facebook advertising

facebook ads for small business

Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads are a great way for business to reach a targeted audience to advertise and sell their product or service. It also allows you to keep in touch with your customers, share updates and deals and respond to any questions people might have. It's a free service and a must for most small businesses.

Setup
To get started advertising on Facebook you need to set up a business page. Although it is possible to get away without a page it's not recommended as it limits your advertising opportunities. Pages on Facebook are for businesses, brands, organisations and public figures. When you set up your business page you do it through your own personal page - just click on pages/create and you're away. You'll need to add a couple of photos - one for your profile and one for your cover photo and enter your business information and business category. The next step is your username, which should reflect your business name and will be used in the Facebook URL. Also add a detailed description of your business in the Our Story section so people can see exactly what services you offer.

Reaching Customers
There are a number of ways you can reach potential customers. You can begin with building an audience that follow your page. You can link to Facebook from your web site, invite friends to like your page, share your page on your personal news feed and post as your page in local groups. Make sure you regularly post information on your page about your business which will reach a proportion of people who follow your page. Initially create some basic posts to explain your business and maybe introduce yourself and your staff. Try sharing some different content, maybe jobs you've completed, some customer reviews, pictures of your business or your latest conquests, any special deals you may have going, changes to your opening hours for things like public holidays. Remember to link posts back to your web page. Make sure you have a link to your Facebook page on your web site, clearly visible and on every page. When you do post on your page your post won't reach all your followers. Facebook will initially display your posts to less than 5% of your followers and then increase this percentage based on the reaction your post receives. If you post gets lots of likes and shares Facebook will show it to more of your followers, but rarely all of them.

Advertising
Facebook offers a number of advertising opportunities for small business. You can promote your Page, posts on your Page or create an ad through ad manager. Page promotions are Facebook ads you create directly from your business Page, in contrast to ads you can create in Ads Manager. You can promote your Facebook page, your website or an event. Facebook offers text and image suggestions to make page promotion easy to setup and implement. When you post something on your page you have the opportunity to boost your post on Facebook to a wider audience. It effectively turns your post into an ad. The main advertising opportunity is to create an ad through ads manager. You can create a single image ad, a carousel ad, video ad, instant experience and collections.

Set your Objective
First step in creating an ad is to set your objective. When you choose an objective, Facebook uses the data it has to show your ads to people in your target audience who are most likely to take the action you want. The three categories of objectives are awareness, consideration and conversion.

Awareness generates interests on what you offer and has two objectives - brand awareness and reach. Use brand awareness when you want your brand to be seen by a wider audience. Use reach to get your ads to as much of your target audience as possible.

Consideration objectives get people to start thinking about your business and look for more information about it. Consideration has a number of objectives - traffic, engagements, app installs, video views and lead generation. Traffic drives people to your website or app, engagement get more people to interact with your post or page, app installs gets more people to install you app, video views gets the most play from your video ad and lead generation allows businesses to create campaigns to find potential customers for their products or services.

And finally Conversion. This category has three objectives and is used when you want your audience to make a purchase or visit your business. Conversions is used when you want your audience to click through to your website and complete an action. Catalog sales is for promoting items from your e-commerce store catalog and store traffic when you have a number of business locations and you want target customer nearby.

Audiences
As part of the ad creation process you need to create an audience for your ad. You have the choice of creating a core audience, a custom audience or a lookalike audience.

A core audience is based on demographics from Facebook users profile information. These target audiences can be based on some or all of the following criteria:
  • location
  • age
  • gender
  • interests
  • connections
  • relationship status
  • languages
  • education
  • workplaces
  • Each option can be useful, depending on your audience.

    Custom Audiences allow you to connect with people who have already shown interest in your business, whether they're loyal customers or people who have used your app or visited your website. You can use your own email list or set up a Facebook pixel to automatically create a custom audience of people who visit your site or take certain actions there.

    Lookalike Audiences are a fast and effective way to connect with people who are likely to respond to your ads. All you need to do is create a source audience of people you know. Your ads will then reach people with common interests and traits.

    Ad Formats
    Decide where to run your ad - on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Audience network or across all of them. You also need to set your daily budget and the time period you want your ad to run.

    The next step is to pick a format for your ad. The choices are a single image, a carousel ad, a video, stories, messenger, slideshow, collection and playables.

    An image ad comprises of a high resolution single image, primary text, headline, description, call to action and website URL.

    For carousel ads you can add multiple images or videos to your carousel. Enter your headline, description, call to action button and Website URL. Your last image will automatically be the profile picture of your Facebook Page. You can opt out by unchecking the box next to 'add a card at the end with your Page profile picture'.

    Video ads use a single video to display your product or service. They have a high audience engagement. Apart from the video you need to add your primary text, headline, call to action and website URL. Advertisers can insert ads that are 5 seconds to 10 minutes long, though Facebook recommends a 15-second maximum, with both non-skippable and skippable options.

    Slideshow ads are similar to video ads and use 3 to 10 images that plays as a video or uses a single video that plays in a slideshow.

    Stories are short posts where you can share photos, videos and posts that will only be visible for 24 hours. They appear at the top of your news feed. Stories ads pop up in-between the Stories users watch on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp.

    Messenger ads show on newsfeeds like a regular ad but allow users to start a text conversation with you.

    Collection ads are perfect for stores that sell a number of different products. Each collection ad features a primary video or image with three smaller accompanying images below in a grid-like layout. Playables ads play a short interactive video. When a person taps a playable ad, they will be able to play a short, interactive and full-screen demo of your game without having to install anything.

    Facebook Pixel
    The Facebook pixel is an analytics tool that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising. It is installed on your website and records when someone takes action like making a purchase, completing a form or reaching a specific page on your site. It can be used to ensure ads are shown to the right people, sales can be maximised and your ad results can be measured.

    Our Facebook advertising
    Whether you are a small business planning to launch your first Facebook ad or a company that needs help with managing and optimising their Facebook ads, we can help. We offer a standard campaign setup from $199 which includes ad copy, image creation, core audience setup, split testing, pixel setup and reporting. We also offer ad management from $99 per month which includes weekly reporting and ad optimisation. Complete our enquiry form for an obligation free quote for your Facebook advertising needs.

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