How to set up an effective facebook ad campaign

9 Tips to Write the Best Facebook Ads Ever (with Examples)

I’m constantly on Facebook, scrolling through my feed reading the news and looking at pics of cute Pomeranians. I’m not alone—the social media platform averages 2.91 billion monthly active users. It’s also the top channel used by marketers worldwide.

All these users spell out huge potential for marketers, and Facebook has emerged as one of the best advertising platforms for both B2B and B2C businesses. In the past few years, as organic reach on Facebook has declined, savvy marketers have been advertising on Facebook to get results.

There’s a lot that has to come together to make a Facebook ad successful—you need the right targeting, a great image or video, and compelling copy. Today, I’m focusing on why writing matters in Facebook ads, as well as some strategies on how you can write great Facebook ads that actually convert.

Why Facebook Advertising Works So Well

There are tons of users on Facebook, but sending an ad out into the void doesn’t result in tons of conversions. The key to Facebook’s advertising is targeting. Facebook has the best ad targeting of any site.

This targeting allows you to get super specific about what audience your ad reaches. If you sell garden hoses, you can reach people who are interested in vegetable gardens and home improvement. If you sell a software-as-a-service (SaaS) tool, you can target those who’ve visited a landing page on your website.

Here are some of the ways you can target your ads on Facebook:

Custom audiences – allows you to target existing customers or leads
Location – allows you to target by location (city, state, country)
Gender – allows you to target by gender (male or female)
Interests – allows you to target by interest (such as fitness, entrepreneurship, fashion, literature)

Behaviors – allows you to target by past behavior, such as someone visiting your website
Connections – allows you to target by people who already like your page, or who have connections that do

Check out this epic infographic to see all of Facebook’s ad targeting options in detail.

All of Facebook’s Ad Targeting Options [Infographic via WordStream]

The Two Types of Facebook Ads

There are two types of Facebook ads that marketers can use:

1. Sponsored Posts

Facebook Sponsored posts appear directly in the Facebook Newsfeed. Users see the ads as they are scrolling, and the feature as prominently as posts from close friends. Here’s an example of a Sponsored post from Farm Hill:

Facebook Sponsored Post from Farm Hill

2. The Right-Hand Column Ad

The right-hand column ad appears—you guessed it!—in the right column of the Facebook feed. These ads are smaller, but they can’t be scrolled past like sponsored posts in the News Feed. Marketers often use right-hand column ads for retargeting purposes. Here’s an example of a right-hand column ad from West Elm:

West Elm right-hand column ad

Note: Sponsored posts include a fair amount of copy, so I’ll be focusing on copywriting tips for these posts, although the tips can be applied to right-hand column ads as well.

But Does Copywriting for Facebook Ads Really Matter?

Yes! When you envision a Facebook ad, you might think of a large image. Images are important in Facebook Ads, but copywriting is also essential.

If you’re spending money on a Facebook ad, you want to make sure it does its job. Good ad copywriting can persuade your audience to click through to your website. Good copywriting functions as a guide—it shows people where they need to go.

Great advertising copy can persuade, excite, and entertain. It makes connections, cuts out excess information, and makes the choice to proceed seem obvious. It’s an essential part of a successful ad.

So here’s how to do it: Use these principles to write the best ads you can.

9 Strategies for Writing Your Best Facebook Ads

Here are our tips for optimizing your Facebook ads with great copy.

1. Use Facebook Targeting to Narrow Your Audience, then Write to It

When it comes to selling online, it’s tempting to write like you’re on stage at a conference. But if you want to be effective, you must write as though you’re writing to one person—and one person alone.

This person, your target, is the one you need to woo and persuade. Just as though you were an in-person salesperson, you need to focus all your attention on this person and their needs.

On your website, you have to write copy that speaks to all potential customers, and you probably have a few different personas. On Facebook, however, you can narrowly target your audience. What does it look like to implement this Facebook Ad tip? Here’s an example. You can target your ads to women who are over 30 that live in the U.S. and are interested in fitness and wellness. Then you can write targeted ads that speak to that very specific audience.

Facebook Audience Definition

2. Write Different Facebook Ads for Different People

This goes along with the idea of targeting. Your customers turn to you for a variety of reasons, so why would you use one blanket ad? Facebook’s strength is its ability to target, so don’t treat your ad like a billboard.

