New to Facebook Advertising? Follow These Important Tips

Welcome to the club! Facebook advertising can provide the significant boost your business or brand needs.

Whether you’re expanding your audience, driving more traffic to your website, or promoting a specific sale or service, Facebook advertising is one of the best ways to build exposure in today’s market—but it takes a lot of work.

As with any other profession or skill, creating and delivering ads on the Facebook platform takes a lot of know-how and practice. When you’re just getting started with paid advertising as a part of your Facebook marketing strategy, it’s especially important to familiarize yourself with the basics. Otherwise, you run the risk of spending a lot of time and money only to get disappointing results.

Luckily, you don’t have to go far to find help online. By the end of this article, you will have a few actionable tips to help you kickstart your journey into Facebook advertising.

Tip #1: Make a Professional Facebook Page

You cannot make Facebook ads without first having a professional page for your business. It’s completely free. A personal Facebook profile (also free) is all that’s required so Facebook recognizes you as an admin for the page.

To create a page, simply log in to your personal profile. From the right column, scroll down until you hit “Create.” Select “Page” to begin. If you’re using your mobile device, select the menu at the top right of the screen, which is represented by three horizontal lines. Select “Pages” and then “+Create” on the screen you’re directed to. 

The next step is making your page look professional. Fill out the “About” section in full so that users know who you are, where you’re located (if you’re strictly online, include your website URL), and how to contact you.

Also, upload a professional-quality cover photo and profile photo, as these represent your business’s entity. You may, for example, use your logo as the profile photo and an image containing your products as the cover photo.

Once you’ve set up your page, you will have access to Facebook’s Business Manager, which is the platform you’ll need for creating ads and managing campaigns. But don’t neglect your page once it’s created.

In addition to using it to distribute ads, you should regularly post organic content as well to keep users engaged with your business or brand.

Tip #2: See What Other Businesses Are Doing

If you have absolutely no idea what a Facebook ad should look like or where you should even begin creatively, look for inspiration.

See what other businesses and brands are doing for their ads and observe how audiences are engaging with them. While browsing for inspiration, ask yourself these questions:

• What appears to work?
• What appears to fail?
• What ad formats appeal to you?
• How can you incorporate a creative idea from someone else’s ad into your own campaign?
• What did they do that excites you as a consumer?
• How could you do it better?

Going into your first campaign will feel less like you’re blindly flailing through if you have a better idea about what’s out there.

Tip #3: Research Facebook Advertising Terms, Policies, Products, and Best Practices

Another tip to ensure you know what you’re getting into is to do in-depth research on common terms, policies, products, and best practices associated with Facebook advertising.

For example, do you know what an ad objective is? How about a Carousel ad? Familiarize yourself with the lingo and ad products.

It’s also crucial that you understand Facebook’s Advertising Policies, which specify what you are allowed to promote as well as what you’re allowed to do creatively.

Additionally, it’s important to understand best practices for Facebook advertising. For example, video ads should communicate the main point of your message within the first few seconds rather than at the end of the video.

Another example of a best practice is A/B testing, which involves testing ads to see what visual or structural elements perform best.

When you get to know all of Facebook’s terminologies, offerings, and limitations, you’ll run a lower risk of putting out ads that don’t work.

Tip #4: Know Your Objective

An ad only works if it’s accomplishing your desired goal. An objective is what you want your ad to accomplish.

Website traffic, purchases, clicks, and in-store visits are all examples of objectives you might have for your campaign. Make sure you are able to clearly identify your objective. Doing so makes it easier to create ads accordingly and will ultimately deliver the results you desire.

Tip #5: Know Your Audience

Have a beautiful ad with a clear objective? Before you go thinking you have success in the bag, make sure you’ve done your audience research. An ad promoting fast food and burgers, for instance, will not perform well if it targets an audience of vegetarians.

To avoid this issue, once you’re ready to publish your ad, carefully fill out the audience targeting sections. You can target users based on demographic, interests, and existing history with your business or brand.

Facebook also offers useful resources such as Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences, which allow you to upload information about your existing customers and target audiences with similar attributes (respectively).

Become an expert on your audience’s traits, interests, and behaviors to increase your chances of campaign success.

Tip #6: Know Your Competition

This isn’t a tip intended to feed the fire of angry rivalry. It ultimately benefits your business to know your competition well - especially the way they advertise. Not only will getting to know your competition give you inspiration, but it will also help you see where you can do better. Ask yourself these questions:

• What do they offer that you aren’t offering in your ads?
• More important, what does your business do that your competition does not that you can highlight?

Keep tabs on your competition. It will be both educational and enlightening for your campaign.

Tip #7: Consider a Facebook Advertising Company

If you have a significant lack of experience as far as social media is concerned, consider investing in a Facebook advertising company. You’ll waste less time on underperforming ads this way.

However, you should still educate yourself in the areas mentioned throughout this article so you can understand what and how your team is doing. It will also help keep you informed when deciding what team or agency to hire.

This article serves just as the first building block to your success in Facebook advertising. The rest is up to you. Good luck to you as you embark on this exciting new venture!