A basic guide to Facebook ads
Facebook Advertising can be a hugely effective way of growing your business, generating sales and leads and creating a loyal client base.
There are currently more than three million businesses making use of the advertising potential of Facebook. These companies see the benefits of a network which has over a billion daily users and a means of targeting users by demographics, age, gender, location, behaviour, interests and more.
Reasons Why You Should Use Facebook Ads
Organic reach through Facebook has been in decline for years, but Facebook Ads can cash in on the network’s audience size whilst offering the potential for easily trackable campaigns, complete budgetary control, an immediate increase in traffic and instant returns on your investment.
Facebook Ads can make it simple to track your cost-per-conversion rate (which usually works out to be very cost-effective), and it is easier to use than Google AdWords. It also offers a bumper package of targeting options such as regions, towns, and income brackets, along with the ability to get to people right at the start of the buying process, often even before they realise that they need a particular product or service.
Another benefit of Facebook Ads is the potential it offers to use videos and images to capture people’s interest and increase your chances of settling your services or products.
Words of Warning
Facebook Advertising undoubtedly has many positives, but it does need to be managed and set up correctly in order to ensure that you get the most out of your investment. It is also best used for businesses with a widespread appeal, making it a poor choice for you if your business only targets a single town, for example, and for companies operating within B2C markets.
Starting Out
You can create your ads by using the the drop-down arrow found in the top right-hand corner and clicking on the link. This also offers access to more information about Facebook Advertising. The Ads Manager dashboard makes it extremely easy to create adverts and manage those already running.
Choosing the Right Ad for Your Business
One of the major decisions you need to make is about the result you want from your ads in terms of growing your business and developing your brand or taking your page forward. This will allow you to choose the right adverts to meet your needs and, regardless of the type of ad you go for, you will need to choose your objective (the ad type), define your audience and budget (your ad set) and then create the ad itself.
Types of Ads
There are 11 different types of ads you can choose from according to the results you want to achieve. These are designed to boost your posts, promote your page, direct visitors to your website, boost conversions on your company website, increase installs of your business’s app, raise app engagement, reach people close to your business location, increase attendance at an event, encourage people to claim an offer, encourage video views or collect leads.