For example, imagine you’re a clothing retailer. You sell men’s and women’s apparel, as well as shoes, accessories, activewear, underwear, and even bath and body products. Many customers will be interested in some of what you have to offer, but many will be most interested in one area. Simply put, women will be interested in what you have for women.

I love this video ad from Old Navy promoting its activewear. The ad is targeted to those who’ve listed fitness as an interest. In this way, Old Navy reaches the right audience with its ad.

Old Navy’s “Get moving in style” Facebook video ad

3. Ensure Your Facebook Ad Copy Goes with Your Visual

Many smaller businesses—and even larger ones, especially in the B2B space—don’t have a ton of visuals on hand. When it comes time to run an ad, there’s a scramble to make sure an image gets attached.

This can result in an image that doesn’t go together with the copy, which presents a jarring experience for a Facebook user. If the copy and the image don’t line up, they’ll wonder what the ad is actually advertising. They’ll be unlikely to click, and your ad will be wasted.

Starbucks stitched together three images to create a great visual for its “World’s Largest #StarbucksDate” campaign. The copy mentions “french press caffe Verona & a chocolate brownie,” which are then visualized in the photos. In this way, Starbucks reminds its audience what they’ll get by coming into the coffee shop, resulting in an effective Facebook ad.

Starbucks’ “#StarbucksDate” Facebook ad campaign

If you’re struggling to create images for Facebook ads, you can use image tools like Bannersnack, Canva, PicMonkey, and Pablo by Buffer to create your own.

4. Stay Focused with One Call to Action

The best Facebook ads have a clear goal. Are you trying to increase brand awareness, get a lead, or sell a product? No matter what, your ad should have a clear call-to-action. Without it, Facebook users will see your ad, but they’ll have no idea where to click, or what to do.

Society6 sells iPhone cases, and they show off their products in their Facebook ads. But the ad is a lot more than an image of a lovely iPhone case—it has a call-to-action button (“Shop Now”) encouraging users to come to the Society6 website to browse, shop, and ultimately buy.

Society6 Facebook ad, with one call to action

Speaking of calls to action, did you know that “Call now” is also an option? Learn more about click-to-call ads on Facebook here.

5. Keep it Short and Lead with Value

You’re paying for an ad, so it can be tempting to cram in as much as possible. You have to explain your product to people, after all. However, to really compete in Facebook ads, you need to keep it short, and lead with value.

What does someone get out of using your product? How will it help them? These are the areas you should focus on in your copy, and you should get these points across in a clear, concise manner.

For example, TaskRabbit helps people hire others to complete personal tasks, but the value is that users can get everything done when they’re busy and overwhelmed. In the following ad, TaskRabbit shares its value with the copy: “Getting everything done is easier than you think,” “Hire a tasker instead,” and “We’ve got chores covered.” Just three sentences completely explain the value of the service.

TaskRabbit’s “Hire a Tasker” Facebook ad, with lead value

6. Use Simple Language that’s Easy to Understand

Copywriting is not high literature. Maybe you were a poet in college, but flowery language will muddle your message. It’s time to cut the verbosity.

Your number one priority should be writing a Facebook ad that’s easy to understand—for anyone, even a 5th grader. When someone sees your ad, they should immediately know:

What you’re offering
How it benefits them
What to do next

That’s why I love this sponsored post from SoFi, which helps people refinance their student loans. The copy in this Facebook ad is refreshingly simple: Pay off loans faster. SoFi explains what it offers (refinancing of loans), the benefits (paying off loans faster), and what to do next (apply now).

SoFi’s “Pay off loans faster” Facebook ad, with simple language

7. Be Upfront About the Numbers

If you’re selling a physical product, people want to know how much it costs. If you’re running a sale, people want to know what percentage they’re going to get off. A copywriting strategy that works? Lead with the numbers.

For example, Ball Honda, a car dealership in San Diego, sponsors Facebook ads that drive home the nuts and bolts of how much it costs to get a car. They share the deal people can get if they lease a CRV, and give a date for when the promotion ends. They don’t show the ad to everyone in San Diego—they target those who have come to their website already.

The ad isn’t particularly sexy, but it’s helpful, and it effectively reminds people to come to their dealership when they’re ready to buy a car.

