Once you have gone through the process of making a Facebook page for your company or brand, you are going to want to create a Facebook advertisement to get more traffic to the page itself.
Luckily, Facebook has its own built-in ad making program, so sponsoring your Facebook page is nothing short of easy.
With Facebook Ads, two things that you can be sure to do with your customized advertisement is:
- Find the perfect target audience for your company or brand
- Connect and communicate better with people who are already viewing your website
Let’s take a closer look at what this means.
Finding The Right Audience
With Facebook Ads, there are three categories of audiences used to define viewers of your Facebook page:
- Core Audiences
- Custom Audiences
- Lookalike Audiences
What is a Core Audience?
Simply put, a Core Audience is the body of people who are most likely to take in interest in your company or brand based upon attributes such as:
- Age
- Location
- Gender
- Interests
- Behaviors
If you are looking to advertise a surf shop, you do not want to make an ad directed at people who live hundreds of miles from the beach. Using the Facebook Ad Manager, you can determine what the Core Audience for your situation is likely to be.
What about a Custom Audience?
The word “custom” in Custom Audience might be a little misleading here, but what it is basically referring to is the body of people that have already shown some form of interest in your company or brand. These are people that you cannot afford to skip over in the advertising process. For instance, say most of your internet traffic comes from your website or app usage. By taking the user data from those who have viewed your website previously, you can easily connect with these customers, so that they are likely to return in the future.
And Lookalike Audience?
This is sort of a marriage of both Custom and Core Audiences. It is an audience that is based on the types of people that have already viewed your Facebook page. If your brand is attracting a large number of women between the ages of eighteen to twenty-four, then it is likely that reaching out to other women of the same age range will peak some interests.
Creating An Ad
When you are ready to make your Facebook Ad, go ahead and go to www.facebook.com/ads/create
For this process, you’ll need to make a Facebook Ads account, but it is as easy as making a few clicks on a mouse.
Objectives The first thing asked of you upon making an advertisement on Facebook will be to choose a marketing objective. This boils down to a number of options including:
- Brand Awareness (reaching out to those most likely to be naturally interested in your Facebook page)
- Reach (getting your ad seen by as many people as possible)
- Traffic (getting people to visit a site either on or off Facebook)
- Engagement (getting more people involved in your brand)
There are other more specific objectives that range from catalog sales to video views.
Finding An Audience
Once you know what the objective for your ad is going to be, it is time to go ahead and pick the target audience that you spent so much time just learning about. The first thing that you’ll have to do with your audience search finds the right location. Your target location can be as broad as say the entire United States, or as meticulous as marking a specific town or city. You can also choose between people who live in a certain area, that have recently traveled through a certain area or are currently traveling in a certain area.
Next, you may choose from a specific age range, from as low as 13 to as high as 65+. You may even choose from different genders, languages, or search from any other keyword that may cross your mind. You are also given the option to exclude a certain keyword from your search if you choose.
Placements
You can choose whether or not you would like your advertisements released automatically, or in certain places or formats.
If you choose to edit your own placements, you can choose whether the app is available on Facebook, Instagram, mobile devices, certain operating systems, and other advanced options.
Budgeting Done Right
Finally, you’ll be able to decide how much you are willing to spend, per day, on the advertisement. If you are a starting business, and cannot afford to spend more than five dollars a day on running Facebook ads, then that is okay.
You may also choose a start and end date for your ad if it is based on a specific event, and there are plenty of advanced options for you to ensure you are not paying more than what you need to for the advertisement.
The Ad Itself
Making the advertisement does not require more work than you would expect. It can be done by simply uploading a picture or video, choosing the format of the ad, writing a description, and providing a link if you so wish.
Some Quick Tips About Ads
Advertising is a tricky business, so do not dive right into the Facebook ads creation page before looking into a few of these pointers.
- Connect with your audience; it is not enough to show them an ad, you have to push them on the brand as a whole
- Learn what you can remove from your advertisement; this will save money on your budget without adding the risk of losing viewers
- Appeal to the emotions of your audience; make them feel something when they look at your ad
- Create a strategy; DO NOT just make a bunch of different ads, hoping that some of them will work
- Use text, but not too much text, because you do not want to overwhelm the reader with words