The Complete Beginner's Guide to Facebook Advertising

Facebook ads can be a powerful marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. In this beginner's guide, we'll cover everything you need to know to start using Facebook ads effectively.

Facebook advertising allows businesses to show ads to their ideal customers based on detailed targeting options. With over 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook provides an unparalleled platform to drive brand awareness, website traffic, engagement, and conversions.

In this guide, we'll cover the key benefits of Facebook ads as well as the main campaign objectives and key terminology you need to understand. You'll also learn best practices for setting up and optimizing campaigns for success. Follow along to learn how to make the most of Facebook advertising.

Key Benefits of Facebook Ads

- Massive reach - Over 2 billion monthly active users provides a huge potential audience. You can target very specific demographics and interests.

- Precise targeting - Options like location, age, gender, interests, behaviors, and connections allow you to hone in on your ideal customer.

- Measurable results - Track impressions, clicks, conversions, likes, shares and more to gauge campaign performance and optimize efforts.

- Retargeting capabilities - Create ads and target people who have already engaged with your brand for additional conversions.

- Flexible bidding - Choose between cost per impression, cost per click, cost per action bidding strategies. Set budgets and schedules.

Facebook advertising is a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes to reach their target audience and achieve their marketing goals. But with so many options and features available, it can be tough to know where to start.

We have managed hundreds of Facebook and Instagram campaigns for businesses of all sizes, and we know what it takes to achieve success.

If you're a business owner and ready to take your Facebook advertising to the next level, schedule a meeting with us today. We'll help you create a custom campaign that meets your specific needs and budget, and we'll manage everything from start to finish so you can focus on running your business.

Click here to schedule a meeting and learn more about our Facebook ads management service.

Facebook Ads Campaign Objectives

Choosing the right campaign objective is crucial because it aligns your ads to your core marketing goals. The objective you pick determines how Facebook will optimize and deliver your ads, as well as how it will measure and report on performance.

If your goal is brand awareness, but you choose a conversion objective, your ads won't be optimized to reach the most people and build brand recognition. Setting the wrong objective can waste budget and effort. Be thoughtful about which objective best maps to the results you want to achieve.

Facebook provides a range of campaign objectives to match your marketing goals:

Brand Awareness

Brand awareness campaigns increase visibility and reach. They aim to get your brand, products, or services in front of new audiences.

Choose awareness objectives when you want to:

• Increase brand visibility

• Reach new audiences

• Grow brand recognition

Traffic

Send people to your website, app, or other online content. Traffic campaigns help drive visitors for sales, sign-ups, and more.

Use traffic objectives to:

• Drive visits to your website

• Increase app installs

• Promote content and blog posts

Engagement

Spark interactions and increase following. Aim for more post likes, comments, shares, and followers with engagement objectives.

Select engagement objectives if you want to:

• Get more post likes and reactions

• Increase followers and community

• Spark comments and shares

Conversions

Optimize campaigns to get people to take specific actions - conversions. This includes sales, lead generation, app installs, event sign-ups, and more.

Pick conversion objectives when you want to:

• Sell products directly

• Generate leads or inquiries

• Promote events and registration

• Drive app downloads

Video Views

Promote video content to get the most views and build your audience. Video view campaigns help videos gain traction.

Use video view objectives to:

• Maximize views on video content

• Build viewership of videos

• Increase watch time for videos

Should I start with conversion campaigns for my new brand's Facebook ads?

Using conversion campaigns can work for a new brand, but it may not be the most effective strategy to start with. Here are a few considerations on using conversion objectives for a new brand:

• Conversion campaigns aim to drive immediate actions, which can be challenging when people aren't familiar with your brand yet. People are less likely to purchase, sign up, or download from a brand they've never heard of before.

• For a new brand, awareness and engagement objectives often make more sense initially. Building brand recognition and getting engagement establishes familiarity.

• With limited advertising budget, it may be better to focus first on brand building rather than trying to optimize for conversions right away.

• Conversion objectives may drive a high cost per result since brand recognition is low. The same budget could get more traction toward awareness goals first.

• Once a brand has established some visibility and following, conversion campaigns become more viable and worthwhile.

So while conversion objectives can still work for new brands, it may not be the most efficient approach right away. Taking the time to create awareness and engagement can lay the foundation for better conversion campaign performance down the road. Starting with softer objectives allows budget to go further when starting out.

Key Facebook Ads Terminology

Here are some key terms to understand:

- Ad set - Container for campaigns with the same audience, budget, schedule, and bidding.

- Audience - The target group you want to see your ads based on demographics, interests, behaviors.

- Bid strategy - How you pay Facebook for ad results (CPC, CPM, CPA).

- Creative - The visuals, copy, and messaging of the ad itself.

- Placements - Where the ads are shown (News Feed, Instagram, etc).

- Campaign - Overarching objective you want to accomplish with your ads.

How to Create a Facebook Ad Campaign

Follow these steps to set up your first campaign:

1. Set campaign objective - Brand awareness, traffic, conversions etc based on goals.

2. Define your target audience - Location, demographics, interests, behaviors, connections. Get granular.

3. Set up ad sets - Organize ad sets with specific budget, schedule, bidding per audience.

4. Create compelling ad creative - Eye-catching visuals, clear messaging that aligns to each ad set.

5. Choose placements - News Feed, Instagram Feed, Instagram Stories, etc.

6. Set a budget and schedule - Daily, lifetime, or overall for campaign. Schedule ads for best times.

7. Select a bid strategy - Pay per impression, click, or action depending on goals.

8. Track and optimize performance - Monitor KPIs and tweak targeting, creatives, bids to improve.

Facebook Ads Best Practices

Use these tips to maximize your Facebook ad success:

- Test different audiences, creatives, strategies. Evaluate what resonates best.

- Use captivating visuals and copy. Catch attention fast and convey value clearly.

- Retarget engaged users to increase conversions.

- Track ROI not just vanity metrics. Know your true cost per result.

- Split test ad variations to find what works best.

- Be patient. It takes time for Facebook's algorithm to optimize delivery.

- Measure incrementality to see true impact of ads.

FAQs

How much do Facebook ads cost?

- Cost depends on bid strategy, competition, and results. Most pay $0.50-$2.00 per click or $10-$100+ per conversion.

How quickly do ads get approved? 

- Most ads go live within 15 minutes, though can take 1-2 days for first ad review.

Can I run ads without a Facebook page?

- No, you need an active Facebook page and ad account to run Facebook ads.

What ad formats work best?

- All formats can work, test different ones. Video and image ads often grab attention.

How often should I post?

- 2-5 ads variations per week is a good starting point to test. Change up creatives and copy.

Conclusion

With this Facebook Ads beginner's guide, you should have a solid understanding of how to utilize Facebook's advertising platform for your business. Start with clear goals, precision targeting, compelling creative and analytics-driven optimization. Monitor performance closely and iterate to improve results over time. Used strategically, Facebook ads can deliver an impressive return on investment across branding, traffic, engagement and conversion objectives.