Ball Honda Facebook ad, with upfront numbers

8. Get Some Perspective

You’re working to market your brand every day, so it can be tough to step back and make sure the copy for your Facebook ad resonates. Scroll through your own Facebook feed and take a look at the ads. Which ones make you want to click? Which ones do you simply scroll past?

It’s a good idea to get some perspective from someone besides yourself. You can hire a freelance writer or editor to write the ad for you, or help you brainstorm. You can also bounce the ad off a few coworkers, especially ones outside the marketing department, to see if they think it’s effective. Friends and family—people outside the business—can help as well.

9. Test your Ad Copy

The only way you can improve your Facebook ad copy is if you run tests. Facebook makes it easy to spend a small amount of money to try things out. In the end, the only way you can ensure your copywriting works is through experience.

Try running two different ads—each with the same image, but different copy—to see which resonates most with your audience. Which version gets the most likes, comments, and conversions?

For example, Post Planner posted the same ad, but changed up the copy. In one ad, they asked a question. In the second ad, they made a statement. It’s a subtle copy change, but it can spell out big changes in results.

Post Planner Facebook ad, with experimental ad copy.

For more help with testing, check out our post on Facebook A/B testing on a budget.

Write Copy That Drives Results on Facebook

The best ads on Facebook ultimately lead to sales. As a marketer, you need to make sure you’re putting the ingredients together to create an ad that gets the job done, and strong copywriting is an essential part of a good Facebook ad.

Need more tips on Facebook advertising? Check out these resources from WordStream:

3 Questions Our Facebook Grader Can Help You Answer
10 Smart & Easy Facebook Marketing Ideas
How to Create Facebook Lead Ads that Convert
5 Ways to Get Tons of Low-Cost Conversions on Facebook
The Complete Guide to Facebook Video Ads
Facebook Ads Checklist: 5 Quick Questions to Ask Before You Hit “Go”

How to Create the Perfect Facebook Ad in 10 Minutes

It’s easy to get confused with Facebook advertising. From behavioral targeting to pixel tracking, Facebook offers a bewildering number of targeting options, advertising best practices, and ad formats.

In this article, you’ll learn the five elements of successful Facebook ads. I’ll walk you through each step. These lessons are based on things we’ve learned at Hootsuite running paid social advertising campaigns.

Bonus: Download a free guide that teaches you how to turn Facebook traffic into sales in four simple steps using Hootsuite.

1. Create a simple CTA with one clear action

The perfect Facebook ad is clear about the action it wants the prospect to take.

Every campaign or ad format in the world can be boiled down into two types: ads designed to engage your prospect’s attention and ads designed to drive a direct action such as sale, app install, or lead.

In a perfect world, your campaign does both. But in most cases, you’ll either get one or the other. Brand awareness is valuable. It’s a smart strategy that builds your business over the long-term. But too many campaigns try to mash brand awareness and direct response together. Unless you’re a marketing genius, it rarely works.

As such, creative brand awareness campaigns are better served with CTAs related to content consumption such as following your Facebook page, subscribing for more content, or collecting email subscriptions. And direct response ads are better served answering common buying objections than trying to engage or entertain.

An excellent example of a direct response ad comes from the company AppSumo. As you can see below, the ad has one clear goal: get you to immediately buy the product.

The ad doesn’t waste time—it tells what the product is, what the deal includes, and uses a timed offer to give you a compelling reason to buy right away.

Mailchimp is the undisputed champion of brand advertising. Their genius is that they let brand awareness campaigns simply build the brand. Their Facebook ads never try to get you to watch one of their weirdly brilliant videos AND sign up for a free trial. It’s not that Mailchimp doesn’t do product-specific ads, either. Lots of their ads aim to drive sales or get customers to try a new feature. But they keep these two worlds—brand awareness and direct response—completely separated.

Conversely, an ad that tries to do both is is likely to fall flat. If you have ad copy that speaks to the core value of your product (brand awareness), don’t ask people to buy or sign up right away. Instead, use your CTA to encourage people to take a smaller, more location action such as “watch a video to learn how the product works.”

