I don’t care who your customers are…
…they ARE on Facebook.
I guarantee it. Facebook now has over 1.23 billion daily active users and 1.86 billion monthly active users (stats). Pew Research Center reports that approximately eight in 10 online Americans are on Facebook (as of November 2016), which is a seven-percentage-point increase from 2015.
What’s Stopping You From At Least Trying?
If you aren’t advertising on Facebook yet, you need to at least try. After all, you could be missing out on a huge revenue opportunity and market impact by ignoring Facebook advertising. Wouldn’t you at least like to be able to say you gave it a try and that it didn’t work – instead of always wondering “what if?”
I realize many people are intimated by Facebook ads. What do I create? How much do I spend? Who do I target? That’s why I’m excited to share a new five-step DIY plan wonderfully illustrated by Headway Capital in this infographic (below).
Step 1: Select Your Marketing Objective
It all begins by selecting a marketing objective. This is done in Power Editor, which runs in Chrome. Set up Power Editor here.
Create a new campaign, name it, and choose a marketing objective. You can choose everything from “Page Likes” to “Event responses,” “brand awareness” and more. In many cases though, the objective will be “Traffic” – getting people to your website/landing page.
Step 2: Define Your Audience
Next, you’ll define an audience. An audience of 50,000 to 100,000 people in the U.S. can be a good starting point. While you want to be specific, if you get too specific, you could limit your exposure and reduce your potential reach. Learn more about all of Facebook’s ad targeting options here. Also, run through this checklist of questions to ask in determining your Facebook audience.
Step 3: Set Up a Budget & Schedule
You can choose for your ad to have a daily budget or a lifetime budget. Either way, you are always in control of how much you spend. You can spend as little as a dollar a day. For starting out, go with a ‘Daily Budget’ instead of a ‘Lifetime Budget’.
Step 4: Design Your Advert
Now that the campaign is determined, it’s time to create your ad. The single image option is a great way to start. Your image should be 1200 x 628 pixels. (For more on sizing, check out this social media image size cheat sheet.) Your ad will feature:
- An image
- Headline
- Text
- Call to action
- News Feed link description
- Link
Check out Facebook’s ad guidelines for information about how long your text can be.
Step 5: Understand Facebook Ad Reports
Lastly, you’ll want to test the performance of your ad. Facebook will show you metrics on performance, engagement, clicks and more. Use this information to improve your next attempt! Check out the full infographic below. Questions? Ask away in the comments!
