Facebook Marketing: Essential Guide for Advertisers!
“Senator, we run ads,” replied Mark Zuckerberg when the senators grilled him about Facebook’s source of revenue.
Well, that is what Facebook is, an 80,000-pound advertising gorilla. It is a clear fact that 9 out of 10 marketers use Facebook Ads to grab leads and fill the newsfeed with sales. More than 2.2B active users is a country on its own.
With more than $15 Billion in revenue, Facebook Advertising is one of the biggest revenue sources for Facebook. But, is it the same for businesses that use Facebook ads?
In a HubSpot article, it was cited that Facebook has decreased it’s organic reach from 16% to 6.5% from February 2012 to March 2014 and since then everything is going down the spiral for businesses who are looking forward to getting organic reach.
The only viable way for businesses to reach more users is to run Facebook ads. Running Facebook ads is as an art and in this piece, we will teach you that art.
Set up your Business Manager Account
The first step is to set up your business manager account. The reason why you should have a Business Manager is that it keeps your personal account separate from your business account and lets you focus on the business.
If you plan to run ads on behalf of other businesses or have multiple businesses of your own it is always a better option to sign up for a Business Manager Account.
Using a Business Manager account, you can easily group different people, pages, ad accounts and other data resources such as Pixels, Catalogs into separate Business Accounts. Managing roles and access to different properties is also straightforward if you are using a Business Manager Account. A plus point of business manager account is that you can add people to manage different pages or ad accounts without having to add them as a friend on Facebook.
Moreover, you can create multiple ad accounts with different currencies using a Business Manager Account which is not possible if you are using simple Ad Account, as only one ad account can be created through a personal profile.
Not only that, you can also have yourself added to someone’s Business Account as an employee to run ads for them or manage their pages if the client wants total control or wants you to run ads using their credit card.
Having a personal account on Facebook is a prerequisite for a biz account. Prior to creating a business account. To set up your business manager account, go to https://business.facebook.com/ and click on ‘create account’.
How to Navigate in Facebook Business Manager?
Once you have created a business manager account, the first thing that you must do is to add people in the account.
Facebook Business Manager offers two levels of access: Admin and Employee. An Admin has full-level access in which they can add pages, remove them, revoke or give permission to employees.
Employees can only access the accounts and tools they are assigned to by the admin. To add people, go to Users in Business Page manager and from that go to People. Now clicking Add you can add people.
You can add pages by clicking the Pages tab under the Accounts. You can even add your Instagram account and control its advertising from Facebook Business Manager settings.
How to Manage Ads and Campaigns?
Structure of Advertisements
Before you start setting up ads, let’s look at how Facebook organize ads. Facebook organizes ads in three levels. These levels help us optimize, organize and measure the performance of the ad.
1. Campaign: This is the objective of our ad campaign. For instance, we may run a campaign to drive traffic on our website.
2. Ad Sets: Within the campaign, there are ad sets. Each ad set can have a separate budget and its ser of criteria like demographics, interests, placements, etc. You can use ad sets to target different custom audiences as well that you have created using the Facebook Pixel or even find newer audience segments using the Facebook Lookalike option.
3. Ads: This is the part where you build the creative of the ad. There are several different options available based on your selection of campaign. For example, you can choose from a single image or video ad, carousel ad or a more complex selection such as canvas ads, catalog ads, etc. Remember to choose an appropriate Call-to-Action based on your objective. Ads can drive people to a landing page or accomplish one purpose like gaining subscribers, enticing people to like your page, initiate a chat or reaching out to more people.
Let look at how each level operates.
If I have a beverage product, I will create a separate campaign for each of the following things:
- Drive traffic to a website.
- Increase brand awareness
- Promote coupon.
To drive traffic on the website, I might create an Ad set for current customers: like from an email list. Also, another Ad set for people who play sports and are from my city. You can run two ads side by side and see which of the advertisements are performing better than the other. How to Create Ads on Facebook Business Manager?
Make Bulk Changes with Facebook Ads Manager
One valuable option in Facebook Ads is that you can make bulk changes in the ad all at once. For example, if you want to update the city in 3–4 ads, you can go to Edit and select those campaigns.
Organize Campaigns with Tags
When you are working on a large scale it is necessary to keep track of everything that you do. One of the ways to do is to organize your Ad campaigns with Tags. When you Tag an ad, you will be able to identify the ad campaign with these tags. You can search tags with various filters.
You can use tags to organize campaigns by:
- Page name
- Ad account
- Event/holiday
- Campaign objective, such as likes, conversation, and post engagement.
- Campaign duration
When you create a new ad campaign, you’ll be given an option to add relevant tags. Separate tags with commas. Then complete and publish the campaign.
Alternatively, navigate to the campaign dashboard, which is already published. In the campaign details section, click the new tag and add new tag to the campaign.
This is where you can remove tags from the campaign too.
How to Add Facebook Pixel on your Website?
To put it, Facebook Pixel is a shortcode which is placed on your website or webpage to note traffic and number of conversions on that page.
What can Facebook Pixel Track?
Facebook Pixel can track several types of actions known as events. These events include Website visits, Purchases, Add to carts, Video views, etc. More than fifteen events can be tracked with Facebook Pixel. For each of the event you must choose whether to track on the page load or the in-time action.
Tracking on page load: When you track on page load, you’ll able to track actions like sign-up or successful purchase of a product.
The in-line action: It will track events like, “add to cart” or anything is done on that specific page. You can also set parameters for some events. For example, maybe you specifically want to track purchases over a set dollar value. You can do that with pixels.
How to Create Custom Audiences to Target your Customers?
To create a custom audience, in the Business Manager, go to the top menu and select “Audiences” from the Assets section.
Now from the drop-down of Create Audience, select Custom Audience
From here, you can select where do you want to pick your custom audience. It can be website, customer list or any offline activity.
Check this fantastic step by step tutorial on setting up Facebook Custom Audiences
Split Testing on Facebook
If your budget allows it is advised to contact a professional digital agencywhich will turn your users into raving fans. For small business owners, you can use split testing to boost sales. A split test will help you experiment with various versions of your ad and see which version will work best.
There are three ways in which you can use split testing:
Guided creation. If you are new to split testing, this is the method which will walk you step by step towards the end.
Quick creation. If you are familiar with the structure of the test this method will help you to make smart ads.
Duplication. To duplicate your ads, this is the most feasible option to choose.
The goal of split testing is to figure out which of the ads are performing better than others. However, we begin let’s look at some of the major mistakes that people make while performing A/B testing.
Trying too many variables at once: It will be impossible to check which of the variables made a difference. Don’t test many at once.
Analyzing fast with low budget: You need to place some extra amount to test conversion. A small budget will not reveal anything impactful.
The test setup is not wrong: You must give each test variable some time to deliver results.
Sticking with the low-variance elements: Just changing one element will not reveal anything useful in a split test.
Facebook Ads Split Testing — Step by Step Tutorial
Final Thoughts
62% of businesses are unable to get ROI from Facebook ads. Your business doesn’t have to be part of the majority. You can stand out, follow some best practices and make Facebook ads work for you.
Remember, it is not Facebook Ads that is at fault. Optimization is key. Facebook ads can be a hit or miss depending on the nature of your business. With trial and error and constant optimization, you can find that sweet spot where your ads will start giving positive ROI.
Always begin with multiple campaigns and smaller budgets. Scale the campaigns that are performing well while pausing the ones that don’t. Use it wisely and Facebook ads will do wonders for your business! Facebook advertising can steal your night’s sleep. Which is why we are here to offer you Facebook Marketing and Advertising services. Let us take all your strain away with a set of professional digital marketing services.