Decide on one simple action you want people to take. The easiest way is to focus your ad on one section of the purchase funnel. Pick one from Hootsuite’s social media marketing funnel:

Awareness, affinity, and consumption: stick to first handshake CTAs such as boosting followers, reading other pieces of content, or subscribing to your email.
Conversation: focus on engagement metrics such as boosting shares, increasing comments and tagging, or generating positive mentions.
Intent: focus on next step CTAs such as “learn more” or driving content downloads.
Conversion: focus on actions that lead directly to revenue such as adding products to a cart, requesting a sales demo, downloading an app, or signing up for a subscription product.

2. Use an audience targeting strategy that helps you refine over time

The perfect Facebook ad doesn’t randomly combine audience targeting. It uses testing to refine targeting precision over time.

Facebook offers an endless list of audience targeting abilities. It’s easy to get confused. And even easier to just give up, adding random interest and behavior categories and hoping that Facebook will magically match you with customers.

You can save a lot of money and time by being intentional in your audience targeting.

The trick to audience targeting is to improve your insights into what works over time.

Here’s a simple path to start.

Begin with a lookalike audience.

Lookalike audiences are powerful because you can use existing data (such as people who purchased a product from your website) to target similar prospects on Facebook. This gives you a solid platform to start testing and refining your audience targeting.

How do you create a lookalike audience in Facebook? In your favorite Facebook ad tool, follow these steps.

Navigate to the Audience section of your ads manager.
Click Create a Lookalike Audience.
Choose create custom audience and then choose customer file.
You can then add an Excel file of customers—for example, your email list or a list of customers from PayPal.
Choose the country where you’d like to find a similar set of people.
Choose your desired audience size with the slider.
Click Create Audience.

If your goal is to target the most potential lead prospects, you should create lookalike audiences targeting one to two percent of a country’s population, instead of aiming for 10 percent. And for best results, don’t forget to exclude custom audiences of people who have already converted.

If the steps above confused here, here’s an article with more information on how to create a lookalike audience in Facebook.

Later, refine with nuanced targeting.

After you run your first campaign, you can then adjust your audience targeting strategy by adding the tweaks below. Add these one at a time to see if they make an impact. This article from AdEspresso by Hootsuite explains how targeting works in Facebook.

First, choose target location. Then add on interests. Then demographics. Narrow your audience by adding required categories—such as the user must be interested in X and also must like Y or Z. Experiment with behaviors as well.

Under behaviors you can target specific device owners, people who are having an anniversary within the next two years, for example, or users who have recently made a business purchase.

Another approach is to start by testing broad audiences, and then adding more specifics as you go, getting a more refined and higher converting audience every time.

3. Write a clear and conversational headline

The perfect Facebook ad doesn’t annoy people with boring benefits or wordy sales pitches. Use a conversational tone and relax on the sales tricks.

At Hootsuite, we’ve found that headlines work best when they’re clear and conversational. This minimizes annoying people with overt advertising in their personal feeds.

Sometimes a good headline is a clever phrase. Other times, it’s a straightforward product benefit. There are no true hacks to writing headlines. And even the old advice that headlines must contain benefits—not features—is as the British say, rubbish.

My recommendation is to follow brands that really have mastered the aesthetic and social codes of Facebook and Instagram. A few personal favorites: Chewy.com, MVMT, and <>. You’ll notice these brands tend to have a much conversational approach to headlines, rather than traditional benefit-focused copy.

As an aside, your headline in a Facebook ad is typically the “text” field in the ad builder, not the “headline” field. Zuck and I see eye-to-eye on many things. But it’s clear that engineers—not copywriters—built Facebook ads.

As you might have noticed in Facebook’s ad builder, the ‘headline’ appears in the third position in the ad under the image. This would make the headline the second thing you read in the ad—so not a headline at all.

If you enter copy in the “text” field, treat this as your headline. It’s the first thing your prospects will see and the “headline” functions more like a subhead for additional information.

4. Use an image that has creative tension with the headline

The perfect Facebook ad has a clever or creative tension between art and copy.

Amatuer advertisers on Facebook make a predictable mistake. The image and the headline do not have any creative tension. For example, if the headline is “make money in your sleep,” you’ll see a stock image of a person in pajamas, holding handfuls of cash. Or if the headline says “become a social media jedi” you’ll see a social media manager dressed as a jedi.

Here’s a helpful rule for stronger art direction. If the copy is literal, make the visual playful. If the visual is playful, make the copy literal. This creates contrast and interplay between the art and copy.

