Why bother with “another” Facebook Advertising Guide? Because when we spend our own money to run our own campaigns, our insights and perspectives are pure gold.
But wait. How big is Facebook advertising, you ask?
According to Craig Smith of Expanded Ramblings, there are more than 4 million businesses and individuals using the platform to promote campaigns. 70% of these advertisers are outside of the us and the total number of advertisers have grown by 50% between 2015 to 2016.
With an average (CTR) click-through rate of 0.9%, the average cost per click being $0.64, and an average cost per thousand impressions at just about $7.29, Facebook advertising makes a compelling case for businesses to promote their businesses, get leads, and finally make sales.
Make use of this Facebook Advertising Guide & get your right:
Setting Up The Facebook Manager
Your personal Facebook account isn’t what you should be using for your business (no matter what business you have). Keeping your personal account and business account just makes sense.
At this point, I am assuming you already have a Facebook business page. If you don’t have one, you’d have to create on (and you can create your Facebook business page from inside). Since you’d want to use Facebook for advertising, you’d also need an advertising account.
Facebook would have already have had a tab enabled with your personal account, and that doesn’t count (unless you are using Facebook to promote something personal).
The first step is to head over to https://business.facebook.com and login with your usual Facebook credentials..
After logging in, click on “business settings”. Click on this a little page icon on the left menu You’ll then find “Add a page” on the top right. If you click on it, you’ll see three options.
Claim a page
Request access
Create a page.
Depending on your situation, you’d choose one. If you already have a page out there in the wild, you’d need to claim “access” to it. If you are going to work on someone else’s page or if you are an agency or freelancer hired to work with a client, you’d need to use the “request access” button.
If you’ve never created a Facebook page before, you’d need to create a page.
Let’s say you already have a page and you need to claim it (note that you’d have to be the admin to get immediate access. If you are not the admin, you’d have to request whoever the admin is to grant you access).
Click on claim a page, type in the name of the page (or the URL of the page), it’ll show up here. Click on it, and you now have access to your page from within the Business manager.
Up next, is to follow a similar process for your Facebook Advertising account.
On the same panel you saw before in business settings, look for the little icon right under the icon for Facebook pages.
Repeat the same process we did for the business page. More often, for first time users, you’d have to create an ad account that’s in the name of your business. Go ahead, create the account, setup a payment method. You are done.
Then, add people in your team. Make sure you add yourself to the people associated with the account.
Please note that, you’d follow relevant steps to access others’ FB pages and ad accounts. When your team or clients give you access (the notifications show up in the right hand corner), those pages and ad accounts show up. After you add yourself or your team, the pages and ad accounts will show up when you login.
How to give access to Agencies or freelancers
Rule number 1: Never give out your personal login ID and password you use for FB to your team members, freelancers, or agencies.
Rule #2: Don’t forget rule #1
If you have to give Facebook business manager access to your team members, freelancers, or agencies. It’s a straightforward process. But by doing this, they have their own logins.
If it’s your team member, you are adding, go to people and add their email address so they get an invite to join your organisation here.
If you are adding freelancers, partners, or agencies, you’d need to ask for their Facebook business ID. This is where you can find the business ID.:
For the business page:
Click on your page, “assign partner”, and drop their ID here.
Follow the same process for Facebook ad account too.
Click on your page, “assign partner”, and drop their ID here. This is where you can find your business ID.
This lets your agencies or freelancers login through their own business manager accounts and they’ll be able to work with you to manage your business page or your ad account or both.
Setting Up Your Facebook Pixel
You’ll be able to create only one Facebook Pixel per business ad account. Assuming you have setup your business manager right, you’ll see “business manager” link on the top right corner, next to the FB logo.
Click, and there’s a dropdown menu. You’ll see a tab called “Pixels”. If you don’t see it, just hover on all tools and you’ll find it there.
Now, it’s time to setup your pixel
Click on Pixels, create new Pixel, give it a name, and that’s it. Your pixel is ready.
When it is ready, you’ll see a tab where it says setup pixel. You’d need to add this pixel to your website, landing pages, and anything else that belongs to your business.
This pixel is the heart of your Facebook Advertising.
Setting up the pixel on your website
You have an option of using Google tag manager or Facebook’s integrations with many platforms such as Shopify, Magento, Bigcommerce, etc. You can use those and the instructions are self-explanatory. You also have instructions, just in case you need them
If you want to install the code yourself, click on the other option, “Install code” and you’ll see two parts for the pixel.
One is the base code and the other is the event code. The base code loads on all pages (including thank you pages or other pages that your leads end up on, after they take an action). Actions can also be inline actions (like when they just click on a button, or add something to your shopping cart).
Copy the base code and install it on the section of your website’s code. If you are using HTML, you’d have to do this manually on all pages (please check with your developer).
Next pick the event code (out of 9 different options you have, pick one that makes sense for you), and paste it below the base code but NOT in the head section.
Be careful not to put this part of the code in the head section.
