Facebook Marketing 101: Facebook Advertising

In my last post, we covered the foundations of your Facebook Marketing strategy – your “why”, targeting, and what to post. Today, it’s all about Facebook advertising and what to look for when measuring your efforts.

Everyone is doing Facebook advertising so, honestly, you may as well too. With Facebook’s algorithm, it’s almost a requirement to boost some posts in order for your content to be seen. But don’t worry – it will not bust your marketing budget.

On Facebook, desktop ads have 8.1x higher click-through rates while mobile ads have 9.1x higher click-through rates than normal web ads. Social media advertising is the most cost-effective way to advertise in this day and time, and Facebook leads the way with various, and amazing, options available to businesses.

Here are some easy steps to setting up a Facebook Ad:

Step 1: Figure out what you are promoting and select an ad type.

When running a Facebook ad, you need to know what you are promoting and why you are promoting it (much like your overall social media and/or Facebook strategy). There are three decisions to make:

1. What are you promoting?
2. Will your ad run via auction or reach and frequency?
3. What type of ad will you choose? (Hint: Awareness ads are best for small budgets)

Step 2: Select an audience

Selecting your audience is the most important part – more important than the ad itself. When selecting your audience, you are narrowing in to target the ideal customer/client. Your choices are to either:

1. Create an audience from the options you are given (which can make unlimited combinations).
2. Use a custom audience.
3. Use a lookalike audience.

Step 3: Ad Placement

Your choices for placement are:

1. Desktop
2. Desktop Right Side
3. Mobile
4. Instagram
5. Audience Network (this lets you extend your ad campaigns beyond Facebook to reach your audiences on mobile apps, mobile websites and videos. We use the same Facebook targeting, measurement and delivery to make sure each ad on Audience Network helps you reach your campaign goals at the most cost-effective price.)
6. Instant Articles (See more here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/825186870955247 )
7. In-stream Video

If you’re not sure, Facebook will recommend using the default placements for your objective:

1. Brand awareness (including Reach & Frequency buying): Facebook and Instagram
2. Engagement (including Reach & Frequency buying): Facebook and Instagram
3. Video views (including Reach & Frequency buying): Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network
4. App installs: Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network
5. Traffic (for website clicks and app engagement): Facebook and Audience Network
6. Product catalog sales: Facebook and Audience Network
7. Conversions: Facebook and Audience Network

For more information on ad placements, visit: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/175741192481247?helpref=related

Step 4: Set an ad budget and schedule

Ah, the budget. Here’s where you determine how much you are going spend for your ad. You have two choices: daily budget (how much you spend per day) or lifetime budget (how much you want to spend for the entire campaign). Yes, you can run an ad for as little as $1/day but not every ad will let you do that. Here are the daily spend minimums:

• For an ad set that gets charged for impressions, then its daily budget must be at least $1 a day
• If the ad set gets charged for clicks, likes, video views, or post engagement, then its daily budget must be at least $5 a day
• The ad set gets charged for low frequency events like offer claims or app installs, then its budget must be at least $40 a day

For more information on ad spend minimums, visit: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/203183363050448

Step 5: The ad

Now the second-most important part of the whole process – creating your ad. You can choose an existing post as your ad or you can create one from scratch. If you are creating an ad from scratch, you have 5 formats to choose from:

Note: Formats will vary based on the ad objective you have chosen.

Step 6: Track your ad

How do you know if you Facebook advertising is working (or did work)? You can view the results of your ads in the Campaign Dashboard and view each ad (as shown above). You can customize your reports through Columns and Breakdown.

If you’d like a more detailed guide to Facebook Advertising, you can download my Facebook Advertising 101 Guide here.

Of course, how do I know if my Facebook advertising efforts are working?

Before measuring your efforts, you have to know what your ROI and KPIs are. Not all social media success is measured in money. So, welcome to Facebook Analytics!

There are many programs on the web that can pull detailed information for you about your Facebook page and your Facebook content (Sprout Social, Simply Measured, etc.), but Facebook Insights work just as well. Here are some main metrics to track:

Engagement

• Clicking a link, sharing your post, making a reaction, or leaving a comment
• The more people interact with your content, then the more they will see it and the more it will show up in Facebook’s algorithm because it signals to Facebook it’s popular.

Reach 

The number of people your content is seen by by either paid or organic efforts.

Impressions

How many times your posts were seen (does include multiple views by a single person).

On your website

How much traffic Facebook is referring to your site. You can view this in Google Analytics.

Page Likes & Follows

Look for growth each month. Give yourself a goal of 5-10% growth each month.

Video Metrics to track

• Retention – how long people are watching
• Engagement

Advertising Metrics to track

• CTR (click-thru-rate). Average across all industries is 0.9%. When Facebook sees your ads are getting impressions but no clicks, it logically assumes your audience doesn’t find the ad relevant. This can result in paying more per click and overall poor performance.
• CPC (cost per click) & CPM (cost per thousand impressions). Average CPC across all industries is $1.72.
• CPA (cost per action). Average cost per action across all industries is $18.68.
• Ad frequency

Facebook Marketing is not all that hard and it’s easy to manage. Here are some tips to wrap everything up:

• Schedule Posts on the Page or through a program such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social.
• Check analytics at least once per week.
• Have a Facebook advertising budget.
• Do not be afraid to go out of the box and try something new!

Facebook can be a great place for your business to see success in the social sphere. It’s full of potential and endless possibilities.

Did I leave anything out? If you have questions about your Facebook strategy, contact me or comment below!