In layman’s terms, Facebook Ads works on similar mechanics like printing an ad in a newspaper. Just like you pay a publisher to put your ad in a newspaper or a magazine, the same mechanics work on Facebook & Instagram. You essentially pay Facebook to showcase your ads on their platform/s. The good news for you is that Facebook Ads is now more advanced and cheaper than newspaper or traditional ads and it’s more dynamic too!
To understand Facebook Ads, we need to understand the elements of Facebook Ads that are vital for generating best results for the campaign.
- Campaign Type
There are various types of Campaign options to choose from when setting up the campaigns. You need to select the type which matches best with your objectives.
For example, if you want to run a campaign to drive traffic to your website, you should select a traffic campaign option. If you want to run a brand awareness campaign, you should select brand awareness as your campaign objective.
When you select an objective on your campaign, this helps Facebook deliver your ads to the right set of people which in turn is beneficial for your business.
- Targeting
Facebook/Instagram Ads are at the moment, the most favoured online advertising platforms because of their targeting options. They allow you to target people based on a variety of combinations.
There are multiple targeting options available on Facebook, starting with ‘interest’ targeting – where you can target people based on an interest related to your business.
You can also target people based on their age, gender and location among other things.
- Ad Types
Another element which is vital to Facebook Ads is selecting the best type of Ad for your target audience, based on the product that you want to advertise. There are multiple options to choose from:
- Video
- Photo
- Slideshow
- Carousel
- Dynamic Product Ads
- Lead Form Ads
- Facebook Pixel
Facebook pixel plays an important role in the advertising space. It is a piece of code that is installed on the website before we begin advertising. Using Facebook Pixel enables you to create more powerful campaigns once it starts collecting data.
The Facebook Pixel also helps you track conversions, it makes the Facebook machine learn more about your audience interaction with your assets, ads & website and create a digital database of users.
How does Facebook charge their ads?
The best part about Facebook/Instagram Ads is that you can decide how much you want to pay for your ads, and Facebook will work according to YOUR budget. It is important to note that to get the best results, we recommend starting with at least $1000 a month. Once you set up your budget, Facebook will not go higher than this amount.
For example, there are 3 campaigns in the account and each campaign has a $20/day budget, $20×3= a $60/day total budget. Facebook will not spend more than $60×30=$1800 in a month.
However, sometimes when the campaigns are getting good results, Facebook can spend up to 10% extra than your allocated budget on a particular day but will balance out the excess amount spent on that day with spending less on another day within the month.
Types of Audience
Facebook Advertising platform has been one of the most powerful advertising platforms for over a decade and it’s not just because of the number of people on Facebook. Facebook has immensely specific targeting settings that gives them a strong vantage point from a business perspective.
As a business owner, you need to know who you are talking to when you’re advertising so that you can tailor your message to them and get more attention.
Facebook Ads audience targeting is very segmented. For example, if you are a Golf Store owner, you can literally target people interested in Golf, Golf Clubs or Tiger Woods.
There are 3 types of Audience targeting you can select for your advertising campaign:
- Custom Audience
Custom Audiences is one of the most important segmenting tools available to you in Facebook Ads! There’s so many options available for you to create your custom audience.
Once you complete the installation of Facebook Pixel, it will start collecting data. You can then create an audience for Website Visitors, Instagram Followers, Facebook Page Followers etc.
With the custom audience tool, you can segment your audience based on their interactions with your website, social media channels, videos, events & Facebook Shop. This gives businesses the ability to create specific campaigns based on their audience’s interactions in order to further provide more related content and increase conversions.
This is also called Remarketing/Retargeting Audience, which essentially means you’re reaching out to the audience who has already interacted with you on any of the digital platforms(website, facebook page or instagram)
- Lookalike Audience
This is another great tool to find the right set of audience for you to target. ‘Lookalike audience’ allows you to create lookalike audiences out of your top performing audiences.
- Core Audience/Interest Targeting
Core Audience is a large set or pool of users categorized by Facebook based on their interest, Facebook categorized these users into various interests based on their activity on Facebook or on the internet browsers. For example, I like a page about Golf, and I also watch a lot of Golf Videos on Facebook and I have also explored a couple of golf websites, so Facebook will categorize me as golf interest users. So if anyone wants to reach out to users who are interested in golf you just need to select golf as your interest, your ad will be displayed or shown to target me or similar people. Adding interest is not the only part of core audience targeting, there are other options as well such as demographics, locations, genders & age. You can create your own custom combination by selecting the age group, demographic or location you want to target.
Understanding and analysing the Facebook Ads data