Next, after you loaded the pixel. Refresh your web page and come back here to check if your Pixel is firing. If you used Google Tag manager, the tag manager would also show you the status. There’s also a Facebook Pixel Helper chrome extension that you can use.
Bonus: Setting up the pixel on your Unbounce Landing pages
If you specifically use Unbounce as your landing page solution, here’s a video to show how to add a pixel to your Unbounce landing pages
Setting up Your Campaign For Facebook Advertising
You could use the default way of launching your campaign. But I generally prefer using Facebook’s power editor. The power editor has advanced features that save you time and help manage multiple clients.
You can use the normal campaign interface too. When you are ready, Facebook will automatically push you forward (like a wizard) and help you get started.
You’d need:
- Ads
- A URL to point the ads to (unless you are using Lead Ads)
- Ad Copy
- Video Ads, if you are doing video ads
- A series of images (if you are using Canvas)
- A form that you can generate within Facebook (if you are using Lead ads)
Start with a naming convention
if you were targeting only male teens interested only in Baseball in the United States, it’ll help if you name your campaigns this way:
US | 13-19 | Baseball
Targeting working mothers between ages of 26 – 44 only in Mexico City?
US | WFHM | 26-44 | MC
Millennials in NYC?
US | Millennials | NYC
Pick a way that makes it easy for you to know what each ad, ad set, and campaign is doing. When you have a lot of campaigns running, this is a life saver.
Pre-testing Basics & Segmentation
Separating your testing elements helps you test easily and more accurately. The data you’d get is more dependable this way.
Let’s say you are targeting two countries (US and Canada): You’d then launch separate campaigns — one for US and one for Canada
Similarly, you can separate campaigns up while testing for following elements:
- Countries, cities, towns, etc
- Male or Female?
- Aged between 30- 45 or 45-65?
- Demographics
- Interests
Use Ads & landing pages in Pairs
- Your ads have to be in pairs (A & B)
- Each landing page the ad points to exist in two variants (A & B)
- The ad A should message match with a matching landing page (which itself has two variants)
- The ad B should message match with landing page (which itself has two variants)
Connecting it Together: AB Testing Ads & Landing pages
When it set it all up, it helps if your final ad sets are setup the following way:
Ad Set 1 (testing only ads and landing pages)
US | WFHM | 26-44 | MC — Ad A — landing page (variant A 50% traffic distribution and Variant B with 50% traffic distribution)
US | WFHM | 26-44 | MC — Ad B — landing page (variant A 50% traffic distribution and Variant B with 50% traffic distribution)
Ad Set 2 (Testing Age groups, for work at home moms)
US | WFHM | 26-44 | MC — Ad A — landing page (variant A 50% traffic distribution and Variant B with 50% traffic distribution)
US | WFHM | 45-55 | MC — Ad A — landing page (variant A 50% traffic distribution and Variant B with 50% traffic distribution)
Ad Set 3: (Testing Cities Vs All of United States)
US | WFHM | 26-44 | MC — Ad B — landing page (variant A 50% traffic distribution and Variant B with 50% traffic distribution)
US | WFHM | 26-44 | ALL —Ad B— landing page (variant A 50% traffic distribution and Variant B with 50% traffic distribution)
Run ads for long enough to get enough data to determine which of these combinations is working for you.
Getting The Sales funnels Right
Now, many clients I work with also insist on “selling” right away. Like, from ad to e-commerce product page. Then, they sit and wait for sales to happen.
It’s not going to happen.
Even if it does, it’s going to be “luck”. You don’t want luck, right? You want sustainability. You want to make sure that you put in a dollar in and get a dollar out.
So, there are only three things you need to do when you do Facebook advertising for maximum conversions:
1. Always give a high-value but zero friction offer first.
2. Start with a low budget, as low as you can (because you can see how much you’d have to test)
3. Use variants, combinations, optimisation, and testing to find out winners.
The typical approach of hungry joe: Ad — Sales Page
That won’t work.
The funnel should have an Ad — landing page with an offer — lead signs up — use automation to nurture leads — make a sale — then sell again and again
Your sales funnel should typically look something like this, changing only according to the nature of your actual offers and the resulting sequence of events.
Remember this, and skip the sales funnel at your own peril.
Don’t tell me you haven’t been warned.
The key is Conversions; Not Traffic
Most people obsess about traffic. Really, traffic is meaningless if it doesn’t convert. For your Facebook advertising efforts, all that money you just threw on the campaign would mean nothing if your campaigns don’t bring in conversions.
The only deciding factor should be conversions.
Let’s do some numbers here with the assumption that you spend $5 per day on FB advertising, and we ran the campaign for a week. Also, let’s assume each lead you get is worth $2 for you.
Reach: 3600 folks
Clicks overall: 243
Total visits landing page (Variant A): 110
Total visits landing page (Variant B): 110
Landing Page Conversion rate:
Variant A: 10%
Variant B: 12%
Total leads:
Variant A: 110 x 10% = 11 leads
Variant B: 110 x 12% = 13 leads
Now, don’t change your budget at all.
Just change the Variant A (since it didn’t perform as well as the variant B) and try Variant C
Run the campaign for a week.
