How to run Facebook Ads 2022: The Only Guide you need to build your brand

Facebook ads are arguably one of the essential parts of any Digital Marketing Campaign. Being the largest Social Media Platform of a kind, no business can ignore Facebook while designing its Digital Marketing campaign.

No matter what product or service you offer, it’s highly likely that you will find your target audience on Facebook. But there is a catch! Facebook has littered with all kinds of people & every one of them is not your target audience. So it’s critical to ensure a specific group of people views your message.

Enter Facebook ads. Facebooks ads are the best option to get your message across to the right target audience. Since the introduction, Facebook ads have proven they’re worth every now & then, establishing them as an inevitable organ of every Facebook marketing campaign.

In this detailed guide to Facebook ads, I have discussed different types of Facebook ads, creating a Facebook ad & Facebook ads tips & tricks.

It’s going to be a long journey, so get ready to dive deep into the world of Facebook ads!

Let’s begin.

What are Facebook ads?

Facebook is a free platform where anyone can post their message for free. But there is no way of telling who will view the particular post. Out of 3 billion active users, anyone can see that post & none of the viewers may be your target audience.

That’s where Facebook ads come into play. Facebook ads are “Paid” posts that you can place on Facebook & decide precisely who will view your post. Facebook’s algorithm is so robust that it lets you choose age, gender, demography, location, & Interest. Here, pay attention to the word “Paid.” To use Facebook ads, you will have to pay Facebook a certain amount.

With Facebook ads, you get to decide how much you want to pay, what user actions you want to spend, & much more. In short, Facebook ads are highly advanced & offer you an excellent opportunity to help you reach your defined target audience.

Why are Facebook ads important?

After understanding what Facebook ads are, let’s take a look at the benefits of using Facebook ads for your Digital Marketing Campaign.

Micro-targeting

As mentioned earlier, Facebook offers immense granularity for targeted ads. You can create targeted ads based on behaviour, age range, gender, language, location & interest. Such extensive Micro-targeting is critical as it helps you eliminate the possibility of irrelevant individuals seeing your ads.

This helps you save money & get more conversions from the leads. In short, when it comes to Micro-targeting, no platform can match Facebook.

Goal-specific ads

Every Business has some specific business goals. For e.g., some want to generate more leads, some want to grow their social presence, some want to reach more people & some want to boost their sales.

A Facebook ad can be an excellent choice for these businesses as they offer multiple Goal-specific ads. Whether you want website visits, post engagement, or generate leads, Facebook ads have provided a complete solution.

Robust Analytics

When you are spending your hard-earned money, it’s evident that you’ll want to know exactly where your funds are going. Facebook analytics offers a detailed view of your ads’ performance. You won’t have to do guesswork about what’s working & what’s not for.

You get information like weekly reach, best-performing posts, website clicks, engagement details, & even sales!

So for someone who loves to keep track of their paid digital marketing campaigns, Facebook ads are a perfect choice.

Wider Reach

Organic reach is great & every business wants to reach its maximum followers organically. But in the past few years, Facebook has constantly been reducing the organic space of business pages. The reason is apparent; Facebook wants you to spend more on paid ads. You’ll be amazed to know that only a fraction of your followers see what you post daily!

So if you are looking for a wider reach quickly on Facebook, you don’t have much of a choice. You will have to invest in Facebook ads. No matter what type of business you are in, Facebook ads will surely help you reach more people.

Rapid Lead-generation

Facebook is probably the best & quickest lead generation tool. Let me tell you how. First, you identify a group of people quickly converted into customers. Once done, you can attract like-minded individuals via an excellent feature of Facebook called “Look-alike-audience”!

This fantastic tool allows you to create a custom audience for your next ads using the data that you already have. The results from these features are exceptional.

What are the different types of Facebook ads?

After understanding how powerful Facebook ads can be, let’s understand the different Facebook ad formats.

Image ads

These are among the simplest yet most potent forms of Facebook ads that you can start with. Image ads are easy to create & boost. All you have to do is promote your existing post or create a new image ad.

But this doesn’t mean image ads need to be simple & boring. You can add a pinch of creativity & it makes it more attractive.

Video ads

Multiple pieces of research prove that video is the best marketing medium for any social media platform. The same goes for Facebook Video ads. You can run them on News Feed & Stories to garner maximum engagement.

Depending on your need, these video ads can be either in GIF format or standard video. Video ads offer maximum flexibility & room for creative ads.

Poll ads

Polls are a great way to improve your viewer’s engagement with your ad. Facebook offers two option poll ads for mobile devices linked with the video or image. Separate links can be added to each choice & when a viewer clicks the link, a response will be generated.

You and the viewer can both see the total responses of the poll later.

