much text. Once your ad runs, you can access daily stats such as number of views and clicks.
You can pause or modify your ad at any time, although, if you make changes, it may have to go through the approval process again. If, after a few days, you are not getting satisfactory results, you can change the image, the language, the target, or anything else that you think might be limiting your ad's success.
The best way to run social ads on Facebook is to create several ad and vary the goals, destinations, targets, and visuals so you can compare results. After running the same ad for a few weeks, swap it out or modify it so it appears fresh. An ad running continuously can get stale over time and lose its effectiveness.
Make sure the social ads you place are in keeping with your company's brand image. Monitor your ads carefully. When something works, assess what helped make the ad a success. Often, it is a combination of a compelling image or video and provocative ad copy. Overall, be clear about your business goals and how you’ll measure the success of your advertising efforts.