Facebook Advertising: How To Get Started & Make Sense Of The Possibilities

Do you know and understand your company’s marketing objectives? What results would you like to achieve with Facebook ads? If these questions are difficult to answer, you’re at the right place. Let’s take a look at the main goals of an ad campaign on Facebook. You’ll then gain better insight into your needs and figure out what types of ads are best for your brand.

Currently, you can easily boost (promote) any given post on your Facebook page without having to use the Ads Create Tool. However, Facebook’s ad platform offers a wide range of other ad options. In other words, you can do a lot more than simply boost a post or get new likes for your page!

Don’t make the mistake of starting ad campaigns without specific objectives or strategy. Take the time to understand your needs and goals before creating Facebook ads.

When you boost a post directly on your Facebook page, an ad campaign is automatically created for you. You might as well start there to understand Facebook’s tool to create ads (available in the Ads Manager).

The Ads Manager (or Power Editor for more advanced users) allows you to create different types of Facebook ads step by step. You can therefore create personalized and effective ads, which you can manage and change at any time.

The structure of Facebook ad campaigns

Facebook ad campaigns are divided into three parts: the overall campaign, different ad sets, and the specific ads. You have to go through each step before you initiate an ad campaign.

The first step: Choose your marketing goal 

In order to create a successful ad campaign, you must consider the following:

• What are the products and services you want to promote?
• Who is your target audience?
• Who are your client personas?
• What is your competitive advantage?
• What are your company’s marketing objectives?

To create an effective ad campaign, you must be intimately aware of your clientele and have S.M.A.R.T. objectives (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based). These will help you to monitor your initiatives and performance over time.

When you create an ad campaign, you must first choose your ad goal from a list Facebook creates and attribute a name to your campaign (you can change the name later on). Goals are categorized under three categories: awareness, consideration and conversions. These objectives allow Facebook to understand your needs and recommend different ad options for your brand. The steps will be somewhat different based on the objective you choose for your campaign. Let’s look at each objective in more detail to find out which ones are right for you.

(A new version and names for objectives is currently being deployed on Facebook. You’ll find these new names and shortcuts in parenthesis if you have access to the new version.)

Awareness 

The objectives in this category are more traditional and are ideal for companies looking to promote their products and services, and garner interest in their business.

Boost your posts (Engagement – Post engagement) 

Sponsoring a post is one of the most common objectives. This campaign is the same as if you sponsor a post directly from your Facebook page. Use this objective if you want more engagement from your clientele, which means more interactions with a specific post (number of reactions, comments and shares). You can sponsor a recent post or create a new one to reach even more people. You’ll analyze the engagement rates of sponsored posts.

Page promotions (Page Likes)

Would you like to increase your number of followers? Use this objective if you want to promote your Facebook page using ad banners with a call to action: “Like Page.” With this type of ad, you will measure the number of new Likes your page gets.

Reach people near your business (Local awareness)

Are you trying to reach a clientele that is located near your business in order to encourage them to walk through your door? With local awareness, you can create an ad that will target people near your company based on the address you have entered on your Facebook page and people’s location. Call-to-action buttons will be more geared to having new customers contact you (such as getting “Directions” or “Call Now”). These ads will generate interest in your local business or even increase your regular customers’ loyalty as they connect with you online.

Increase brand awareness (Brand awareness)

Are you looking to reach more people who will possibly like your brand? Choose this objective if you want to increase your brand awareness and target potential clients.

Consideration

Do you want to incite people to learn more about your company and search for information about what you have to offer? The objectives in this category encourage users to learn more about your brand.

Send people to a destination on or off Facebook (Traffic – Website clicks)

If you don’t need to promote your Facebook page or interact more with your clientele, you will probably be interested in promoting external links. With this objective, you have the opportunity to create an ad for a specific website. You will then be able to analyze the number of clicks and visits to your website. Increasing the number of visits on your website could potentially generate more sales.

Get installs of your app (App installs)

Getting more app installs is an objective designed specifically for app develops that want to promote their app and boost the number of installs.

Raise attendance at your event (Engagement – Event responses)

Use this marketing objective if you want to increase the number of attendees at a Facebook event you are organizing. This type of ad will encourage people to learn more about your event and respond to the invitation. To determine if your objective is reached, you can calculate the increase in the number of event participants.

Get video views (Video views) 

If you have high-quality promotional or ad videos, promote them on Facebook to get more views. To analyze this type of campaign, you can measure the number of views and increase in the number of views.

Collect leads for your business (Lead generation) 

Did you know you can use Facebook ads to gather information for your business? This lead-generation approach enables you to create a form that will collect user data, newsletter subscriptions, quotes, follow-up calls, etc.

Conversions

Finally, if you want to encourage people who are interested in your company to use or buy your products and services, you can use this objective, which favors conversions.

Increase conversions on your website (Website conversions) 

Your website can be an excellent means for conversions. Choose this objective if you want to encourage people to take specific actions on your website, such as subscribing to a newsletter or buying a product. In addition, you can install a Facebook Pixel to measure the performance of these ads.

Increase engagement in your app (Traffic – App engagement)

This objective is similar to the one to incite people to download an app; however, this one encourages people to use the Facebook app. Call-to-action buttons will be different, such as “Play a game” or “Use the app.”

Get people to claim your offer (Engagement – Offer claims)

Did you know that you can create limited-time rebates, discounts and promotions directly in Facebook? These offers can be used online or in your brick-and-mortar store. You can create an ad to promote these offers and acquire new clients.

Promote a product catalog (Product catalog sales)

Do you have a product catalogue on your website? If so, you should create dynamic ads that will automatically display products in your catalog to users based on their interests and websites that they have visited. Learn more about these ads here.

Get people to visit your store (Store visits)

Does your company have more than one location (for example, a franchise)? If so, this objective is for you! These ads will promote your different points of sale to people located nearby. However, to create these ads, you have to configure your business locations in Facebook’s Business Manager.

There you have it! You now know the various marketing objectives Facebook offers! For your first ad campaign, focus on only one objective to evaluate your results during and after it. In the next article, we’ll cover the second step of a good ad creation process: setting your budget and targeting your ads.