How to create Facebook ads

Today, you almost have to live on a distant planet to not know social networks, especially Facebook. If you use your Facebook account, you have certainly noticed the various ads that scroll through your feed, often related to your interests or similar pages you’ve visited.

As a business owner, have you thought about reaching your customers through social networks? And if you already do it, are you doing it right? It is easy to create an ad on Facebook or any other social media, but you need to know the ABC’s to be able to target your audience in the most effective way! Read on for more information on how to create a Facebook ad that is simple, effective and reaches your target audience.

Why advertise on Facebook?

In 5 words: 2.45 billion users per month. This is a huge pool of potential! But of course, you won’t actually reach the total 2.45 billion of potential buyers (anyway, Mr. Morrison, who lives in Australia, won’t be one of your customers if you live in Montreal and made your reputation by delivering bikes in your neighborhood); the important thing is to effectively target your potential buyers, in order to increase your conversion rate via your Facebook ad.

Moreover, because of its low cost, Facebook Ads is a great advertising tool not only for large companies, but also—and especially—for SMEs, whose advertising budget is much less than that of a multinational. But because of the ever-growing popularity of social network advertising—it is estimated that by 2020, more than $110 billion will be spent on advertising! —now is the time to set up your Facebook campaign to reach as many users as possible. And given the popularity of this social network, the impact of your Facebook ad could be considerable!

How to create a Facebook Ad?

Although the Facebook Ads Manager tool is disarmingly easy to use, there are still a few rules to follow to maximize the reach of your ads, otherwise they will have as much effect as if you were throwing pebbles in the water in the hope of catching a fish. By following these different steps, you will allow your publications to reach their target, whatever it may be.

1. Develop your online strategy.

It is important—sorry, primordial—to define your strategy to get the most effective advertising possible; after all, no one likes to throw their money away! And that is precisely what can happen if you don’t put your strategy in place before you start creating your ad. Hence, you will have to:

1. Identify the product for which you want to advertise. For example, if you have a skateboard company, do you want to promote your flagship products, or do you want to focus on a lesser known product that you know has potential?
2. Define the objective of your advertising campaign. Do you want to give your business more visibility? Reach a new category of buyers? Promote the arrival of a new product? Increase your conversion rate? Once you have defined your objective, you will be able to better direct your advertising campaign.
3. Identify your target audience. Would your 88-year-old Aunt Lucille be interested in your skateboards? While it is possible, it is highly unlikely! For example, if you target the 16–35 age group, you will probably be more successful.

There are a lot of other questions you may want to ask yourself to help you focus on your goals; it is up to you to make your strategy as comprehensive as possible!

2. Choose the type of campaign and define your objective.

Lead Ads

This high-performance format will allow you to generate a considerable amount of leads from the social network itself without going through your website. Thanks to a pre-filled contact form with the user’s name and email address, the user can make an appointment, subscribe to a newsletter or any other action suggested by the call to action button that you will determine. The user will then only have to click to generate a new lead!

This format is customizable according to various criteria such as your budget, format, text to insert, etc.

Traffic

The traffic objective, present on both Instagram and Facebook, will allow you to attract new users to your site or app. In addition, you will be able to redirect them to another destination, such as your website or a Messenger conversation, and increase the number of people accessing your site from their platform (PC, tablet or mobile).

Many formats are supported by the traffic ad objective, such as videos, photos, slides, carousels, etc.

You will be able to choose among different objectives: brand awareness, coverage, traffic, interactions, video views, Lead Ads, or point-of-sale traffic; depending on the strategy you have chosen. At LeadStream, we mainly use Lead Ads or traffic campaigns, here is an overview of each of them.

3. Target the right audience.

As we mentioned earlier, one of the benefits of targeting your audience is that your Aunt Lucille will not be inundated with skateboard ads. To do this, you will need to identify your target audience. Are you targeting a particular age group? Are you targeting men or women? People from Montreal, Val-d’Or, or Natashquan? Technical graduates or doctoral students? People with upcoming birthdays? As you can see, you could almost choose one by one the users you want to target, depending on the people who are likely to be interested in your product or services.

You could even have your page displayed in the feed of users who like similar pages, so that you stand out from the competition (and show them you exist!). Finally, you will be able to re-target users who have visited your page but haven’t made any purchases.

4. Choose your ad placements.

Ads can appear in different places on Facebook such as videos in the News Feed, in promotional banners as well as on different devices (PC, tablet, cell phone). Then you can adjust and keep only the most profitable locations according to your needs and budget; what works for one business may not necessarily work for another; over time you will know where to reach your customers, and what is the most cost-effective way to reach them!

Instant Experience ads are also particularly appreciated by mobile users; they allow them to fill out a form with their contact information, to access a photo gallery or your online store, and so on.

You can also choose to advertise in Facebook Stories; however, if you choose this option, you will only be able to place your ad there, unlike the way described above, which allows you to place it in both the News Feed and the banner ad.

5. Set your Facebook ad budget.

Of course, not everyone has the advertising budget of a multinational company, but no matter how much you want to spend on advertising, there is a solution; just find the one that works best for you! You can decide to set a total budget for the entire time your ad is on Facebook, or you can control that budget on a daily basis.

In addition, Facebook’s algorithm will target your best performing ads and put more money into them. For example, you have $50 to put into your campaign, and you split that amount equally between ads ‘A’ and ‘B’. However, the algorithm detects that ad B shows better results or is likely to bring you a better conversion rate. It will therefore inject, in real time, a larger amount of money into ad B, which could be, for example, $35 compared to $15 for ad A.

6. Select your ad format.

Now that you’ve established your strategy, chosen the type of campaign, the audience and your budget, it’s time to think about the type of format you prefer. You may choose videos or images, which you could put in a carousel format. What are the characteristics of these two formats?

Videos​

For Facebook, you will need a resolution of at least 1200×628, in MP4 and MOV formats (recommended). Keep in mind that if you have too much text (more than 20%), the diffusion will not be optimal.

Carousel​

This interactive format is perfect for a product retargeting campaign and lends itself to both Facebook videos and images. The carousel can be used in different places such as in the Facebook banner ad—on the right side of the screen—on Marketplace, in Messenger, in the News feed, etc. You will be able to insert up to 10 images in the carousel, in JPG and PNG formats.

7. Finalize your ad.

Call to action buttons, URLs, catchy titles, descriptions… all you must do is put the finishing touches to your ad and publish it online! And to help you get the best conversion rate possible, LeadsBridge—an advertising automation platform—will help you increase the return on investment of your advertising campaigns.

8. Monitor the performances of your ads.

Whether it is the number of times your ad has appeared online (impressions), the cost you have to pay to Facebook each time someone clicks on your ad, or the rate of users who have seen your ad and click on it, various statistics can be tracked regarding the performance of your ads and will allow you to make adjustments if necessary.

In summary, to create a good Facebook ad, you must not only establish a solid strategy but also target your audience as accurately as possible, consider your budget and choose where your ad will be displayed. LeadStream’s digital marketing consultants can help you set up a highly effective advertising strategy, while respecting the budget you wish to allocate advertising for your business; contact us as soon as today!