Now,
Reach: 3800 folks
Clicks overall: 312
Total visits landing page (Variant B): 130
Total visits landing page (Variant C): 130
Landing Page Conversion rate:
Variant B: 10% = 13 leads
Variant C: 15% = 20 leads
You didn’t spend more. But you now have almost 100% more leads just because you use A/B testing, variants, and you can afford to be patient enough since you have a low budget for advertising.
When you find your champions, you can step on the throttle and spend more. To start with, this is what you should ideally do.
Using Audience Insights on Facebook
Even if you weren’t going to do Facebook Advertising, you’ll do well to visit the Audience Insights section within your Facebook business manager. You should definitely do this if you are looking to launch campaigns.
It’s amazing how much data Facebook has on ever user, and you can put that to use to plan and execute your campaigns. Slice and dice the data available to make smart decisions about how you’ll approach your campaign:
Thanks to Facebook, never before in history was it ever possible to zoom in on the exact prospects you are looking for as customers or clients. You can get as broad as you like to as narrow as you like with Facebook’s audiences. If you think about it, the opportunities available can give you sleepless nights.
Depending on your business, you could go down your targeting like this:
Skins & Cases for Apple products, only for working millennials in Malaysia.
Beauty products for new and expecting mothers, aged between 30 – 44, with an average salary of $6000 per month or Household income of $9000 per month, living in New York.
A social Media Management tool precisely for people who hate HootSuite.
A complete, marketing automation tool for people who hate both InfusionSoft and OntraPort.
Custom-umbrellas for college going teens in India.
See how granular you can get and how deep you can go?
Targeting Audiences on Facebook
If you launch a campaign targeting your audiences, that’s only side of the story as far as Facebook is concerned. You also have advanced audiences options on Facebook such as custom audiences and lookalike audiences.
Custom Audiences:
If you already have a huge list of prospects (or even if it’s a tiny list) — and not customers — you can upload this list to Facebook to target only your prospects (who also happen to be your email subscribers).
Lookalike audiences:
You can have Facebook profile and seek complete strangers — within the parameters of the campaign — that are very similar to your existing audiences (Maybe you’ve reached them all during your previous campaigns, your existing list of potential customers, or even your customers).
Retargeting audiences:
Everyday, you already have people visiting your website and/or landing pages. More than 80% of them leave without doing anything on your website (for whatever reason).
These people know you. They visited you. It’s just that they didn’t take any action that’s favourable to you.
By adding the pixel to your website and your landing pages, you can grow this audience too. When you are ready, you can launch campaigns targeting only these previous visitors.
It’s called Retargeting and it works like a charm.
Landing Pages
Now, that I mentioned landing pages, let me say it again: don’t launch Facebook Ads (or any ads) or even ever put a link anywhere when you are asking for something without landing pages.
Why?
It’s called a distraction.
If I visit your website, there’s a lot of distraction there. There’s about page, contact page, the blog, and all the fancy pop-ups we have on our websites. If you paid for the click, you want visitors to take action and become leads.
When the average attention span of your visitor is at an all-time low, why do you want to distract?
Landing pages help you put up a page that has one job to do: to help visitors take action.
The usual site-wide conversion for a website is around 1.95%. Well built, conversion centric Landing pages convert at 30% or even 50%. You tell me. What kind of a conversion rate do you need?
You can use any of the following for landing pages:
It doesn’t matter which one you use. What matters is that you do.
Funnels & Automation
Most people don’t buy the day they land on your website or on your landing pages. That’s why you need landing pages to get your leads first. From that moment on, you’ll nurture leads systematically, strategically, and carefully. You don’t want to be pushy or sales.
Yet, you don’t want to continue sending them emails like you email your friends. You still have to ask for the sale.
If you did this manually, you’d never be able to run your business. Plus, there’s no fun in this drudgery, right?
That’s why you’d set up funnels and automation.
So, you are a financial consultant for men between ages 28 to 45. Your offer for the Facebook ad was to have them download an eBook on personal finance tips. They signed up. They got the eBook.
They are in the funnel.
Now, you’d send out emails with more information about personal finance — more tips, more insights, research you gathered, and more. The fourth or the 5th email will have a link to your paid membership site for them to signup to get access to video courses, a private community of like-minded people, and an entire library of tips and methods to make them pros at managing their personal finance and grow wealthy.
Now, that’s a funnel. That’s how you move people from cold & curious visitors to lifelong buyers of your product.
Landing pages are only a part of the funnel. You’ll need email marketing automation (autoresponders) to complete the funnel.
Use Drip and start for free to get started with your email marketing needs.
Reporting & Analytics
Facebook has all the reporting you’d need. If you want even better, you can use a tool like AdEspresso that not only helps you setup, launch, and manage your Facebook ads but also gives you analytics for your campaigns.
When you finally get everything right, and as your campaign is live, your campaign dashboard will look like this:
Assuming your pixel is firing, and that you’ve added the Facebook pixels right, you’ll also be able to see conversions and results that you seek.
Tell me how your ad campaigns are performing.
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