How To Advertise On Facebook

Hootsuite has estimated the potential reach of Facebook ads to be 2.11 billion users out of the almost 3 billion users that engage actively on Facebook monthly. This reach of Facebook ads and its efficiency in target marketing indicates that Facebook must be on the list of every business social media campaign. This article aims to share information on how to advertise on Facebook.

How does Facebook advertising work?

To effectively advertise on Facebook and enjoy the benefits of leveraging the platform, you must understand what Facebook advertising is and how it works.

Facebook advertising or Ads are paid messages that businesses place on Facebook to promote their business product and services in the eyes of Facebook’s large audience. The reason Facebook ads are used by businesses is to enable them to reach their target market faster, so Facebook advertising primarily works by creating awareness about a business.

Facebook ads are targeted to users based on their profile information, demographic and location and it uses the following Ad formats to ensure it achieves its aim of reaching new customers and attaining business growth.
Facebook ad formats range from videos, images, multiple images(carousel), collections and instant experience ads, lead ads, and messenger ads,  to stories ads, and slideshow ads.

How to create a Facebook ads account

You can’t advertise on Facebook if you do not activate your Facebook ads account. A Facebook ads account is an account that will allow you to create ads, manage ads and also analyze them.  I said “activate” because when you sign up on Facebook, Facebook automatically  gives you an ad account ID by default, but to activate it, or to be able to use it to advertise you would have to do the following;

• Have a Facebook page or preferably play the role of an admin, advertiser or editor on someone else’s page. And also set up a payment method for your ads which of course must be valid. So, you should proceed to create a Facebook business page.
• After creating your Facebook business page, you can now navigate to the “Ad account” tab present on the business manager page, click on the “Add” icon and from the drop-down menu that will pop up, click on “Create a new ad account” and proceed to fill out the right information that will be required in the fields that will promptly display.
• After you’ve filled out the information required, you can proceed to select the “Create ad account” option and also choose the users you want to be linked to your ad account.

Please note: As an advertiser you are only limited to ownership of one ad account until you’ve made a successful and confirmed ads service payment before your ad account limit can increase.

Now that you have created and set up your Ads account, let’s look at how you can advertise on Facebook.

How to advertise on Facebook

Advertising on Facebook is quite easy if you know how, and Facebook ads aren’t expensive although the cost depends on a few factors such as the size of the audience it intends to target, the duration the ads will run, the geographic location of the targeted audience, the time of day it is going to be displayed and the time of year.

To advertise on Facebook, you would have to ;

• Choose the objective of the Facebook ad

You can accomplish this by navigating to the “Campaigns” bar on the ads manager page, and clicking on “Create”. The objectives Facebook places on its campaign are divided into brand awareness, engagement, reach, lead generation, traffic, conversions, messages, video views etc.  I would recommend that you choose the objective of your Facebook campaign wisely as it will not only meet its target but will also affect the cost. Yes, the total cost of your Facebook ads depends on the type of campaign you chose to run.

• Schedule and budget your ads

Here, you will have to choose which of your business page you would like to promote with the ads and create a budget for it. This process can be quite tricky especially if it is the first time you will be running Facebook ads. If this is the case, you should only choose what you are comfortable with. Ads are scheduled into daily and lifetime of which certain prices are allocated. Daily means your ads will have to be fed the stated amount daily whilst lifetime considers a one-time budget which is throughout the lifetime of the campaign.

• Pick a target audience

Facebook ads work best when it is narrowed to a particular audience. You can select your ads’ target audience based on their demographics, geographic location and more. To achieve this, click on the audience size indicator that is located on the right side of the screen. Facebook also allows you to target people who have shown interest in your business before and you can do this by going to the “Detailed targeting” page and selecting the target audience of your choice.

• Select your ad placement and establish brand safety

Ad placement is all about selecting where you want your Facebook ads to be displayed. Go to “Advantage + placements” to automatically enable it or click on “manual placement” to make the choice yourself.

After placing your ads in a strategic location, the next thing you should do is protect your ad content from unwanted places you don’t intend it to appear.  Let’s say your product is meant for nursing mothers, it shouldn’t be made to appear in the content category for teens because it wouldn’t make sense, would it? You can filter content by enabling “Brand safety”.

• Create the Facebook ad

This is the last thing you are required to do if you must advertise on Facebook. Choose the ad format you want for your Facebook ads and input the appropriate information in the displayed media fields. Remember, to choose a format that aligns with your campaign objective, and preview it before clicking the “Publish” button to endorse it.