As a small business, there’s no need to spend a lot of money on advertising. In the digital age, there are many free/low-cost methods you can use to market your business effectively. One of the biggest opportunities is through Facebook Ads.
It is very affordable to advertise using Facebook Ads and creating high-converting ads on this platform is not difficult. When it comes to making Facebook Ads, there are two options: Ads Manager or Power Editor. Facebook Ads Manager is more preferred by small businesses.
Here are some quick tips to get you started on Facebook’s Ads Manager:
Develop a Proper Social Media Advertising Strategy First
Before you start using Facebook Ads Manager, you should come up with a proper strategy first. Without one, you may be confused by all the available options and end up making an ad campaign that fails to target anyone.
For every campaign you are going to make, answer the following questions first:
- Which product/services are you promoting specifically?
- Who are you targeting?
- Will your target audience be warm or cold?
- How will they use what you are offering?
- Will they have any objections?
- What stage of the funnel do they fall in exactly?
- What’s the aim of the campaign?
- Do you want sales, leads, website traffic, brand awareness or something else?
Without a strategy that has an aim of what you wish to accomplish, it will be hard to create powerful ads. Start with a game plan first.
Define Your Advertising Objective
When creating a Facebook Ad for your small business, the very first thing you’ll do is to pick your objective. You need to choose the correct objective because Facebook optimizes ad placements by brands based on the chosen objective. Sometimes, the correct objective can reduce your CPC and lead to improved results.
The available objectives that you can choose from include:
- App installs
- Brand awareness
- Catalogue sales
- Conversions
- Engagement
- Lead generation
- Messages
- Reach
- Store visits
- Traffic
- Video views
Target Your Audience
It is important to start ad campaign creation with a solid idea of your target audience. You can choose from the following:
- Custom audiences: Target specific people on your email list, or those who have taken specific actions on your Website, Facebook page or Instagram profile page.
- Lookalike audiences: Replicate characteristics from your business’ custom audience.
- Connection targeting: Determines if you would like your advertisements to be viewed by people who are or aren’t associated with your brand.
- Demographic targeting.
- Interest or behavior targeting.
Decide Where You Want Your Advertisement to Be Displayed
On the ad set level you will need to choose the sort of placements, applications and devices you want would like your advertisement to be displayed on. You can pick desktop display only, mobile only, or go for both mobile and desktop displays.
Set a Budget
In the section that follows, you can select your budget, schedule ads, and choose an optimization method. With Facebook Ads you can opt for a lifetime budget or a daily budget. Moreover, you can set your advertisements to run indefinitely or start and end on scheduled dates.
Final Thoughts
Advertising using Facebook Ads for a small business is easy, affordable and effective. Facebook offers a lot of choices and once you are familiar with how to use the system, this can work to your advantage. As long as you define a good plan before starting, creating ad campaigns will be much easier and you’ll able to create stronger ads.
Need help with your Facebook ads? L7 Advertising can help.