Facebook Targeted Advertising: A Beginner's Guide

The audience of the famous social network Facebook is 1.84 billion daily active users. These are people who spend about 30 minutes a day on the platform. Such indicators have led to the active use of the platform for business promotion. Unlike traditional advertising, which requires considerable investments, advertising on Facebook allows any user with an account to launch advertising campaigns with minimal investments.

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Targeted advertising on social networks is ads that users will see while scrolling through their news feed. Moreover, these will be users of a certain gender, age, profession, and interests who live in the area chosen by the advertiser - the target audience.

Due to the huge number and diversity of Facebook users, even very low-budget advertising on the platform can be useful for companies in various industries and directions to:

• increase brand awareness or attract new customers;
•  attract traffic, increase engagement;
• increase conversions, sales through product catalogs, and store visits.

1. ADS Manager - what is it and how to understand it? 

Facebook Ads Manager is a service for creating and placing ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network.

It allows you to create ads with a specific budget, location, and time of display, edit them as needed, and track results.

2. Creating a profile page from which advertising will be displayed

To run ads on Facebook, you first need to create a Business Manager account. It's pretty easy to do:

•  go tobusiness.facebook.com;
• click "Create account";

• enter your business name, choose a primary Facebook page for your account, and provide your name and work email address.

Next, you need to set up access to advertising through Business Manager:

• openbusiness manager settings;
•  in the "People" section, select "Advertising accounts";

• Select "Add new ad accounts" and click "Create new ad account."

3. How to create your first ad?

After creating an account, you can access the Ads Manager. Go to Ads Manager, click "Create Campaign." Start setting up your ad by selecting the campaign goal.

3.1. Choosing a campaign goal

At this stage, you need to decide what goal you want to achieve by placing your ad:

Brand awareness and reach– the ad will be shown to the maximum number of users or the selected group.

Traffic– the goal is chosen to attract users to the site.

Engagement –chosen to draw attention to the publication and increase the number of likes, comments, and reposts.

Program settings- The goal is chosen to draw attention to the application.

Video views- The goal is to promote the video. Ideal for introducing a new product. In the video, you can talk about the product and then run direct advertising to the audience that watched the video.

Lead generation- The goal is suitable if it is necessary to test the demand for a product if the company does not yet have a website. Or to compare the effectiveness of different types of advertising. By clicking on the ad, a potential client goes to a page with a form for entering data, which collects contacts for further work.

Message– engaging users in Messenger correspondence for further work with them.

Conversions– the goal is similar to the “Traffic” goal, as it also brings the user to the company’s website. The difference is that when choosing the “Traffic” goal, the algorithms show ads to users who are more likely to visit the site. And the algorithm for the “Conversions” goal selects users who have already completed the desired target action.

Selling products from the catalog– this goal is chosen by online stores that have product catalogs.

Visiting points- The goal is chosen based on the need to advertise an offline business.

3.2. Defining the audience

Thanks to the information that users leave about themselves online, targeting is adjusted to the desired audience according to the specified conditions:

• location – a country, city or area on the map. You can choose from: all people in this area, locals, tourists, etc.;
• gender and age;
• education;
• interests;
• languages ​​– it is recommended to choose the language of the advertisement;
• etc.

You can target a single ad, ad group, or ad campaigns. For best results, Facebook recommends uploading an audience list of 1,000-50,000 people.

Detailed targeting: how to customize your ads to your target audience

Detailed targeting can be set up by demographic interests, general interests, and behavioral factors. Every advertiser should deeply study these three points, because reaching the pain, need, desire, and goal of a specific target audience depends on the correctness of the chosen interests.

Facebook will recommend interests based on your activity, but we recommend that you create your own analysis of your target audience and understand their main query to set up the most effective detailed targeting.

The "Connections" option allows you to configure the display of ads exclusively to your subscribers and their friends, or exclude them from the display list.

