Facebook ads are a relatively inexpensive way for your business to reach many potential customers. A major benefit of Facebook advertising is its ability to reach your exact audience. Facebook presents businesses with the opportunity to get their message across to certain target demographics efficiently, meaning you’ll be paying for ads to be seen by people that already have interest in your type of establishment on and offline. You can advertise on social media just like you might place an ad in a newspaper, and we’ve created this guide to help you through the process!
Creating an Ad: Overview
- From your personal Facebook account, click the arrow in the upper right-hand corner.
**You will only be able to run an ad for your page if you are a manager of your location’s page.
- Click Create Ads in the Dropdown. This will bring you into your Ads Manager.
- Choose a Campaign Objective on the left.
- Click Set Audience & Budget.
Campaign Structure
- Campaign: A campaign contains one or more ad sets and ads. Choose one advertising objective for each campaign.
- Ad set name: Ad sets contain one or more ads. You'll define your targeting, budget, schedule, bidding and placement at the ad set level.
- Ad: The creative you use makes up an ad.
- Click Choose Ad Creative
- Select images or video that already appear on your page, like photos or your cover image, or upload a new image. Text cannot take up more than 20% of your image, or your ad will be rejected.
- Most campaigns will allow you to edit the link and text you want to appear in your ad. Edit these with your audience in mind – what will attract them to click?
- Check what each of your ad types will look like on the right. If you do not want to run a specific kind of ad, click remove.
- Instagram ads can also be managed through Facebook Ads. If you want to run an Instagram ad, look for it as an ad type. If you do not want to run an Instagram ad be sure it is not selected.
Options for Campaign Objectives
- Boost Post: Select a post that’s already on your page to promote.
- Promote your Page: Either upload new ad creative or choose images already on your page to promote your page with the goal of adding more fans of your page.
- Send people to your website: Select a website and use either new ad creative that you upload or existing images on your page to encourage people to click through to your website. You can use a single image, a single video, or multiple images. You’ll also have the option of tracking visitors to your website with Facebook pixels.
- Increase conversions to your website: Similar to sending people to your website, but to be used if you want them to take a specific action once they get there, like purchasing something or filling out a form.
- Get installs of your app and/or increase engagement in your app: These options are specific to advertisers with mobile applications.
- Reach people near your business: This option allows you to target the area around your business by drawing boarders on a map. Choose creative from your page or upload new creative.
- Raise attendance at your event: You must have an existing and upcoming Facebook Event created to use this option.
- Get people to claim your offer: You must have an existing Facebook Offer to use this option.
- Get video views: You must choose an existing video or upload a video to use this option.
Setting an Audience and Budget
- Location: You may want to target your city and cities around you. In the case of a Reach people near your business ad, you can more specifically target the area around your location.
- Age: If your entire establishment is 21+, you could target your ad to those users.
- Specify the appropriate gender (best practice would be to choose both male and female to reach the most amount of people) and languages.
- Detailed Targeting: This drop down allows you to specify your audience’s demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. We highly recommend targeting your ad to an audience specific to your location. The more targeted your ad, the more effective it will be.
- Placement, Budget and Schedule: Start small with your budget – a little goes a long way! You can increase or decrease your budget or cancel your ad at any time. When just getting started, it is best to choose Automatic Placement for your ad and Schedule a start and end date for your campaign. This will help with optimizing your budget and tracking of the ad’s effectiveness.
Facebook advertising is a measurable effort that can increase revenue, sales, and brand awareness for your business. Targeting helps narrow down who will see your ad, so you don’t waste money on unnecessary views and interactions.
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