A great thing about Facebook is that to enact a Facebook advertising strategy, you don’t have to be a successful business. Small and big businesses alike can put their strategies into play without necessarily having a huge budget.
While a bigger budget gives us more flexibility over our marketing strategies, a smaller budget can still do some good.
If you fall into the group of people who haven’t run a Facebook Ads campaign before, and perhaps don’t have the biggest budget to begin your new endeavor, don’t worry. With this guide you’ll have all the basics of Facebook Ads under your belt and getting started will be easy!
Why Run a Facebook Advertising Campaign?
This is a question we see a lot: why use Facebook Ads over other platforms? The truth is, there are a few different platforms which are perfect for paid advertising. Google Ads is by far the most dominant platform at the moment, but it’s not always the best choice for a business.
Although PPC ads are best approached with a decently high budget (several thousand at least), Facebook Ads lets you get started with as little as $10. Obviously this isn’t a good starting amount, but the point is Facebook is suitable for businesses on a smaller ad budget.
Next, Facebook has a huge number of users. This means that no matter what type of person falls into your ideal audience, you can target them with a Facebook advertising strategy.
And lastly, it’s just a really easy ad platform to use. Google Ads can be intimidating for first-time users, but Facebook Ads isn’t. Everything is laid out in a way that makes it easy to learn, and finding specific features is easy. For beginners and the more experienced advertisers, Facebook is an amazing place to run ads.
Different Types of Facebook Ads
Facebook has so many types of Facebook ads to choose from. It’s always a good idea to try a variation of ads to find out which type gets the best engagement. Here is a quick breakdown of some popular ad types, but you can get more detail from our recent post on the subject.
Video Ads
These are currently our favorite, and they’re perfect for literally any Facebook advertising strategy. Videos are entirely visual so in comparison to text ads, there’s no effort needed from customers – they just watch.
Also, we’ve found (as have various studies on Facebook Video Ads) that they get more conversions than other ad types.
Mobile App Ads
Advertising an app has never been easier. You can upload a video or some screenshots of your app at work. With those screenshots on a mobile app ad, viewers are just one tap away from downloading it.
Targeting is pretty great with this ad type too. You can specifically target iOS or Android users, smartphones or tablets, and even just users who have an active Wi-Fi connection.
Carousel Ads
This is perfect for eCommerce stores. A carousel ad lets you show off a few of your store’s products and this is interesting for one reason. You can inadvertently discover what products get the most attention from your customers.
Sure, you can judge this from sales alone, but more data is a good way to verify which products are your best sellers. You might find that one product gets a lot of clicks from the ad but isn’t getting sales, in which case you know where to improve on!
Facebook Ads Audiences
Another thing Facebook does well is its audiences. There are several different types of audiences you can build so that your Facebook advertising strategy really does take into account all marketing fronts, like retargeting.
Facebook Lookalike Audiences
What is a Facebook lookalike audience? It’s really exactly what it sounds like – an audience which looks like your target audience. This isn’t exclusive to Facebook as there are other platforms which let you target lookalike audiences, but on Facebook it’s done perfectly and can be really successful.
Facebook Ads takes data from your current target audience and comes up with another audience, similar to those you already target. The reason this works well is because if you pinpoint the perfect audience, there’s a good chance people who fall just outside of that audience or have similar interests will also prove worthwhile of targeting.
Here’s how a Facebook lookalike audience could work. You start creating a custom audience and you use a list of 25,000 previous Facebook users who converted into customers. Facebook’s algorithm will process this list, identify common traits, and identify other Facebook users who “lookalike”.
It’s definitely worth switching up your audiences every once in a while by branching out and targeting different groups. Who knows, you could discover an audience which your product/service appeals to more than your current target audience.
Facebook Custom Audiences
Next is Facebook custom audiences, and these are fantastic. There’s absolutely no reason not to familiarise yourself with these because they’re incredibly useful and will drive more customers through your Facebook advertising strategy.
A custom audience can be used for lookalike audiences as well as retargeting. Retargeting is basically targeting people who have seen your ads before but didn’t engage or go through with buying from you. Or people who did buy from you but who you want to become repeat customers. Another way of thinking about it is as your “second impression”.
You can use lists to create a custom audience. These lists can be of customers who bought from you in the past, website visitors, users who installed your app, and so on. Since you can target people who already showed interest in your ads before, this feature is invaluable.
Get Help with Your Facebook Advertising Strategy
That’s the basics of Facebook Ads and you should now have enough knowledge to jump right in. Not only is this platform ideal for any business, it’s great for aspiring and experienced marketers. It’s simple enough and has a lot of features that make it perfect for learning.
Coming up with your first Facebook advertising strategy isn’t as stressful when you understand how to set up ads, the different types of Facebook Ads you can run, how to spend the budget wisely, and the accuracy of the audience you can target.
If you still feel overwhelmed by all this, consider a Facebook Ads agency like KonvertLab. Our years of experience enable us to help businesses get the results they want from ad campaigns. All it takes is one call, which you can book at a time convenient to you, and we’ll explain what we can do for you.