how to use facebook ads for your small...

HOW TO USE FACEBOOK ADS FOR YOUR SMALL

BUSINESS

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IntroductionFacebook Ads has changed advertising forever. Now, we have an advertising tool that lets you identify and target your ideal customers. When used correctly, Facebook Ads can be very profitable for your small business. But when used incorrectly, it can be a waste of money. This guide will explain the seven steps you must take to succeed with Facebook Ads.

Why Facebook Ads can be so valuable

There are two main reasons why Facebook Ads can be so valuable for small businesses:

} Facebook has a lot of active users } You can directly target your ideal customers

A lot of active users

More than two billion people use Facebook each month, while more than one billion use Facebook Messenger and another billion-plus use Instagram (which is owned by Facebook). That’s a lot of active, engaged traffic for your small business to cash in on. Directly target your ideal customers

You know all those status updates, comments, photos and demographic details we share on Facebook and Instagram? Well, Facebook takes that information, as well as our connections, and uses it to create detailed user profiles. Small businesses can target their ads at these user profiles. In other words, you can identify your ideal customers based on their demographics, interests and behaviours – and then target them directly with your ads.


ContentsIntroduction 3

Step 1: Set up Facebook Business Manager 5

Step 2: Embed the pixel in your website 8

Step 3: Create Facebook Audiences 10

Step 4: Create a campaign 14

Step 5: Create your ad sets 17

Step 6: Design your ad 21

Step 7: Monitor your campaign 22


To succeed with Facebook Ads, the first thing you must do is set up your Business Manager account.

Business Manager is the section on Facebook where you find your business page, ad account and ad tools.

Don’t have an account yet? Go to business.facebook.com and click ‘Create Account’.

As the image on the next page shows, you will be asked for your:

} Business name } Facebook business page (create one if you haven’t already) } Name } Email address

SET UP FACEBOOK BUSINESS MANAGER1

STEP

https://business.facebook.com/


STEP 1 | SET UP FACEBOOK BUSINESS MANAGER

Next, you’ll need to add/create your advertising account. In the Business Manager menu:

} Choose Business Settings } Click Accounts } Select Ad Accounts

You will see three options:

} Link to an existing ad account } Request access to an ad account } Create a new ad account (see image on next page)

Select the appropriate option and follow the prompts.


STEP 1 | SET UP FACEBOOK BUSINESS MANAGER

Once you’ve connected your Business Manager account to your Facebook business page and ad account, your home page screen should look like this:


EMBED THE PIXEL IN YOUR WEBSITE2

STEP

The Facebook pixel is code that you create in your Business Manager account and then embed in your business website.

This is a tracking code that links your website to your Facebook Ads account.

The Facebook pixel is used to measure how your ads have performed.

Here’s how to create your pixel:

} Click the hamburger icon (==) in the top left } Select Pixels } Click Create A Pixel } Name your pixel } Enter your website URL } Click Create

Next, you need to install the pixel ID (which is a 16-digit number) on your website. As the image on the next page shows, you can:

} Integrate the pixel directly into third-party platforms like Google Tag Manager, Shopify and WooCommerce

} Manually install the code between the <head> and </head> tags (you may have to do this multiple times to cover multiple pages)

} Outsource the job to a web developer (like Hunter & Scribe)

Once your pixel is installed, it should take only a few hours before it starts delivering data to your Business Manager account.


STEP 2 | EMBED THE PIXEL IN YOUR WEBSITE


CREATE FACEBOOK AUDIENCES3STEP

The key to success with Facebook advertising is to make sure your ads are targeted at your highest-value customers.

That’s where Facebook Audiences comes in.

Audiences is a section within Business Manager that allows you to create lists of people to target with your ads. The Audiences section can be divided into two broad categories:

} Retargeting } Prospecting

Retargeting

Ever wondered why you visit a website ... and then you start seeing that company’s ads whenever you open Facebook and Instagram?

That’s called retargeting.

Retargeting is one of the most effective features of Facebook Ads, because somebody who has already shown interest in your small business (by visiting your website) is more likely to become a customer than somebody who hasn’t.

Retargeting is done through a feature known as Custom Audiences, which allows you to tap into the data captured by your pixel.


STEP 3 | CREATE FACEBOOK AUDIENCES

As seen in the image on the previous page, there are four different sources you can use to create a Custom Audience:

} Website traffic } Customer files } App activity (e.g. using Facebook or Instagram)

} Offline activity (e.g. manually entering data you’ve gleaned from elsewhere)

Prospecting

Prospecting refers to looking for new customers.

Prospecting involves directing ads at people who have never interacted with your business online – which would be almost all of Facebook’s two billion-plus users.

The challenge, then, is to isolate the limited number of potential customers within that massive pool. Facebook has two tools to help you do that:

} Audience Insights

} Lookalike Audiences

Audience Insights

Audience Insights is a tool you can use to narrow down the pool of two billion-plus Facebook users into specific niches.

You can use Audience Insights to learn more about your ideal customers, such as their demographics, purchase behaviour, interests and more.

That makes it easier for you to identify your most likely buyers, and to test different campaigns with them.

