How to Run an Ad Campaign on Facebook

If you own a business, it's crucial to have a solid online presence.

Studies have found that over half of consumers turn to Facebook to find new companies when they're looking for products and services. If you don't have an online Facebook presence, you're missing a huge chunk of the market. 

Further, Facebook offers marketing tools that are easy to use, highly targeted, and cost-effective. No more putting an ad in a magazine and hoping the right people see it. 

You can target your ads toward the exact people most likely to want your product and services.

Ready to learn how to make the perfect Facebook ad campaign? Keep reading to become a Facebook advertising expert.


The Perfect Ad Campaign

The perfect Facebook ad campaign considers the following elements:

• What you're trying to accomplish
• What kind of ad you should run to accomplish that objective
• Who you're trying to reach
• How much you want to spend
• What information you want to impart to consumers
• What content will make potential clients choose you
• Where you want your ad to be seen

Let's break it down step by step.


1. Set a Goal

You first need to choose a goal. Common goals include:

• Generating new leads
• Increasing traffic to your website
• Boosting social media engagement
• Increasing your likes on social media
• Gaining attention for an event
• Promoting a sale or new item

This is where your entire campaign starts, so make sure you have a firm idea of what your goal is before starting to make sure your finished ad accomplishes the task.


2. Choose an Objective

When you enter Facebook's ad manager, you'll be given the option to create a Facebook ad. When you click on this, you'll be given 15 different marketing objectives broken down into three categories.

Awareness

This category is all about making your brand known and increasing its reach.

• Boost your posts
• Promote your page
• Reach people near your business
• Increase brand awareness
• Increase your reach

Choose one of these objectives if your initial goal had to do with raising brand awareness and getting your name out there.

Consideration

Consideration is looking to take awareness to action, getting people to act.

• Send people to a destination on or off Facebook
• Get installs of your app
• Raise attendance at your event
• Get video views
• Collect leads for your business

Choose a consideration objective if you're looking to engage with people and get them to look more closely at your brand.

Conversion

Conversion takes people who are interested and turns them into clients.

• Increase conversions on your website
• Increase engagement in your app
• Get people to claim your offer
• Promote a product catalog
• Get people to visit your shops

Use conversion options if you're trying to turn interest and leads into real actions that will bring people in the door.


3. Target Your Audience

Facebook allows you to choose your audience using very targeted demographic options. Your choices include location, age, gender, languages, interests, behaviors, and connections.

You can also choose advanced targeting, which allows you to include or exclude people based on specific pages, events, and apps.

Being able to choose the exact demographic that sees your ad is what makes Facebook ads worth the money - you can make sure every cent you spend is targeted directly at your perfect consumer. Don't rush through this part, and you'll see a much higher ROI (return on investment) than traditional ads.


4. Define a Budget

Speaking of money, you'll need to define your budget next.

You can choose a daily or lifetime ad budget for your campaign. A daily budget will send out the maximum number of ads for a certain amount of money per day.

A lifetime budget is the max budget a campaign will spend. When this limit is hit, the campaign will automatically turn off.


5. Create Your Ad

You can choose to use an existing post for your ad or create a new one.

If you choose to use an existing post, you'll be taken to a list of your posts so you can choose which post to promote.

If you choose to start fresh, you can choose between several different post templates, including:

• Carousel, with two or more images
• Single image
• Single video
• Slideshow
• Canvas, a newer option that is like a collage

The formats available will depend based on the objective you chose, so you may or may not see all of these.

If you've gone for a photo format, you'll want to choose photos that are about 1200 x 628 pixels, have an image ratio of 2:1, and don't have any added text.

Videos that do best are at least 720p, less than 2.3 GB, have a widescreen ratio (16:9), and are at max an hour long.

Choose bright, well-shot images and videos that look professional and engaging.


6. Choose Where to Place It

Facebook has default placements that they recommend. These include mobile news feeds, desktop news feeds and the right column. You can also choose to show your ads on Instagram.

Most business owners would do well to let Facebook recommend placements instead of choosing their own. This enables Facebook to shows ads in the best places for different situations, resulting in the cheapest cost.


7. Run Your Ad and Watch Analytics

Once your Facebook ad is ready, start it up and watch what happens! 

Facebook offers sophisticated metrics on their ads, meaning you can watch the engagement rates and actions taken from your ad.

If you feel your social media ads should be doing better, and you're not seeing the results you want, consider hiring a company to help you create better Facebook marketing campaigns.


Start Advertising on Facebook!

Now that you know how to run a Facebook ad campaign, it's time to make the most of your advertising dollars! In fifteen minutes or less, you can have an automated Facebook campaign up and running, continually promoting your brand on people's feeds.

Looking for more helpful, social selling articles? Check out the rest of this site for more savvy social media and digital marketing advice!