Carousel ads

If you want to showcase multiple products or services in a single ad or different features of a single product, carousel ads are a perfect choice. You can showcase up to 10 additional images in a single carousel ad.

With a “Shop Now” button at the bottom & a separate link for each image, you can directly generate sales via this adoption.

Slideshow ads

Video ads are great, but the problem is they consume a lot of data. This will make some viewers ditch your video ad, even before it loads. The solution is Slideshow ads created using still images but have eye-catching motion, making them similar to video ads but with a lot less data consumption.

As they are easy to load, they offer more engagement & attract attention.

Lead ads

If you are looking for more people for newsletter subscriptions, signing them up for new products, or collecting contact details, Lead ads can do the job for you. These mobile-only ads are designed to make it easy for your viewers to share their contact details with you.

With their simplicity & efficient nature, they have become an integral part of any Facebook Marketing Campaign.

Dynamic Ads

Dynamic ads are designed especially for promoting the products & services that your viewer might be interested in. Let’s say someone visited your eCommerce store & added a pair of headphones but ultimately ditched the idea of placing the order.

With Dynamic ad, you can show the advertisement of those Headphones, reminding them subconsciously to complete that order.

Dynamic ads are highly targeted & have proven to offer maximum conversions to businesses.

Messenger ads

Brands are already using this ad format to engage with 1.3 billion strong messenger users. There is no rocket science behind creating a messenger ad. All you have to do is choose Messenger as your desired placement for the particular ad.

Another option is to use Click-to-Messenger ads on Facebook feeds. Here is a call to action button that will take the viewer directly to Facebook Messenger to place the order.

Stories ads

People are extensively using their smartphones on the go & the best way to connect with them is to offer content they can consume quickly. Stories ads are specifically designed to target mobile users as it helps you deliver vertical video content with better engagement as compared to other ad formats.

AR ads

Augmented Reality is taking the world by storm & the goes with Facebook ads. Augmented reality ads are the next big thing in Facebook Paid Ad universe. By using filters & animation, you can improve viewer interaction on a much larger scale.

For e.g., with AR ads, viewers can check how a pair of shades will look on them or how a pair of shoes will fit in. Cosmetic Brands can offer custom filters to the viewers for taking selfies & sharing them on their own Facebook pages, promoting User Generated Content.

So if you are looking for something futuristic, Augmented Reality Ads are an excellent choice.

Apart from the formats mentioned above, there are a few other options, like Instant Experience Ads & Collection ads.

Long story short, Facebook offers a massive range of ad formats, depending on your goals & target audience.

How to create your first Facebook ad?

After understanding everything about Facebook ads, now it’s time to get into the game. Creating a powerful & efficient Facebook ad might sound daunting, but it is not. All you have to do is follow a few simple steps & you are good to go.

Here is the step-by-step process on how to run Facebook Ads:

Creating a Campaign:

Step 1: Build a Strategy

This is the first thing you need to do once you decide to create a Facebook ad. Without a robust strategy in place, you won’t be able to get the desired outcome from your ad. As there are many options & choices with Facebook ads, without a strategy, there is a possibility that you might be dazzled completely.

So before you create an ad, ask these questions to yourself:

• What is the Goal of my Ad campaign?
• Which product or service will I promote?
• Who will be my target audience
• How my target audience perceives the product or service I am targeting
• Do they currently use my product?
• What problem do my potential customers face & how can I help them?

Step 2: Set your Goal

Once you are ready with the answers to all the above questions, it’s time to set the goal of your ad campaign. This is vital as once your goal is clear, you can easily measure the success of your campaign.

E.g., you want to increase your website traffic via your ad campaign. So set the Goal whether you want to increase the traffic by 2x, 3x, or 5x. This is just an example; your goal can be anything like:

• Increasing your mobile app downloads
• Improving your online presence
• Generating more leads for your business
• Boost your likes & followers on Facebook
• Improve your online sales
• Getting registrations for seminars
• Boosting New letter subscription

Once your goals are set, it will be easy for you to get the job done effectively.

Step 3: Log in to Facebook Ads Manager

Once you Login to Facebook Ads Manager, you will see the page as shown in the below image. Here, you can choose to create a Facebook Campaign, Ad sets, or Ad.

Once you click on the green “Create” button below the Campaign, you will see a dialogue box with multiple campaign objectives.

Step 4: choose the Campaign Objective

This is the most crucial part of creating a Facebook ad campaign. Choosing the right objective will ensure that you will get the best outcome from your campaign. The Objectives are divided broadly into three categories.