Lookalike Audiences

A ‘lookalike audience’ is a group that you create. The aim is to make this group look like your best customers – that way, you know they’re more likely to respond favourably to your ads.

The first thing you do to narrow down the pool of two billion-plus users is to choose your audience location and audience size.


Next, you choose to target anywhere from 1% to 10% of the people within that smaller pool:

} 1% = fewer people see your ads, but they’re higher-quality users } 10% = more people see your ads, but they’re lower-quality users

To begin with, it’s probably a good idea to choose the 1% option, so you get the most bang for your buck.

Later, as you become more confident with Facebook Ads and your budget increases, you might decide to move up the percentage scale.

Facebook can help you create your Lookalike Audience.

How? By letting you tap into Facebook’s ‘saved audiences’ feature (see image on next page), which is based on data gleaned from the demographics, interests and behaviours of its users.




} Demographics = users’ profile information } Interests = pages and content that users have consumed } Behaviours = actions taken by users that have been recorded on Facebook


CREATE A CAMPAIGN4STEP

You know those ads you see in your Facebook feed (tagged as ‘Sponsored’)? They’re just one element of what is known as a campaign.

Before you publish ads, you first need to create a campaign. A typical Facebook Ads campaign plan looks like this:

Each campaign includes at least one ad set, where you choose your audience, budget, targeting and the ad that users will see.

A campaign can contain multiple ad sets, which allows you to test different ads against different audiences.

To create your first campaign, go to the Ads Manager within your Business Manager account and click the Create button. You will then be asked to choose an objective (see image on next page).


STEP 4 | CREATE A CAMPAIGN

Facebook Ads offers three different objectives:

} Awareness } Consideration } Conversion

Each objective has a drop-down menu with up to six more options (which we’ll call sub-objectives):

Awareness Brand awareness Reach

Consideration Traffic Engagement App installs Video views Lead generation Messages

Conversion Conversion Catalogue sales Store traffic


Make sure you think carefully about your objectives and sub-objectives, so Facebook optimises your ads accordingly.

Whatever your objective, Facebook will always charge you for the number of impressions your ad receives.

Another tip is to think carefully about the names you apply to your campaigns, ad sets and ads.

That way, if you create multiple campaigns, ad sets and ads, you’ll be able to quickly identify each one.

STEP 4 | CREATE A CAMPAIGN


CREATE YOUR AD SETS5STEP

Once you’ve decided your campaign objective, your next step is to create your ad sets.

As part of the process, you will have to tell Facebook what ‘event’ to optimise for.

For example, imagine your objective was conversion (i.e. to convert people who previously visited your website into buyers). In that case, you might choose Add to Cart as your event.

Facebook will then optimise delivery of your ads by favouring this particular event.

When creating ad sets, you will also have to choose your:

} Budget } Audience } Placements


STEP 5 | CREATE YOUR AD SETS

Budget

When setting your budget, you need to decide whether to set a daily budget or a lifetime budget.

Make sure you allocate a big enough budget to not only achieve your goal, but also allow time for Facebook’s ‘learning phase’.

When Facebook starts delivering your ad set, it won’t have all the necessary data. To get that data, it will need to show ads to different types of people, so it can learn who’s most likely to deliver you your optimisation events. This is the learning phase.

Audience

You know those retargeting and/or prospecting lists you created in the Audiences section? You can now tweak those lists in the ad sets section.

You can filter by location, age, gender and language, giving you the chance to test different variations.



Next, you can filter based on demographics, interests and behaviours.

You can also target people who liked your Facebook business page – or choose to exclude those people.

For example, you might want to target people who liked your page because you figure they’d be easiest to convert. Or you might want to exclude those people because you’ve created a special campaign designed to win the trust of people who have never heard of your business.

Placements

Facebook Ads lets you choose where, among the Facebook suite of apps, you want to place your ad – Facebook, Messenger, Instagram. You can also place your ads in Audience Network, which is an advertising network outside Facebook’s domain (see image on next page).


DESIGN YOUR AD6STEP

Now comes the creative part – designing your actual ad.

It’s vital you get this step right; otherwise, your campaign will probably fail.

There’s no point using Facebook Ads to isolate a high-quality audience – only to send them a low-quality ad. In other words, Facebook Ads will find you buyers, but it won’t sell to them. That’s your job.

Once you’ve designed your ad, you then decide whether to host it on your Facebook page or your Instagram account.


MONITOR YOUR CAMPAIGN7STEP

The final step in using Facebook Ads is to monitor your campaign.

Don’t just set and forget, because that’s a great way to waste money. Instead, monitor your campaign’s performance – and, if necessary, tweak it.

Ads Manager is where you measure your results. There are numerous metrics you can check. For example, if you had an ecommerce site and your objective was conversion, you might research:

} How many checkouts were initiated } How many purchases were made } How much you had to spend for each purchase

You could also check the profile of your buyers and what type of device they were using.

If you discovered that you had a higher conversion rate with younger men on mobiles than older women on desktops, you might change your campaign accordingly.

how to use facebook ads for your small...

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