Step by Step Facebook Ads Tutorial – Create Winning Campaigns

For instance, take this ad I created for The International Youth Conditioning Association. The goal was to drive traffic to a blog article “The Secret to Running Profitable and Rewarding Summer Camps”.

Through this article, they attempted to sell a signature summer camp program to other fitness camps and gyms. What made this ad so commanding and profitable was the fact that this ad was tailored to their specific business objective.

• To drive traffic to their website, we first used Facebook targeting to put this ad on the news feeds of our target market, which is Fitness camps/gyms. You will learn how to do this later in the article!
• Next, we used sales copy to “entice” the audience into wanting to know more about how they too can profit from this particular program during the summer months.
• Lastly, we used the “Learn More” to increase the CTR (clickthrough rate) and drive traffic to the blog.
• This formula proved quite lucrative, giving them a 13% conversion rate which created more than $15,000 in program sales!

Whether it’s to drive traffic, increase sales on your website, increase app download, or just simply to increase brand awareness, Facebook ads can help you achieve your business goals!

So, let’s step into the world of Facebook marketing, and see how it can help your promote your business.

What are Facebook Ads?

We’ve all seen Facebook Ads before. They appear in the newsfeed, both on desktop and mobile.

Ads are usually accompanied by the word “Sponsored” in the upper left hand corner, or “featured” in the column on the right of  your screen.

What makes this way of online marketing so successful is that Facebook can target your audience based on their social media profile.

Age, location, education, interest/hobbies, and even relationship status (single people typically spend more money) come into play.

All this vital information can help you to better target your audience, keeping you from wasting away precious market dollars on trying to sell to an audience who don’t want or care for your services.

How to Set Up Facebook Ads Campaign

An increasing number of businesses are realizing that, in order to make a social impact, they would have to put their money where their post is.

Facebook paid advertising is one immediate way to get your valued content on to your potential customer’s newsfeed.

Now, let’s get started !!

Step #1 Define Your Goal!

Even before you start to design your ad, sit down and think about what you want to achieve with the ad.

Do you want:

• Increase traffic to your website
• Increase attendance at events
• Generate new leads
• Increase the reach of your content on Facebook
• Boost engagement for your Facebook Page

When you decide upon the goal of your Facebook ad, you will get a clearer picture of what you want to accomplish. This will also help you think of a variable that can be used to measure the success of your Facebook Ads campaign.

Online vs. Offline Business: How Can Facebook Ads Help?

There are plethora of different marketing strategies that work for both Online and offline businesses. However, nothing beats targeted traffic that Facebook Ads bring.

Building an online presence, increasing traffic, or promoting an event (in person or online) can be done much more effectively using Facebook ads.

So, let’s breakdown the pros and cons of Facebook Ads, and see how it can benefit your online or offline business:

• Increase traffic to your website: | Online & Offline | Looking for  more people to check out your blog? Want customers to check out your restaurant’s menu? If the answer is YES…This option works great for both!

• Increase attendance at events: | Online & Offline | Works the best for online events. Promoting your event via FB can play an integral part in your sales funnel. This shows people how to go from hearing about your event, to actually registering for it.  You capture awareness – get them to sign up – nurture your relation with your lead -then Get them to take action.

• Generate new leads: | Online | Want people to opt-in for your free giveaway? Looking for people to watch your webinar? Nothing works better for generating interest and leads than FB ads.

• Increase the reach of your content on Facebook: | Online & Offline | Content is king both online and offline. So increasing your viewership of your content will only benefit your business.

• Boost engagement for your Facebook Page: | Online | Boosting engagement is a way to get more post clicks, shares, and comments.

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Step #2 Choose Your Objective

There are 15 different marketing objectives to choose from. We’re going to make it easy for you to figure out which one will be best for your business.  Typically, when a business runs an FB ad, they are looking for one of two things: brand awareness and/or conversions.

