Create Ad Campaign

The Easiest Guide to Facebook Ads in 2022

You could have the perfect SEO, social media, and email marketing strategy, but if you’re not investing in Facebook ads for your business, you’re leaving money on the table. Billions of people use the platform every day, and creating tailored content for them is one of the best ways to get them talking about your business and purchase products from you. Plus, Facebook has robust analytics, which gives you an in-depth insight into exactly what’s working and not, so you can modify your campaigns and replicate what works for you to boost your profits. Let’s get started with learning how to run Facebook ads for your business. 

How To Run Ads On Facebook For Your Business

Facebook ads are by far one of the most affordable and effective ways to advertise your business. And to make the most out of these ads and drive sales, you need to learn how to use Facebook ads by following the steps given below.

Step 1: Pick An Objective

An ad objective is the marketing goal or the action you want people to take when they see your ad. So, it is very necessary to pick the right one to communicate the right message and the brand voice to the audience. Here are three objectives on which most of the ads are based:

• Awareness

If you want your audience to know more about your business and how you can add value to their lives, your marketing objective is to increase brand awareness. This is a top-of-funnel ad where you are reaching out to everyone interested in your business category.

• Consideration

If you want your audience to take the next step and interact with your business by seeking out more information and engaging with you on your website, app, or in your Messenger – your marketing 

• Conversion

If the interested audience has engaged with your business and shown interest in the value that you provide, your next marketing objective should encourage them to buy or use your product.

Step 2: Select Your Audience

The type of people your ad is targeting is called the target audience. Depending on the objectives we discussed above, the audience is divided into the following three groups:

1. Core Audience
If you’ve never run ads for your business before, you’ll start with your core audience.  This type of audience can be created using the criteria given in the table below.

2. Custom Audience
Custom audiences allow you to reach customers who have already shown interest in your business. These could be people who have visited your website or used your app. The table below explains the various types of custom audiences in detail.

3. Lookalike Audience
Lookalike audience is a group of people who are similar to your current customers. You can give Facebook a source audience consisting of 1000-5000 people, which it can use to reach people with similar interests. 

Step 3: Decide Where To Run Your Ads

Based on your objective, you can run the ads on multiple platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Here are the most common ad placements Facebook offers. 

#1 – Facebook Feed

Feed ads appear when people are scrolling through their inbox, desktop, or mobile feeds. Here’s a table that explains this positioning better.  

#2 – Stories

A full-screen vertical ad appears when people open their stories on Facebook, Messenger, or Instagram. 

Video story ads have started taking off on the platform as they’re more engaging, create a connection with your audience, and help you get more conversions compared to other non-video ad formats. You can create a video story ad in under 5 minutes using InVideo’s Facebook stories template. 

– In-Stream: These ads appear before, after, or while you’re watching a Facebook video or Instagram Reels or video.

– Search Ads: Similar to Google PPC ads, these ads appear next to relevant Facebook and Marketplace results.

– Messenger Sponsored Messages: Sponsored messages allow you to send discounts, promotions, and offers to people who interact with your business on Facebook through Messenger. Check out this page to learn more about Facebook’s Sponsored Messages. 

– In-Articles: These are mobile-optimized ads that allow publishers to distribute fast-loading interactive ads to the Facebook app. Similar to feed ads, you can also select the placement of these ads on the Facebook app and desktop site. If you’d like to know more about this type of ad, check out this page on Facebook.

– Apps: These types of ads appear in external apps and help you reach people who access apps outside of Facebook and Instagram through the Audience network. You can run audience network ads only for a handful of objectives. Here are the different types of audience network ads.

Step 4: Set Your Budget

Now that you know what Facebook ad placements can work best for your business – you need to have a budget strategy to ensure you’re getting the maximum return on ad spend. To that effect, here are a few tips you can follow. 

Step 5: Pick Your Format

Facebook offers different ad formats which work very well across a wide range of devices. We’ve listed the different types of Facebook ads below.

– Photo Ads: If you want to improve your brand awareness and drive people to your website, Facebook recommends that you use photo ads. The best part is that you can create these ads quickly and still get returns as it’s effective in grabbing the user’s attention. 

– Video Ads: Video ads help drive brand awareness and drive sales, so they should be a part of your paid content marketing strategy. Many businesses don’t use video ads because they think it’s costly and time-consuming. But neither of these statements is true. 

– Stories Ads: Story ads are entertaining and make people feel connected to the community. And you should use them if you want to promote your product by making it a native part of your target audience’s experience. 

– Messenger Ads: Messenger ads show up in your target audience’s chat box as an ad. It’s your best bet if you want to interact with customers at scale and increase your sales at the lowest possible campaign costs, Messenger ads are your best option.

– Carousel Ads: Carousel Ads are made up of multiple pictures and help you highlight all the features of your product or promote multiple products at once.

Step 6: Place Your Order

Facebook uses ad auctions to determine the best possible audience for your ads once you’ve submitted the ad. And to ensure your ad comes out on the winning end, let’s understand the factors Facebook uses to determine the winners of the auction. 

#1 – Your Bid

When you create a Facebook ad, you’re participating in a global auction where you are competing with other advertisers to make sure your ad reaches its target audience.

While the auction does not depend solely on the highest bid, Facebook wants to know how interested you are in showing your ad. So, if you bid for a higher amount, Facebook will be more likely to show your ad. You can either allow Facebook to set your bid or you can do it manually.

#2 – Ad Quality And Relevance

One of the key things Facebook looks for in an ad is how relevant and useful it is to its users (your target audience). It determines relevance by taking into account the number of clicks, video views, app installs, etc., and determining the kind of feedback it gets from the audience. 

#3 – Estimated CTA Rates

Facebook estimates click-through-action rates by showing your ad to people it knows are most likely to sign up for a product like yours.

If your estimated CTA rate is low, the cost of your Facebook ad is most likely going to be higher, and you may have to increase your bid to win at the auction.

#4 – Your Target Audience

Your audience also plays a major role in determining the cost of your Facebook ad. Who your target audience is and how focused your pool is can greatly influence your ad spend on Facebook. This is because so many businesses are trying to tap into the same target audience.

#5 – Peak Season

There are months in the year when the Facebook ad costs are higher as compared to regular months, such as the holiday season. This is because the number of advertisers targeting similar audiences increases – making the cost of advertising on Facebook higher.

#6 – Placement Of Your Ad

Where your ad is placed in Facebook’s ecosystem and audience network (which includes Instagram and Messenger) is key to how much your ad will cost. Newsfeed ads get more visibility than right column ads, so a lot of advertisers will be vying for a spot there. As a result, newsfeed ads will be costlier than right column ads.

#7 – Ad Delivery Optimization 

When you choose to optimize your ad delivery, Facebook shows your ad to people in your target audience who are most likely to respond to your ad.

Step 7: Monitor The Performance

Just launching Facebook business ad campaigns doesn’t necessarily mean increased sales or a boost in engagement. You need to monitor and measure the performance of these ad campaigns to decide whether an ongoing ad campaign must continue or change its plans. Here are a few metrics that will help you understand this better. 

Cost per click (CPC): This indicator breaks down how much money you spend on each ad click.

CPM (cost per thousand impressions): This is the average cost per thousand ad impressions, based on your ad being displayed for the first time in a Facebook browsing session. 

Cost per action (CPA):  Facebook will charge you each time someone takes the action you want them to after viewing your ad. 

Conversion Rate: This metric represents the percentage of people that click on an ad and then make a purchase. 

Return On Ad Spend (ROAS): The ROAS is defined as the revenue that came from the ads divided by the amount spent on the ads and gives you an idea of the profits you made for the amount you spent.