3.3. Placement

This section specifies the places where your ads will be displayed. When you choose automatic placements, the algorithm will choose where your ads will be displayed. When you set it up yourself, you can choose from:

• News Feed for PC and mobile devices:The ad will be embedded in the user's news feed, along with friends' posts. This is a good option for anyone who wants to increase brand awareness and attract attention to the publication. When sending users to a landing page from an ad in the news feed, it is worth making sure that the site is adapted for mobile devices so that users see the site's landing page correctly.
• Right column:As the name suggests, this option places ads in the right-hand column of Facebook and is a traditional “banner” style ad. This option is only available to desktop users, encouraging users to purchase products or learn more about a product.
• Facebook Audience Network:A network of mobile apps and websites that Facebook partners with to show ads. This option is suitable for increasing reach and showing ads to people who use different apps. This placement is also effective for optimizing video views.
• Instagram: suitable for maximizing reach and increasing brand awareness among the target audience represented on Instagram.

3.4. Budget

Facebook allows you to control your advertising costs. There are two main ways to allocate your costs:

• Daily advertising spend – the average dollar amount spent on advertising per day. You can increase or decrease this as needed.
• Lifetime advertising costs – the amount spent on advertising over a certain period of time.

The launch date, like the campaign end date, is manually adjustable and can be scheduled in advance.

Facebook offers a default daily budget of $20, but you can change your budget. It's recommended to spend at least $5 per day on your ads, and keep them running for at least a week to see how people engage with your ads. Research shows that people respond differently to ads on different days of the week.

When setting up your advertising costs, it’s important to consider the difference between cost per thousand impressions and cost per click. CPM is the cost per 1,000 impressions, and CPC is the cost per click on an ad that leads a user to your company’s website or app. You can manually set the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for a click on a link.

Pay per impression (CPM) is suitable for increasing brand awareness, while pay per click (CPC) is a suitable option for attracting traffic or potential customers.

When choosing payment options, it's worth experimenting and observing how your costs affect the effectiveness of your campaign - the more you experiment, the more experience you'll gain for the future.

After setting up advertising, you need to monitor the budget and turn off advertising in a timely manner if it is no longer relevant, so as not to incur unplanned expenses.

3.5. What type of ad should I choose?

We move on to the final stage of creating an ad. Here you choose how the user will see your ad. There are 5 display formats:

• Ring Gallery: An ad with two to ten scrolling images or videos. The carousel ad format engages users by allowing them to scroll through and view images or videos.
• One image: An ad that contains up to six visual display options, showing one image at a time. A single image ad is one of the most versatile options, and is great for those who are just starting out with Facebook ADS Manager.
• One video: single video advertising Allows you to tell an interesting story to your target audience and attract their attention.
• Slideshow: A looping video that includes up to ten images. This ad format allows you to create a connected visual story.
• Collection: Ads where images and videos are displayed in full screen mode. This is a great option for increasing the level of interactivity with users.

4. The subtleties of creating advertising creative

When creating an advertisement, there are several features to keep in mind:

•  The main text of the ad is up to 90 characters.
• Title – up to 25 characters.
•  Link description – up to 90 characters

It's best to put the most important and interesting information first. When people scroll through their Facebook feed, they do so quite quickly, so you need to try to grab their attention from the very beginning.

Be sure to clearly state your call to action, whether it’s a call to click to learn more or sign up for an upcoming event. The call to action should be short and engaging.

When choosing an illustration for an ad, it is worth remembering that in the user's feed it will compete with . .

5. Summing up

Today, Facebook is one of the few platforms that allows you to find your target audience and effectively interact with it. An important feature is that Facebook advertising allows users to take the complex process of advertising into their own hands, manage it and track results.

Even though you have to compete with messages from family members and friends in your feed, your ad won't go unnoticed.

Remember that targeted advertising is just a tool to attract buyers to your main offer. Think about where you will drive traffic. This could bewebsiteoronline storefromdomain, consistent with the company's type of activity and reliablehosting. The presence of a website has a positive impact on the customer's impression of the company and increases trust.