How to Advertise on Facebook

The power of Facebook in the business world grows substantially every single day! Regardless if you’re a small or big business owner, you have to be familiar with this platform’s marketing powers. Understanding exactly how to promote on this network means establishing a successful brand, growing your audience, and increasing your sales.  If you need to find out how to advertise on Facebook or how much does it cost to advertise on Facebook, you’ve come to the right place. In this blog post, we’ll guide you through the steps of creating a superb advertising campaign, the average costs, valuable tips, and why this should be your go-to marketing platform.

Why Use Facebook For Advertising?

Why do so many people turn to Facebook as the primary weapon of their marketing strategy? Let’s start with the fact that it’s the biggest social platform globally, with over 2.895 billion active monthly users. So, if your business goals are targeting a larger audience, where better to turn than Facebook. Its user base is not only impressive in numbers, but it’s also diverse in so many ways.

Since online advertising is currently the most popular form of being recognized, thinking of an efficient strategy is of utmost importance. This social network is excellent for digital marketing because, unlike other advertising channels, it offers a wide range of advertising services to hit your target market and audience. So, if you put together a great ads campaign, customize it right, you can target the ideal customer with ease.

What Are The Types Of Facebook Ads?

Did you know that there are many formats of advertisements on this platform? Although not all are equally common, still, there is a way for everyone to promote their products and services. Here are the ones you must know about:

Video

Video ads are favorite for users throughout various social media platforms because they tell a whole story. On Facebook, you can upload a video up to 15 seconds, showing content that’s engaging and shows off your product/services in a creative way. You can also share snippets from the production process, your team, and anything you can think of to bring the customers closer to your brand.

Another way to advertise via videos is through the in-stream video feature on this platform. While other users stream videos, yours will appear in between as an ad.

Image

One of the simplest yet efficient marketing formats is an image ad. You know what they say; a single image can say a thousand words. Before posting it, ensure that your chosen image or graphic follows the requirements (image sizes, caption sizes, on-image text, headline, description). It’s the perfect method for beginners and brands that can’t spend a lot on advertising.

Carousel

Reaching your prospective customers will be much easier if you add more images and videos instead of just one. The carousel ad allows you to add up to 10 videos or images of the items/services you want to advertise, with a link description up to 20 characters, caption up to 125 characters, and link headlines up to 25 characters. Scrolling through the items is quite captivating; the customers can click on the link to take them straight to the products, and it can lead to a product purchase much faster when you offer more than one option.

Poll

Advertising with polls is only available for Facebook Mobile users and isn’t an option for people who manage their Facebook pages via the desktop version. However, you can add polls to both pictures and videos, and you can also include links to the options.

Collection

Collections are very similar to carousel ads. This type of promotional content includes one video or photo that serves as the primary, with additional images with links the users can tap on and purchase your services or products.

Messenger

You’ve probably noticed that this platform has Facebook Messenger ads that appear in between your conversations when you open the Messenger app. Since the Messenger app has over 1 billion active users daily, it allows you to promote your goods and expose them to a broad audience.

Stories

Using Facebook stories to advertise is simple and only available for mobile users. As you probably already know, stories are short and only last for 24 hours. They appear over the entire screen and can become a powerful tool to reach target audiences.

Facebook offers so many diverse ways to advertise, and the types of ads we mentioned above are only the most common ones. Other ways you can promote your business include Facebook Marketplace, Facebook events, Facebook offers, augmented reality ads, instant experience, lead generation, etc.

How To Advertise On Facebook?

What are the steps of creating a successful promo campaign on Facebook? After logging into your business page, go to the Ads Manager section to start with the ad. Here’s what you should do next:

1. Choose A Campaign Objective

Having a marketing objective is of utmost importance if you want your ads to work! So start the process by setting up your campaign goals, in terms of who you want to reach, how you want to sell, and what you want to achieve overall. Facebook offers you 11 different objectives, listed in 3 separate categories.

The objective you’ll choose can also affect your monthly budget for advertising, so keep that in mind. For example, if you want to drive sales, you’ll need to think of the cost per action, but if you want to increase your brand’s exposure (video views, messages, app installs, traffic), you’ll need to think about cost per Facebook CPM (impressions).

2. Set An Advertising Budget

The next step of creating a campaign is setting your budget. You can create a daily budget or a lifetime budget. How much you should spend depends on various factors, including previous experience with paid ads on other networks, whether those ads were successful, your objective, how much you can afford, how expensive your product is, etc.

Once you’re done setting a budget, you can continue to schedule when you want the ad to start and end. You can release it right away or choose a date in the future. Scheduling is an option only for the users who decide to opt for the lifetime budget alternative for their marketing campaign.

