Facebook Ads: How To Advertise on Facebook

It’s common today to see many products satisfying the same needs. Consequently, we’re bombarded by a horde of advertisers trying to convince us to buy their wares.

The most effective way to prove that your product is better than the rest is through powerful advertising, and one of the best ways to do this is through Facebook - the largest social media platform in the world.

Facebook Ads was introduced on Feb 6th, 2007. It has grown tremendously over the years and today it generates over 4 billion dollars of revenue annually. This profitability stems from the increase in users and advertisers. In this article, let’s look into how to advertise on Facebook so that your business can leverage it.

Before jumping right into how to advertise on Facebook, let’s first understand why should you advertise on Facebook.

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Why Should You Advertise on Facebook?

Much of Facebook Ads’ popularity comes from its ability to spread product/brand awareness by targeting the news feeds of specific audiences. But there is an additional number of reasons why you should start advertising on Facebook:

• Many people spend a lot of time on Facebook- roughly 2.27 billion monthly active users were recorded in the third quarter of 2018. Most of these users check their profiles at least once a day. This ensures that there is always an audience that you can advertise to.
• Facebook helps you find the perfect audience for your advertising. You can find people based on specific demographics, interests, location, etc. so that your advertisement reaches the right people at the right time.
• Facebook is also a little less expensive than other online advertising models. It gives a much higher return on investment (ROI) because it helps you spend less and achieve more.
• If you’re building a brand, you NEED to be on Facebook because it helps people know what your brand is all about. With brand awareness comes trust and credibility, and provides recall value for your brand.
• It can help to target people who have already expressed interest in your service/ product but for some reason didn’t go through with the conversion process. Just like retargeting options available on other advertising platforms, Facebook also helps you reach out to people who are not fully committed at a specific point in time.
• Facebook helps you educate your audience about what products you have to offer. The more your audience knows about your products, the more likely they are to make a purchase. This leads to an increase in revenue, sales, and leads.

Now that you know, why you should advertise on Facebook, as a part of this how-to advertise on a Facebook article, you should know the different types of Facebook ads.

Types of Facebook Ads

Facebook offers an assortment of ways to advertise your products:

Single Image Ads

Singe Image Ads are ads that have an optional text on top, a link description that links to your website, and a call to action. They are the most popular advertising method on Facebook. The ad images are sized at 1200x628 pixels, so it is quite big and impossible to miss when someone opens up their news feed.

Multi-Product Ads (Carousel Ads)

Facebook also allows multi-product ads represented in carousel form, allowing your users to view the range of products that you offer. If you have multiple products you want to offer at one go, carousel ads are a good option.

Video Ads

Video ads on Facebook usually range from a few seconds all the way up to 120 minutes. They are one of the most engaging forms of ads on Facebook. Many people tend to engage more with video ads and hence, they receive about 10% to 30% more views than other forms of ads. You can use video ads to tell your story and get the users to take the action you want from them.

Lead Ads

Lead ads allow you to obtain user details like their names, email IDs, or phone numbers without leaving Facebook.

For example, if someone clicks on “Sign Up” in this lead ad, they get a form where they can fill out their details without leaving Facebook.

Lead ads can also be synchronized with your desired customer relationship management system. They are the go-to ads when you are trying to generate leads from your ads.

Slideshow Ads

Slideshow ads use a combination of single, multi-image, and video ads to create an interactive ad. They usually contain a strong call-to-action coupled with interesting imagery, image carousels, zooming detail, and tilting views for complete immersive user experience.

Collection Ads

These ads combine video, slideshow, or product images taken from your product catalog. If you want to advertise several products all at once, this is a great option to go for.

Next, in this how-to advertise on a Facebook article, we take a look at the steps that are required to create a Facebook ad.

How to Create an Ad on Facebook?

Set up a campaign

While setting up a campaign, you have to first select your spending method and the objective of your advertisement.

There are two ways to select your spending method:

1. Auction - You can enter your ad into an auction, where you can decide how you want to spend your money to achieve your goals by choosing an appropriate bid strategy. This method provides more choice, flexibility, and scalability, but a lot less predictability. It’s available to all advertisers and pricing can change during the auction process.
2. Reach and Frequency - You can advertise to your brand’s audience at a fixed cost. This method enables you to plan and set up advertisement campaigns which provide predictable ad delivery.

