Facebook started out as a fun site for college students and has now grown to include over 1 billion people from every demographic all over the world. As a result, you can use Facebook Ads to target your audience no matter what your offering. But before you begin your Facebook Ad campaign, here’s everything you need to know.

With all of the voluntary sharing that happens on Facebook, the site has generated the ability to gather crucial information about its users.

This information makes Facebook a valuable site for marketing as ads can target specific users whose information implies their interest in different offerings.

Facebook has encouraged more businesses to take advantage of their paid advertising services. In fact, they made it nearly impossible to reach everyone following your page without Facebook Ads.

Facebook has been able to gather its incredibly precise information by monitoring user behavior on its network. For instance, when users click ‘like’ on any page or post, Facebook logs it as a potential interest in more things in that particular niche.

The tracking capabilities taking place on the network is the main reason why Facebook Ads is a superior social advertising tool. Keep reading to learn what you need to know before creating your next ad.

Everything You Need to Know About Facebook Ads

First-things-first, it’s important to know that all Facebook ads are charged on a per-click basis. This means you only pay for the users that click on your ad! But you must also know that Facebook may decrease the number of impressions based on how well the ad is performing, or if the ad does not appeal to your target audience.

Almost anyone can create an ad budget of a few dollars and have their ad running the same day. It seems simple, right?

Wrong.

The challenge with Facebook Ads reminds me of what some people say about my alma mater, U.C. Berkeley: It’s more difficult to get out than to get in. I guess being the number one public institution in the world comes with its challenges.

The point I want to make is, just because you can easily set up and run Facebook ads doesn’t mean that you are one step closer to getting more customers. You must spend time on analyzing and optimizing your ads. This is one reason why businesses outsource Facebook Ad management.

Moreover, it’s also important to note that Facebook wants you to be successful because that is how they earn money too. Digital advertising spend is snowballing, and Facebook Ads are make up a significant percentage.

Just like the popularity of shopping online has taken over the traditions of shopping in stores, Traditional advertising has slowly been dying out, and digital advertising is expected to grow by about 300%.

I hope this inspires you to seriously think about creating a Facebook Ad campaign if you haven’t already done so.

According to emarketer By 2017, when US digital display ad expenditure will reach $37.36 billion, Facebook and Twitter together will account for 33.7% of the market, up from 30.2% this year.

This market is only continuing to grow as more and more people use Facebook. Already over 700 million people visit Facebook mobile every day!

Don’t miss the boat, train, plane, or whatever vehicle. This is a prime opportunity to expose your business to people interested in your offer.

SEE ALSO: What Facebook Wants You to Know About Mobile Advertising

So, what will make this option beneficial for you?

Facebook Ads Use Two Specific Targeting Techniques

1. Geotargeting

• This feature has come under attack from people who feel like Facebook has become the new ‘Big Brother’. However, it is a great option for advertising.
• Geotargeting ensures that the people closest to your business will be able to find your business. If you work out of Detroit, then you’ll want your ads to target people in Detroit instead of Boston.
• You can even target people who have just moved to town. New people can discover your business right away as they figure out their new surroundings.
• It keeps you relevant in your market focus instead of lost in the void of the internet.

2. Interests

• This option allows you to use a highly specific focus. Your ads will show up to an audience that is most likely to have a click-through.
• You can advertise only to relevant, interested parties.
• You can even capitalize on people’s interest in other companies. When selling a new brand of shoes, you can target people who like Converse. Your ad will now show up for all the people who liked Converse’s page.

Facebook’s targeting techniques are state of the art and unique when compared to their competitors. Their method can find anyone on their site that could even be remotely interested in your business if you use all of their listed options to their best.

So now that you know how beneficial Facebook ads can be, the only thing left to do is get started!

Getting Started on Your Facebook Ad

Setting up a Facebook ad for your business can make all the difference in the success of your business.

This number was generated in 2004, and since then it has only continued to grow. Smartphones have made online shopping easy, and Facebook’s numbers reflect that.

Also, Facebook has made their ad process very user-friendly.

Here’s how to create an ad.

Setting Up a Facebook Ad

Facebook has made setting up your ads a simple process. Just go to Facebook.com/ads or access your ads manager and click create ad.

Once you click Create Ad, you’ll be taken to the Ads Manager page, where you can choose an objective for your marketing campaign, choose the type of engagement, define your audience, and variables to track for effectiveness.

These options, and Facebook’s ability to follow through, is what makes their ads so effective.

Choose Your Facebook Ad Type

Facebook currently offers 11 ad variations for different uses and types of businesses. Some ads announce promotions, while others gather information or guides users to a website. This makes the process completely customizable.

At the end of the day, nobody knows your audience and content better than yourself. Depending on your needs, you can choose the one that’s best for you and your company.

Promote Your Page

We’ve compiled a step by step guide for promoting your page.

Create a new ad and choose “promote page”

A promote page popup will open, and this is where you get to edit all your personalized options.

Here you can upload your own image or choose from a library of images. There’s also a Shutterstock library you can access to find the perfect images for your ad.

You can test multiple variations of your ad and choose the one that looks best across all platforms.

You’ll want to pay careful attention to your image guidelines, its pixels, image ratio, and minimal text.

Those are the basics of your Facebook ad, but what if you want more?

You can add:

• video – video plays are increasing 758% every year thanks to Facebook’s Autoplay feature
• text
• boosted posts – target your advertising directly to fans of similar pages to increase the likelihood of interaction and a potential for your post to go ‘viral’
• send people to your website
• enter the URL of your page to promote it
• choose conversion pixel
• build a carousel of pictures
• create a call to action – this creates involvement with your audience. Spark a debate and get people talking about your business.

Choose Your Audience

Choosing your audience is the most important part of creating your ad. Your audience is everyone who will be looking at your ad, so choose carefully!

These are some general parts of the audience creation page:

• Create custom audience
  • Popup will appear with four options to create them, like customer list and website traffic
  • Location
    • Compare terminologies, add exact location, fine-tune your radius
    • You can add locations from spreadsheet or text file
  • Age, gender, language
  • Interest or behavior
    • Be very specific here. This is where you pull in people who’ve never seen your product but could be interested based on other ‘likes’ they have.
  • Networks and connections
    • Based on interactions with your page, whether they have interacted with you or not. This is good for reaching people unfamiliar with your page.

Budgeting Your Facebook Ads

How much do you want to spend? When do you want to spend it?

Our first suggestion would be to spend about $20 per day depending on your business. This budget amount will allow you to see if your campaign is working and will give you room to optimize if needed.

Facebook also has a lifetime option available which stops your campaign once you reach that budget.

Through Facebook’s specific options, you can tell Facebook exactly when you want them to run your ads, and they will tell you how much this will cost.

Make Sure Your Facebook Ad is Personable

You can have the best ad on the internet, but that alone won’t bring people into your site.

Often people make an ad and don’t realize why it’s not working and the simple problem may be that it’s not personable enough.

https://youtu.be/s47SegF-qcE

Final Thoughts

There are over 40 million small business pages on Facebook. It’s a hive of business activity. Social media is where the people are, so businesses have followed.

Having a successful Facebook ad campaign can be a simple process if you pay close attention to every option and determine what would work best for your company.

Remember that no one size fits all. Feel free to keep testing to find what will work best for your ads. Never just assume that your ads are working.

Apply what you’ve learned about your customers and work it into your ads. This aspect will most likely keep changing and developing as your business grows, so keep checking in!

Is there anything else businesses should know about Facebook Ads? Leave a comment below…