Facebook 101: How To Setup An Ad In 5 Simple Steps

Getting Started With Facebook Ads

Facebook is not a one size fits all type of marketing. They give so many options on various items that it tends to confuse a lot of people especially those who may not be quite as technical as others.

Before we get into how to create an ad let’s just remember some basic marketing principles. These principles apply no matter what platform you are using. Facebook is really no different than direct mail or billboards or T.V. You have to address the same issues and use the same psychology.

4 Universal Marketing Principles

Problem – Agitate – Solve; Regardless of what you are selling or promoting this is arguably the best marketing advice ever. Identify your markets problem, give them something to think about as to why it’s an ongoing problem and then provide the solution. Validate your idea – You can have an awesome idea but if no one is willing to buy from you, it does not matter how wonderful your whizbang gadget or coaching program is. Your Message has to match your Market. You not only must have a great product or service but you have to be able to identify the ideal market and be able to reach them. The good news is Facebook can reach most markets but the bad news is you are interrupting their ‘escape from reality’ time so you need a very powerful message. You must have a unique selling proposition which can be summed up in one or two sentences. This is what differentiates you from competitors and gives the potential customer a reason to buy from you instead of them.

Start With The End In Mind

Let’s get down to the ad itself and how to get going with Facebook. Like all other marketing you want to begin with the end in mind. What exactly do you want your potential customer to do?

Buy a product

Sign up for your newsletter

Download a free report

Complete a survey

Etc…

Once you know this you can create a Facebook ad customized for this objective.

For Your First Ad Use The Facebook Ads Manager

Now essentially there are two ways to start a Facebook Ad. One is through the simpler Facebook Ads Manager and the second is through Power Editor. The Power Editor provides more options and allows bulk editing.

Since we are trying to get your ad up and going quickly we will focus on the Ads Manager. If you want additional information on the Power Editor I’ll be glad to notify you when my updated complete guide to using the Power Editor is ready by going here.

Here are the steps with screenshots to creating your ad –

Step 1 – Go to Facebook Ads Manager and choose your objective.

Facebook does provide 10 objective options. When you select one, this will let Facebook know which Ad Options to give you later on.

Hint: By far most of the time selecting Send People To Your Website is going to be used the majority of the time. It is sort of a ‘catch-all’ selection and gives you the ability to get the potential customer out of Facebook and into your world.

For our purposes here we will use the Send People To Your Website option.

This will now open up an area to enter the URL of the website you are promoting. When you enter the URL you will have a chance to name the campaign and add your tracking ‘pixel’. If you don’t know what a pixel is or don’t have one setup it is not necessary.

Pixels are advanced techniques and very helpful in reporting as well as retargeting potential customers. You definitely want to use those later on but as Mr. Miyagi once said “First learn stand. Then learn fly.”

Step 2 – Setup your audience and your budget.

Remember when we talked about message to market matching. Here is your chance to define your target audience.

For now you will ignore the option at the top ‘Custom Audiences’. This is an advanced technique but another one you will want to learn at a later date.

Key Terms

Demographic – Where they are, age, gender, married, work, financial, etc…

Interests – What pages they have liked, what their activities and interests are.

Behaviors – Purchase behavior and intents.

Select your location, age, gender and there are a ton of other demographic options should you need them. Also, from here you can input interests and behaviors by just free from typing or there will a menu selection to narrow your audience.

You should note that even though there are a lot of options not all options are available for all countries. When you start the selection process if you change the country this may restrict or eliminate the use of certain behaviors or demographics.

Once you have defined your audience there is a check box so you can save it for future use. It’s always good to save it for easy reference and implementation of your next ad for this group.

Next is your budget which can be either daily or lifetime. Typically daily will be better initially and then you can select your schedule so you can run it for a few days and evaluate your results.

Optimization will be defaulted to Link Clicks to Your Website which is fine. Then you have a choice on Bid Amount; either Automatic or Manual.

Automatic lets Facebook set the bid.

Manual allows you to place a bid based on what they are worth to you.