Once you select the type of spending you want to do, you can set up the objective of your advertisement. There are three types of ads you can select from, each with different objectives.

Awareness

If your objective is to create an interest in your product or service among people, you can use awareness. There are two types of awareness - brand and reach.

Brand awareness aims to increase awareness about the products you offer. This method doesn’t usually emphasize interactions like purchase, opt-in, or click through. The main goal of brand awareness is to show people that your brand or your product exists. They aim to create high brand recall among their users rather than focusing on generating revenue.

Reach ensures that your advertisement is seen by the maximum number of people within your target audience and budget. It helps target a smaller audience to visit your website, watch your video, or even convert on your website.

Consideration

Consideration gets people to think more about your product or service and have them take the next step. People who are interested will start looking for more information about your products.

Under this objective, the types of ads you could use are:

Traffic

These ads are useful when you want to drive people outside of Facebook (listen to a podcast, read an article, introduce a new app, etc.). The aim is to educate them more about a particular product by bringing them to your site. Facebook shows these advertisements to people within your target audience based on their past behavior.

Engagement

These ads are useful when you want more users to engage with your ad. They can help generate more page likes, responses to an event or take advantage of an offer. It can help with building an engaged audience for your Facebook Page that can be used for future advertising campaigns

App installs

These ads enable people to download your app by sending them directly to the app store.

Video Views

These ads are useful when you’re promoting your product/service and you want a higher number of views. It can help create an audience which can be used for future advertisement campaigns.

Lead Generation

These ads allow you to generate leads by collecting user details without going outside Facebook. You can integrate these lead ads with other third party apps that are tied to your CRM or email marketing software. It can be a great option for people who are already familiar with your product or service.

Messages

These ads target people using Facebook messenger. Here, people who are really interested can communicate directly with you, or with a chatbot, and consider your product or service.

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Conversion

Conversions ads are at the end of the funnel where you want users to buy or use your product or service. They increase sign-ups to your website, registration to your services, sales or any sort of the desired action on your website.

Under this objective, you can have:

• Product catalog sales - These ads help promote your e-commerce store and other products in your store portfolio. They help push traffic to your store by integrating your existing product catalog with Facebook.
• Store visits - If you have a physical store, these ads can help direct foot traffic to your location, based on users’ current location. It helps people to take the next step to visit your store in person and buy something.

A/B Testing (Split Testing)

Within each of the advertisement objectives, you can create split tests or perform A/B testing. It allows you to create two versions of the same ad with just one of their parameters altered.

For example, you can advertise the same product with two ads, one offering a 25% discount and another offering $200 off the price. In this way, you can test both the ads and know which one performs better.

They can be as simple as changing the promotional offer or the call-to-action. Once you test the broader elements, you can then move on to testing smaller fine tunes of the winning ad.

Some of the parameters that can be varied are Call-to-action, images, text, the position of elements, audience targeting, etc.

Some of the metrics you could focus on for the winning ad are CTR, Clicks, CPC, Conversion Rate, and so on.

Once you’ve set up your campaign, you need to put together an ad set. This involves creating an audience for your advertisement, a budget, a schedule, and a bidding strategy for your ad campaign. The final step is to set up the creative aspects of your ad. You can follow the next steps in this video to guide you through the overall process.

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The Do’s and Don’ts of Facebook Advertising

Now that you know what Facebook advertising is, how to advertise on Facebook, and how you can use it to help your brand, here are some do’s and don’ts for effective advertising.

Conclusion

If you’re interested in learning more about how to improve your Facebook advertising skills or want to learn more about how to advertise on Facebook, Simplilearn’s Facebook Marketing and Advertising course provide an excellent foundation in many facets of Facebook marketing, from establishing your business page to best practices for posting content, and usage of advanced analytics and targeting. Learn how to develop effective strategies and use tools and features like Facebook Groups, Facebook Live, Facebook Ads, Facebook Insights. It will also prepare you for the Facebook Blueprint Certification, an increasingly valuable verification of your new skills.