• Awareness: If your objective is to boost your Brand’s awareness, you can choose this option. Either you can improve the reach of your post, or you can build Brand awareness by selecting this type of campaign. Research suggests that awareness ads work best for you if you are tight on budget.
• Consideration: If you want your viewers to think about your Brand & compel them to consider taking some action, this objective is the right choice. The consideration can be anything like sending people to your website, prompting app downloads, generating leads via form fill-up, or boosting engagement via interaction.
• Conversion: If you want to get direct sales from your ad campaigns, this is the objective you should choose. Whether you want more conversions, Catalouge Sales, or Boost your online store’s traffic, select his dream. Let’s say you select the Lead Generation campaign. Once you choose it, you’ll be asked to name your campaign as shown below (it’s optional, but it’s better to name it for convenience).

Step 5: Adding the Campaign Details

Once you name the Campaign & continue, you will be redirected to the next page. Here, you will have to fill in other details like if your ad belongs to Special Category, whether you want to opt for A/B Testing, & whether you want to optimize your Campaign budget.

I always prefer opting for A/B Testing, as it offers me a better opportunity to check which of my two campaigns works better for me.

Step 6: Budget & Scheduling

After filling in other campaign-specific information, you will have to select the “Budget & Scheduling.” Here you can choose whether you want to set up a “Daily Budget” or “Lifetime” budget & the exact amount you want to spend.

Apart from this, you will have to schedule the Start date of your campaign & the End Date (which is optional). Once you are done, click on Setup ad account.

Creating Ad set

Step 1: Naming your Ad set

Once your campaign is ready, it’s time to name your Ad Set. This will help you in creating & using a Lookalike audience. The name of your Ad Set should be such that it gives you detailed information about the audience.

Step 2: Choose the traffic destination

Whether you want to direct your audience to your website, App Messenger account, or WhatsApp, you can do so in this step.

There is also an option of adding Dynamic creative. This is very interesting as every time the same individual sees your ad, they will see a new creative.

Step 3: Selecting the Target Audience

This is probably the most crucial part of creating a Facebook ad campaign. Facebook offers immense options while defining the Target Audience & you must leverage this opportunity.

Choose Information like the location of your Target Audience, their age group, gender, & Languages. Going a step further, you can also do detailed targeting where you can include or exclude demographic details, interests, & behaviour.

Once you have finalized the audience, save it & move ahead.

Step 4: Choose your Ad Placement

The next step is to choose the platform to display your ad. Facebook offers two options: either you can let Facebook decide where to place your ad, or you can select Manual Placement.

In my opinion, it is better to go to Manual Placement as you know better where your target audience will be. Select the platforms you want your ad to display & check the preview. The options include Facebook Newsfeed, Instagram feed, Instagram Explore, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram shop, Facebook groups feed & much more.

Step 5: Optimize your Facebook Ad

Now, if you are wondering how to optimize Facebook ads, follow this simple step. For e.g., as you have selected a Lead generation ad, it will be optimized for lead generation. Here you can impose cost control where Facebook will spend only a specified amount on a single lead & not more than that.

Setting up your Ad

Once your Ad Set is ready, it’s time to set up your ad:

Step 1: Name your Ad

Naming your Ad is equally essential as naming your Ad Set. So make sure you follow the same strategy while naming your ad.

Step 2: Choose the Format

Once you have named your Ad, it’s time to select the format for your ad. It can be a single Video/image collection or Carousel. Make sure you choose the format that best displays your product or services.

Step 3: Adding Media

Once you have selected the format for your Ad, it’s time to upload media. Click on the “Add Media” option & upload the media.

Step 4: Write a killer copy

Once you are done with uploading media, the last thing that you need to do is write a killer copy. When anyone views your ad, you have a fraction of seconds to attract their attention, deliver your message & convert them.

So it’s essential to write a copy that gets you the best results. Be specific, brief & precise in your words. Don’t confuse your readers & try to match the Search Intent of the potential customers. Make sure you fill every detail in the “Primary Text,” “Headline,” & “Description,” along with the “Call to Action” button.

Once all these details are filled in, you are ready to launch your ad. Go ahead & click on Confirm. Once your ad is published, you can track its performance on the Ad manager page. And if you feel something needs alteration or something can be better, you can always edit your entire campaign, Ad set, or Ad itself.

There is no ideal time period to keep your ads running. But as per my experience, it is always a good idea to keep your Facebook ad running for at least 3 days. That’s when you will get the best results.

What are the best tools for Facebook Ads?

Check out the list of some of the best tools for Facebook ads that I use personally:

• AdEspresso
• Qwaya
• AdRoll
• Hootsuite
• Driftrock
• Facebook Ads Manager
• Revealbot
• AdStage

Final Thoughts

Facebook ads are one of the best marketing tools available for businesses. They offer excellent results & better ROI as compared to other digital marketing practices. So no matter what type of business you are running, having a robust Facebook Marketing strategy can be a game-changer.

I hope this detailed guide on Facebook ads will prove extremely helpful to you. Why not share your thoughts by tagging us on your favourite social media channel, looking forward to hearing from you?

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