What is Facebook advertising and what are its benefits?
A quick guide for beginners - the elements that a Facebook ad has
Want to achieve greater brand recognition? Facebook is one of the main digital channels you can use to achieve this. Dreaming of huge sales growth? Well, again, the answer is the same - Facebook. Striving to remind your customers about yourself on a regular basis? You know how, right? Facebook...
What is Facebook?
Started more as a school project back in 2004, Facebook today is the largest social network with over 1 billion active users. Having established itself as an easy way to connect with family, friends, classmates and colleagues, the platform is accessible to everyone and everything. Including advertising. Because the examples of successful businesses that have used Facebok proves that advertising on this particular social network is a golden opportunity to reach millions of potential consumers of the service or product you offer.
What are the other platforms that include Facebook?
The history of Facebook has gone through many stages to know the network as it is today. In 2012, Facebook acquired another popular social channel, Instagram. Two years later, WhatsApp was added to the mix. This defines the huge impact they have together, both on people across ages and on advertisers, who get an even better chance to cover as many circles of potential buyers as possible.
What is Facebook advertising itself?
Today, we'll spare you going into in-depth detail, but we'll highlight the most important steps to make your campaigns effective. And although there is no exact definition of Facebook advertising, we'll try to outline a rough framework of what it means.
Facebook advertising is paid CPC, i.e. pay per click, advertising, but the name is misleading. It involves 3 parties: the Advertiser, Facebook or now Meta and the end user.
The platform charges advertisers based on 1,000 impressions/impressions in front of their potential customers, so CPC isn't the most accurate definition of it, but that's what it's called anyway. The ad itself, and the algorithm created for its purposes, actually seeks to do 2 things in general: Get users to visit your website or engage them with a content, such as likes, video views, etc.
What should be the first steps to advertise on Facebook?
What do you actually need to advertise on Facebook? Find out in the following lines.
Business Manager
The business manager is your starting point to be able to advertise. It is created from the Settings menu in Meta Business Suite. To make this happen, choose a name that associates with your business, and include an email address other than your personal one. If you're wondering what the business manager itself is, here's a humorous but extremely fair description our team did a while back.
Imagine a mother. She has two children and is currently expecting the third. This is also the business manager. Only his children are called "aunties". In other words, your advertising account, your pixel, your product catalog - all of these are aces. But each single aset, i.e. child, can only have one mother. The mother, in turn, can have many children. I.e. multiple pages, multiple ad accounts, etc.
Facebook page
Following the steps, it's time to link the Facebook page of the business you want to promote to your business profile. You'll find the option on the left of your screen, as a drop-down menu option will open up.
If you don't already have a social network page, you can create one directly through the Business Manager or Business Suite, as it is currently called. We think each of you knows what the page itself is, so we won't go into detail here.
Advertising account
After these two steps comes the time to welcome your advertising account. Again you will find it in the left menu of the screen in front of you, you need to enter the name you created in the previous steps, time zone, choice of currency to pay for ads. Follow the intuitive options to complete the registration, specifying whether you will manage your ads or those of other businesses, as well as designating someone else to whom you will give full rights to manage the activities.
But what is this account? It's the aforementioned account that you use to prepare, launch and optimise your advertising campaigns. It's where you see your ad performance information. It's also the child that actually spends your ad budgets.
Pixel
It's also time for the pixel. Generally speaking, it's programming code that easily integrates into your website (or online store) and "tracks" every action of users who visit the URL - how many browse, add to cart, buy or leave. It's set up again from the left desktop menu in the Meta Business panel, where you'll find it in the Data Sources submenu. You'll have the choice of installing Pixel manually or through a partner integration (choose the one that's right for your site - WooCommerce, Shopify, WordPress or other).
To ensure easy and correct pixel installation, consider two points:
- Verify - via Brand Safety option and Domains submenu, where you specify your site and confirm it.
- Properly set up the events you want to track - sales, add to cart, browse, etc., and rank them by importance.
Important Addendum: Along with the pixel, be sure to set up the Facebook Conversion API, which you'll most often see called CAPI. The questions, "What is it?" and "Why do I need it?" are answered immediately. After the iPhone OS update, from version 14 and all newer, users have the right to restrict access to personal information to businesses that advertise in their Facebook newsfeed. Not only did this create major challenges for retargeting campaigns, but the results had serious variance, reaching over 50% difference.
And without going into detailed technicalities, the following happened. Facebook created CAPI. It doesn't collect data about the users themselves such as name, demographics, gender, etc., but it does report orders and actions made on the site. But it doesn't do it like pixel does - directly through the site code, but reports the data through your server.