Awareness

Objectives that generate interest in your product or service:

• Boost your posts
• Promote your page
• Reach people near your business
• Increase Brand Awareness
• Increase your reach

Conversions

Objectives that get people interested in your business, either to make a purchase, or use your product or service:

• Increase conversions on your website
• Increase engagement in your app
• Get people to claim your offer
• Promote a product or catalogue
• Get people to visit your shops

Step #3 Choosing Your Audience

This has to be the most important step in creating a successful campaign. I can’t stress enough on the importance of knowing your audience. Overlooking this is the #1 reason why businesses fail.

Since Facebook knows everything about us, the more you know about your audience, the better your chances are of getting that ad in front of the right group of people who wants your services.

• Location, starting with a country, state, city, zip code, or address, and refining even further with a mile radius
• Age
• Gender
• Languages
• Interests – Facebook looks at a person’s interests, activity, the Pages they like, and closely related topics
• Behaviors – Things like purchase behavior and intent, as well as device usage
• Connections – Choose to show the ad to all people, just those connected to Buffer, or those not connected to Buffer

Let’s use one of my favorite Italian restaurant in Ekkamai, called La Tana. The marketing goal for this restaurant was to increase patronage during lunchtime (between 11-2pm). FB ads are perfect for restaurants. Because, let’s face it, everyone on Facebook likes to eat. When targeting your audience, you want to focus on your ideal or current customer(s).

La Tana current clients consist of men and women ages 30-45. It is one of the more pricier restaurants in the area. The average customer spends on average 750-1,000 baht when dining at La Tana.

When trying to drive lunchtime traffic, it would be wise to target corporate offices(the corporate demographic typically has the money to spend, and also falls within our customer age range of 30-45) in the area using the zip code option.

This is more targeted than the city option because you can geo-target certain neighbourhood/areas that house your ideal customer. Seeing that we are advertising for the lunch crowd, proximity plays a huge role. As we know, the average employee has a one-hour lunch break.

I would target companies within a 1-3 mile radius (they can get to the restaurant pretty quickly) and have the ad run from 9-1pm. This timeframe is usually when the tummy starts to rumble and is ready for lunch.

Step #4 Set Your Budget

Now, we have our target audience. It’s time to decide how much we will spend marketing to them, and for how long.

• Daily: A daily budget is the average that you’ll spend every day.
• Lifetime: A lifetime budget is the maximum that you’ll spend during the lifetime of your advert set.

How Much Should I Spend on an Ad?

This is a very good question. From my experience, it doesn’t matter what industry you are in, or how much marketing budget you have. I would always suggest that if it’s the first time running the ad – Budget $5-10 a day(estimated average daily reach of 540-2,700 people) and run the ad for 7 days. This will give you feedback on how the ad is converting, and how it’s resonating with your audience.

$5-10 dollar a day is a feasible budget for most small or local business such a La Tana to get their feet wet in FB advertising. After you have gotten the right converting ad formula down, feel free to increase your budget an extra $5-10 dollars a day. Of course, the higher the budget, the greater your reach. I recently worked on a Facebook ad project for a supplement company. Their budget was  a whopping $100 per day(estimated daily reach of 8,000-21,000 people).

Of course, this was a 6 figure company, that had the money to grow their product and presence online. If you are a smaller business, don’t let this deter you from advertising via Facebook. A small investment can yield big returns.

Step #5 Create Your Ad

Facebook currently offers 5 formats for adverts:

• Carousel: Create an advert with 2 or more scrollable images or videos
• Single image: Create up to 6 variations of your advert using 1 image
• Single video: Create an advert with one video
• Slideshow: Create a looping video advert with up to 10 images
• Canvas: Tell a more immersive story by combining images and videos

Don’t forget to size your image(s) and video(s) correctly. FB ad image specs are 1200X 628 pixels and image ratio 1.91:1. Video specs are .MOV or .MP4 files with a resolution of at least 720p. File size 2.3 GB max and at least 60 minutes max

Step #6 Choose Ad Placement

You have the option to place your ad in desktop newsfeed, mobile newsfeed, or the right-hand column. Since you’re starting out. I would suggest either placing your ad in desktop or mobile newsfeed.