3. Choose Target Audience

Another essential step is audience targeting! Thankfully, Facebook allows you to target the ideal audience for your business, get real Facebook likes, and boost your sales. If this is your first campaign, you might need to do additional research before customizing the audience, and you might not know exactly who to target right away. Facebook offers a Custom audience alternative, made of people that have interacted with your business online, not only on this platform.

Some of the detailed targeting options you can customize include location, gender, language, education, relationship status, age, behaviors, interests, generation, etc.

The second field to use to your advantage is Connections and allows you to add or eliminate people associated with your page, event, etc.  

4. Ad Placement

This is the step when you need to look at the placement options and decide where your ads will be located. If this is your first time using this platform for marketing, the best option is Automatic Placements. In other words, Facebook will decide where the ads will be most beneficial, what type of device (mobile, desktop, both), which audience networks (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger), operating systems, location (stories, videos, messages, sites, feed).

5. Safety & Cost Control

The following section you need to optimize is Brand Safety. Is there anything your brand doesn’t agree with, and you think your potential customers shouldn’t see? You can block pages, videos, websites, and much more.

Once you’re done with the safety, it’s time to work on your bidding strategy. There are two bidding options to choose from: manual bidding and automatic bidding. In other words, you can be the one to set your bids, or you can let Facebook decide what the optimal amount is.

6. Launch The Ad

Once you’ve set up all the previous steps, you can start working on the ad content. In the Ads section, you can use your knowledge in ad types to determine whether you want an image, video, carousel, poll, messenger, story ad, or another format.

7. Follow The Metrics

The quality score, formerly known as relevance score, is used to determine the success of your ads. If you’ve created a Facebook group or page a while ago and used ads for a long time, you probably know what works best for your brand. However, if you’re a beginner, you can use all the insight you can get. After releasing the campaign, you should open the Account Overview section to check metrics such as engagement rates (post engagement, likes), impressions, conversion rates (cost per conversion), click-through rates, actions on mobile apps, desktop activity, etc.

How Much Does It Cost To Advertise On Facebook & Main Factors That Affect Facebook Ads Cost

What is the average cost of an ad campaign, and how can you plan your marketing budget? Although it’s tough to calculate the advertising costs beforehand because it depends on many factors, there is a list of average prices to help you create an estimate. Below you’ll find a Facebook CPC average for ads in the third quarter of 2020:

  • Reach: $1.03
  • Link Clicks: $0.16
  • Lead Generation: $0.67
  • Impressions: $0.98
  • Conversions: $0.25

Since we mentioned that numerous factors influence whether you’ll go for the lowest cost, custom one, or another cost you had planned, let’s find out which elements have an impact. First of all, the final price will depend on where you’ll decide to place the ad. Next, the bidding strategy and relevance will also be influential. Finally, audiences that competitors often target will pose a higher cost than audiences that aren’t targeted as often.

5 Useful Tips For Running Facebook Ads

Facebook advertising is a complex topic, and the beginning can be quite challenging with many unknowns. However, if you follow the guide we created and these valuable tips, the experience will become easier and more efficient:

  1. Use different channels: you don’t have to stick to only Facebook when creating your strategy. This platform allows you to share the ads to various other channels, including Instagram, Audience Network, etc. It also allows you to target mobile, desktop users, or both. By following this tip, your business will reach a much wider audience.
  2. Use Google Analytics to track your Facebook Ads: Google offers you a free service to help you track the success of your ads on Facebook. Another great tip we have to mention is to combine Facebook and Google Ads and get the best of both worlds.
  3. Test, test, test: There’s no need to post the same type of ads at the same time every time you promote on this platform. If you want to figure out what works best for your brand, change the posting times, format, etc. Start by posting the same ad at different times, then experiment with the format.
  4. Use click-to-Messenger formats: An easy way for your customers to get in touch is through a click-to-Messenger ad. When your potential clients click on the ad, Facebook will take them to your messenger, where you can set an automated message to answer the most common questions, and you’ll reply to their inquiries. Chatting with users brings them a step closer to purchasing your products.
  5. Use the Facebook Ad Library: Did you know that there’s an Ad Library on Facebook? It’s the perfect place to search for inspiration! When you visit the library, the platform will show you current ads, so you can scroll through them, find competitors, and get a general idea of what you should be doing as a part of your strategy.

Conclusion

After reading all about how to advertise on Facebook, do you think you can create a successful campaign to get real Facebook likes, sell more, and raise brand awareness? Using different ad types and following the step-by-step guide will help you become more comfortable adding this platform to your marketing strategy and using its vast directory of users. The cost of advertising might appear high for beginners and small businesses; however, a winning campaign can skyrocket you to fame. Now, all you need to do is go over this blog once again and head to Facebook to start creating a campaign.

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