Ad scheduling can only be done if you have selected a lifetime budget. This can be useful if you are say targeting to people who work 9-5 and they won’t be able to see your ads until after 5pm. For your initial ads you can just leave it set to ‘Run Ads All The Time’.

Delivery type can only be changed from standard if you are using a manual bid. Standard allows Facebook to space the ads throughout the day. Accelerated shows the ads as quick as possible. This is important if you have something time sensitive and want to get the ads out as quick as possible. This will also use up your daily budget quicker.

Now you are ready to name your ad set and click the ‘Choose Ad Creative’ button at the bottom.

After All That You Are Finally Ready To Create The Actual Ad

Step 3 –

From here you are selecting whether or not you want a single image or a video or if you would like to input multiple images.

Images Hint: The maximum amount of text you can have in a given image is 20% – If you use more than this your ad may not get approved. You can check your image by going to Facebooks grid tool: https://www.facebook.com/ads/tools/text_overlay

Most of the time a single great image will do just fine. A good rule of thumb is if the people you are marketing to have little or no idea who you are, you can leave a picture of yourself out and opt instead for something more indicative of what you are promoting. Even if you are a coach or consultant this holds true.

Once you have selected an image you can scroll down and will then input a few things which I want to go over in some detail.

Connecting your Instagram account – This is a relatively new feature and for your first ad I would leave it out. Marketing to people on Instagram does not have enough data to know if it will be effective as a general tool. Save your money for now and use it just toward Facebook.

Remove Instagram as a placement as show in the image above and also remove on the bottom right along with the Audience Network.

You can keep the Desktop Right Column but often it does not yield nearly as good of results as the News Feed.

Time to Write a Compelling Headline and Some Great Copy

Step 4 – Next up is your Headline – It must be compelling. Do not put a lame headline with some vague generalization. Be specific and be bold. Asking a question is good.

Example: “Would You Like To Know How To Overcome Your Fear of Flying Forever in Only 3 Minutes?”

Now input the Text of the ad. You can be kind of wordy here. Using bullet points or a numbered list outlining the benefits to your customer is where you should focus. You don’t want to talk about how awesome your product or service is. Only state the benefit to the customer.

Selecting a Call to Action Button: You can expand this and get several options. Pick the one that applies to you but if you are unsure, choosing ‘Learn More’ is a good all-purpose button.

Once you have completed this you can choose some advanced options which will allow you to put a little more text into your ad and a couple of other things. However, you can really skip that for now and just hit ‘Place Order’.

Guess what? You’re done creating your first Facebook Ad.

But you’re not done with a key component –

Step 5 –

You do need to check on your ad to make sure it got approved. Facebook will send you an email to whatever email address they have and let you know. Typically these are approved or disapproved within a few minutes to a few hours but sometimes can take longer.

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see a response instantaneously.

Never-the-less once it is approved and running you are all set from a creation standpoint.

You don’t want to forget the crucial part of following up by checking on how your ad is doing. There are a lot of numbers out there- metrics as the fancy corporate types call them but most do not really mean much for most.

Here Are The Most Important Numbers When Getting Started

Reach – The number of people who ‘see’ your ad

CTR (Click Through Rate) – The number of people who actually clicked on your ad.

Conversion Rate – The percentage of people who see the ad to those who clicked.

Hint: You also want to know how many people clicked on your ad versus how many signed up for your product or service. You can then determine your return on investment and also you will now have a ‘control’ to measure other ads or landing pages against.

Keep On Learning

Don’t forget to learn some of the advanced techniques I mentioned and improve your skills by practice inputting more ads.

Also, it would really benefit you to learn some basic copywriting skills and how to write a compelling headline.

There are some great resources out there and tons of great information. Some of it does not work as well as others so before I actually use information someone is giving I ask about their success. Specifics!

Let me know if this worked for you and if you got hung up. If you want me to actually review the ad and give you some feedback I’ll be glad to do so for the first 50 people who send an email to facebookad@onefocusmarketing.com

Just contact me before you do the ad so I can get some basic knowledge of your market and product or service.

____________________________________________________________

Ben Blackmon

Facebook Ad Coach

www.OneFocusMarketing.com

ben@onefocusmarketing.com