Step #7 Submit Your Order

Now you have everything set up…. let’s take that ad LIVE!  Always review your order to make sure everything is correct.

Once you have done that, simply press the “Place Order” button. The ad has now been submitted to Facebook for review. If approved, you will receive an email that your ad is live!

Social Tip: A/B test your ads! Switch the image, color, copy, and even the opt-in button to create an ad that converts like crazy!

When you A/B test your ads. The goal is to see which image, video, audience, font, color, ad copy, etc gets you the highest click through rate(CTR) or call to action(CTA). I typically perform A/B testing on two images at a time. Running too many variations can interfere with results. After running these ads simultaneously for 5 days, we learned that Ad B had 55 clicks to the website, while Ad A had only 5.

Why the difference?

The target audience (Women 25-40) identified with Ad B, which is the one that focuses on the woman’s face, and not Ad A, which showed the trainers face. Without A/B testing, a lot of time and money could have been wasted trying to find that image that resonated with the gym’s target audience.

Boost Sales With Retargeting

Have you looked at a product on let’s say, AMAZON? Then you realize no matter where you go online. That product keeps popping up everywhere you browser? This is called Retargeting.

Retargeting is fairly simple. Retargeting gives you the opportunity to re-engage with this product to give you another opportunity to purchase. Retargeting is a brilliant marketing strategy that takes little to no time to add to your existing FB ads campaign.

How Does It Work?

When someone visits your page, the pixel is added to their device. This visitor is called “audience.” This audience is then cookied, and as they continue to browse online, your ad will continue to be displayed. Retargeting your FB ads can boost your ad response rate by up to 400%

How to Setup Retargeting Pixel

1. Within the ad manager in Facebook, click on “conversion tracking” in the left sidebar
2. Click on the green button that says “create pixel”
3. Choose your category of conversion (registration, checkout, lead, etc)
4. Name your pixel something easily identifiable
5. Copy the “conversion pixel” code
6. Paste the conversion pixel on the post/page within WordPress (either manually or by using the plugin) that people will see right after they convert

Successful Retargeting Campaigns

Retargeting is the second most effective way of marketing (email being first). Here are two companies whose retargeting campaign stands out.

Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support software. It’s retargeting strategy is all about trust and benefits. “Trusted by more than 30,000 companies” “How to scale your support without scaling your support team”. Also, offering a 30-day free trial doesn’t hurt either.

SurveyMonkey is an online survey creation tool. Trusted and used by many fortune 500 companies. SurveyMonkey knows they are the bridge to collecting important data. So the “Fill in the blanks” and “Get more insight make better decisions” makes it clear what they do. I also really like the CTA CLICK HERE tab.

Retargeting can help your business and/or product stay relevant while customers may be looking for other options. It’s a great way to give your audience a second, third or even fourth chance to purchase your product. Running Facebook ads can help with the social growth of your business. If you want to be successful at Facebook advertising campaigns, I would suggest starting small. You want to A/B test and measure the results from your ads to find that winning formula that yields success.

You can earn money doing this for other companies! When learning how to become a digital marketer it’s super important to have FB advertising skills as part of your offering. Generally FB ad marketers take 10-20% of their clients budgets so you can make a good regular income on this type of activity!

If you want more information on how to create a successful online marketing campaign please feel free to contact us for a 1-2-1 Facebook Ads coaching session. We can assist you in creating a long-term marketing strategy for your business

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Social Skinny:

1. Get clear on your marketing goal
2. Choose your campaign objective. Is it to boost a post, bring more awareness to your brand or reach people near your business?
3. Find your target audience and really get to know them. This will help you to laser target them with your FB ads
4. Use retargeting pixel to re-engage audience.
5. Start small with ads. A/B test and measure what is working and what’s not.

Congratulations! You gained new knowledge of creating winning campaigns and it’s all part of how to become a digital marketer. So, it’s time to start using it and observe what works best for you.