Product catalogue (if you are an online shop)
After all the steps taken so far, comes the important moment when you need to link the Product Catalog to your account. Follow the process by starting it in the Assets menu. Choose a name relevant to the activity, and specify a focus. If you are using a platform on which your online store was created, then the process will be almost automated. When complete, track if there is an issue with any of the products as well as set its auto-update.
Product catalogue is possibly the most literal name you can come across in the digital marketing sphere. It is a digital catalogue of your products or services and contains information on sizes, prices, varieties, titles, product descriptions and whatnot. If you see an ad that shows more than 10 products with specific information about them, you are definitely seeing a product catalog ad.
What ads can be placed on Facebook?
Generally, social media ads are targeted to action by a specific group of people in a specific region.
Actions can be related to reaching out to a broad community for information or consideration, or with the primary focus being a purchase. Facebook ads can be targeted to different ages, genders and locations. You can even target the interests of the audiences you want to reach.
Launching Facebook ad campaigns should always be tied to a specific goal that meets the needs of the business. Today, we'll briefly tell you what types they are.
- Awareness campaign - ideal for a new start-up you want people to learn about and a good choice for cold audiences meeting you for the first time.
- Traffic campaign - when you want to drive your users to your website, for example. This type of campaign is suitable for both cold audiences and retargeting.
- Engagement campaign - as the name suggests, this is the right choice when you want to engage your audience. It's suitable for both cold and warm audiences.
- Leads campaign - a suitable solution when you want to build a contact base of potential customers.
- App promotion - do you have a new app? Great! Reach more people using this advertising format.
- Sales campaigns - well, we've had our say. This is the most commonly used advertising category to achieve real sales.
When heading to create an ad campaign, always build a strategy. Think about how well known you are in the market, what you really want to achieve, how often you want to be reminded of yourself. Proper planning is 50% of your future success.
Now that you've set your goals, it's time to tell you about:
What type of ads are Facebook ads, depending on their format?
For your messages to be eye-catching, they need to be dressed up with the right visuals.
Again, there are several options.
- Single images - you're betting on one banner ad, so put effort into making it memorable.
- Video - can be a combination of several images or a creative video with a short story.
- Carousel - carousels are one of the most preferred formats by online stores because they provide the opportunity to promote several individual products with a relevant photo, short description and link.
- Dynamic ads - one bullet that hits several birds with one stone. Similar to carousels, they're ideal for remarketing to customers who have already viewed your products, but they also reach new audiences.
- Collection - the mobile-only ad collection is convenient for all those who want their sales to happen on the Facebook platform - from seeing the product to completing the purchase. They are usually previewed with a central image (or video) below which there are 4 smaller images that the potential customer can click on to see the details.
As you gain experience in advertising, you can try different options to see which works best for you. Of course, the time periods and goals you set are important, but as you build up a routine, you'll learn to "feel" them properly.
And where do you see Facebook ads?
Your ads are shown to the people and places that you have specified and selected in the ad campaign settings. Your ad can appear on Instagram or Story, on your Facebook wall, or in the right column on the Desktop version, on Messenger or social network affiliates. This is also determined at the campaign creation level.
How can ads in Newsfeed and Story be recognized?
Regardless of which platform you're on, sponsored ads are displayed with "Sponsored" text and a button for you to respond, which can be to purchase, engage with the post, view, or otherwise.
How do you pay for advertising on Facebook?
Social media advertising is paid for via a financial instrument linked to the platform, such as a credit card, PayPal account or voucher. This can be for a specific campaign or for a period.
No matter what advertising budget you set for yourself, and no matter whether it's on a daily basis or without a time limit, know that Facebook will charge you, one way or another, for every 1,000 views. You can learn what the platform defines as a view here: https://iabbg.net/research/istinskata-tsena-na-reklamata-vav-facebook-research/
There is no minimum or maximum when investing in Facebook advertising. Of course, the more the merrier, Winnie the Pooh said, and at Advantage we support that statement. But we advise, as you gain experience, to start with smaller amounts to get to know the process.
IMPORTANT! Facebook issues expense invoices that you can book as an expense for your company. This applies to all VAT registered companies. For those of you who do not have VAT registration - consult your accountant, as from the beginning of 2023 Bulgarian legislation has passed a law under which you can book expenses from advertising platforms.
Why do businesses use Facebook advertising?
Whatever you say, paid social media advertising campaigns, Facebook and Instagram in particular, generate huge sales growth for any business when set up correctly and you have a well-built business model.
And if you're having trouble setting them up and managing them, or need help, then don't hesitate to contact ADvantage so we can solve your problems together.