We’ve all heard the buzz around Facebook paid advertising. People say things like “If you aren’t spending $1000 a day on paid Facebook ad’s then you haven’t entered the modern marketing world”. Well I’m not sure that applies to every affiliate on the MoreNiche network, so don’t fret! Facebook is however, a very important and powerful tool when it comes to paid advertising. So if you’re not up to speed, read on!
Getting Set Up with Facebook Paid Advertising
First things first, if you want to do Facebook paid advertising, you will need to set up a Facebook brand or fan page and a corresponding advertisement account. You can do this in your personal Facebook page or we recommend you set up a Facebook Business Manager account.
Using a Facebook Business Manager account is recommended for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it means all your ad accounts and brand pages are in one easy to access place (if you have more than one). Secondly, it means you get access to Facebook advertiser help and support from the dedicated Facebook ads team. This is a great way to ask specific questions and get help with any issues that may arise during your campaigns.
The Facebook Pixel – Remarketing & Custom Audiences Part 1
I know what you’re thinking, “this sounds a little bit advanced… I’ve only just set my accounts up!” Don’t worry. We don’t have to worry about remarketing or custom audiences quite yet, but we do need to get things in place so we can use them later on.
Facebook is a powerful and intelligent marketing tool and a lot of its power comes from it’s awesome pixel functionality. Your custom Facebook pixel is unique to you and your account, and placing it on your main website means that in future you can run adverts to people who are already familiar with your site. But it needs to gather data first! So place that bad boy on your site as soon as you can, so it can collect all the data it needs for you to run amazing campaigns!
You can find your unique Facebook advertising pixel by going to your ad account, clicking on ‘Tools’, selecting ‘Pixels’ and following the prompts on your screen.
Take a look at the screenshot below to make sure you’re in the right section of ads manager. You will also be able to check your pixel is working from this section once your pixel is installed.
For a full guide to installing your Facebook pixel, check out Facebook’s tutorial here.
Once properly installed and traffic is flowing to your website, your pixel will start collecting data about each visitor. You will be able to build custom audiences of website visitors based on pages visited and actions completed. More about this later, but for now, let’s take a look at the different ad types that facebook offers.
Facebook Ad Types And Goals
So you’ve set up your brand page, ad account and pixel. Now I hear you cry:
“JAMES! WHAT DO I DO NEXT?!”
Well, it’s time to start advertising of course!
I really can’t stress enough how much you will learn from experimenting with the different ad types, so dive in (but probably best to keep your budgets low for this).
Here’s what Facebook has to offer in terms of ad types:
Now, as you can see, Facebook has some pretty robust and varied options when it comes to the goal of your ads, and they are adding more all the time. You can keep up to date with all the latest Facebook ad lessons at Facebook Blueprint. So let’s take a look at some of the most common ad types; the ones you are probably going to be getting the most use out of with your Facebook paid advertising:
Boost your posts
This ad type lets you promote a normal status, image or link post to people already following your page, and to either a custom or targeted audience. Think of it as a super status, optimised for engagement on that post. Using this ad type will mean you are telling Facebook that you want likes, comments and shares on whichever post you are boosting. This ad type would normally be a picture, status update or similar. But it could also be a video or a link that you want to promote. These ad types are awesome for gaining attention to something new or fresh, like a blog post.
Here’s what a Boosted post looks on a live Facebook page:
Promote your page
This ad type allows you to gain more likes on your page and make people aware of your brand page. Essential if you are just starting out! Likes are a powerful drug in the world of Facebook. You may have experienced it yourself. As soon as they know you have a Facebook page – everyone wants to know how many likes it has! Truth be told, it’s not hugely important these days, especially when it comes to paid advertising. The amount of likes you have will not directly affect how successful your Facebook paid advertising will be. But having a decent amount of likes does subconsciously build trust in a brand or product when someone checks out your Facebook page. It’s worth trying to get into at least four figures.
Here’s what a promote your page ad looks on a live Facebook page:
Send people to your website
One of the most popular ad types available, unlike the boosted post, this ad type is optimised to send traffic to your website landing pages. You can choose which URL to promote and the accompanying image, as well as text to enhance your advertisement. This ad type is great for promoting content such as blog posts too, as well as opt-ins on your site, individual products or services.
Here’s what a send people to your website ad looks like on a live Facebook page:
Increase conversions on your website
Considered by some to be the best Facebook paid advertising type currently available, this powerful ad type works very much in the same way as the send people to your website ad type, but is optimised to increase conversions. It is also able to track actions on your pages via the Facebook conversion pixel (don’t worry, it’s the same pixel as the one we talked about earlier). When teamed with the Facebook pixel, this ad type can track leads, content views, searches, cart adds, purchases and more. This is currently our favourite ad type here at MoreNiche because not only is it incredibly easy to use and customise, it’s also great for measuring ROI and the impact that your campaigns are having. So make a note of this one.
Here’s what an increase conversions on your website ad looks like on a live Facebook page:
Creating Targeted Audiences
This is the best way to reach ‘new’ people on the Facebook platform. The good news is, this part stays pretty much the same no matter which ad type you are using. Facebook gives you some amazing options to get your ads in front of the right (and new) people right within the ad setup itself.
You can target by location, language, age, sex, marital status, interests, job title, and a whole other world of demographics. Interests is probably where you are going to want to start; it’s an incredibly powerful way to target your Facebook paid advertising campaigns. Thanks to Facebook’s ubiquitous appeal, you can pretty much guarantee that your customers and their interests are somewhere on the platform.
Now this is where you go to work!
You want to get your adverts in the right place, at the right price, right?
You need to go away and research, research, research your product demographic and niche in general.
Go and live inside that niche, because every piece of inside knowledge, language, topic, blog, website, movie and activity you can uncover is another option you can maybe include in your audience targeting.
For an awesome detailed look at what you can achieve with Facebook’s targeting facilities check out this article from Digital Marketer.
So what is the best way to live inside your niche? There are a number of ways to do it, but your best friend during this process will be Google, and making lists! Spend a couple of hours digging through the first few pages of Google after looking up your niche and start making a note of patterns and trends that you notice. All this can later be used to target new people and get new fresh eyes on your product or service.
Google isn’t your only friend though. You can also turn to Facebook. Ever wondered how much Facebook actually knows about you and your browsing habits? The answer is practically EVERYTHING! And luckily for us, they offer that information up to advertisers like me and you!
To access this amazing pool of targeting information you will be utilising a tool called Facebook Audience Insights. To access it, go back to the ‘Tools’ section of your ad manager account. But this time you will be choosing the option that says ‘Audience Insights’. This tool lets you harness the majority of information that Facebook has available today.
In the left hand column, enter your demographic information about your desired audience (age, sex, interests etc) and Facebook will return a myriad of incredible insights into this audience and your niche, from lifestyle characteristics, page likes and locations to purchase habits, household information and activities.
Write it all down, export or print it out, because these are all amazing nuggets of information about the market you want to dominate! This will also work for your custom audiences (more on that one in a while).
All of this information can be used to appeal to and further target your desired audience. Please don’t skimp on this step. Get your targeting right and everything else will fall into place a lot more easily. I really can’t stress it enough. Don’t worry if you don’t get it right first time. It’s really easy to go back in and edit an advert’s target audience from the Ads manager menu.
Go forth and research your target audience, choose your desired Facebook ad type and come back tomorrow to find out how to put a killer Faceook ad together in part two of our ultimate beginner’s guide to FaceBook paid advertising.
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