For example, Slack’s famous campaign has an abstract image. The headline is copy is straightforward, explaining the metaphor. This would be a much different campaign if the image was also straightforward and literal such as a person in an office getting a high-five. It’s the tension between the image and headline that makes the ad interesting.

Another example comes from Zendesk. Imagine how horrible the ad below would be if the image was replaced with a smiling team of support agents. A literal headline and a literal image that makes for lifeless advertising.

If you need to be visually inspired, you can use AdEspresso’s free ad tool. It lets you spy on competitors and find successful examples of Facebook ads.

If you can’t afford a custom photoshoot, here are 21 free stock photo sites.

5. Use the description area to remove friction for your CTA

The perfect Facebook ad knows that asking people to complete an action always creates buyer anxiety.

Your final step is to write the description for your CTA. This is the News Feed Link Description. Use this space to anticipate common buying objections.

For example, if your CTA is “Download your report” a common objection might the audience questioning the value of the report.

As you can see below, the Dollar Shave Club uses the description area to answer common objections to their subscription package.

So you can add some specific details such as a teaser of the content. If you’re asking for a direct sale—such as adding a product to a shopping cart—you can mention free shipping or return policies.

Join our webinar bootcamp series on Facebook ads

We’ve launched a complete (and free) Facebook advertising bootcamp series. Each 30-minute tutorial covers different aspects of building successful Facebook ad campaigns. You’ll learn advanced tactics and targeting best practices from real advertising pros.

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Setting up Facebook Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide

Contents

1 What is Facebook Ads Manager
2 Overview of Facebook Ads Manager
3 Creating an Ads Manager Campaign
- 3.1 Campaign Level Selection
  - 3.1 Campaign Selection
    - 3.1 3.1.2 Budget selection at the campaign level
  - 3.2 Ad group level
    - 3.2.1 Dynamic creatives
    - 3.2.2 Offers
    - 3.2.3 Budget and schedule
    - 3.2.4 Audience choice
    - 3. 2.5 Communications
    - 3.2.6 Types of playing
    - 3.2.7 Optimization and show
    - 3.2.8 Strategy Betting
    - 3.2.9 Type of delivery
    9000 9000 3.3
    - 3.3.1 Advertising format
- 4 Working with Acquisition and Retention campaigns
  - 4.1 What goal should I choose for a retargeting campaign?
  - 4.2 How to work with acquisition campaigns?
- 5 Conclusion
In this article, we will not only take a detailed look at the process of setting up Facebook ads from the technical side, but also analyze how this knowledge can be applied to create acquisition and retention campaigns. Let's take a look at Facebook Ads Manager first.

What is Facebook Ads Manager

Ads Manager is a free tool from Facebook with which you can create and manage ads and measure the effectiveness of their results.

In the advertising account, you can create, view and edit advertising campaigns, ad groups and ads themselves. You can use Ads Manager on both desktop and mobile devices. Please note that not all ad objectives and features are available when creating campaigns on mobile devices.

You can promote posts using the "Promote Post" button below the posts on the business page, but you will have less targeting options if you do so. We recommend launching and maintaining advertising campaigns using the advertising account in the desktop version.

You can access Facebook Ads Manager using one of 3 methods:
1. Using the direct link www.facebook.com/ads/manager.
2. In the top right corner of any page on Facebook, by clicking on the drop-down list and selecting “Manage Ads” from it.
3. Using a mobile application for IOS or Android.
Advertising campaigns can be run from a personal account. Thus, you can create only one advertising account and, accordingly, only one Facebook Pixel. To create more than one account and more flexible management of all pixels, pages, applications, we recommend using Facebook Business Manager.

Facebook Business Manager is a tool for managing all Facebook resources and sharing them with other users. In Business Manager, you can manage apps, pages, and ad accounts. You also have the ability to upload product catalogs, create posts, add payment methods, and more. For efficient management of all projects, you can create multiple cabinets.

Find out more: Facebook Business Manager: full overview of features and capabilities

If you are creating an ad on Facebook for the first time, you will also create an ad account.

To create it, you will need to specify its name, the company that will control it, time zone, payment method and currency.

Account currency is the currency used in the ad account for billing. Facebook writes that it regularly adds new payment methods. The Ukrainian hryvnia is not yet available, but the supported currencies are the Russian ruble, euro and US dollar. Once every 60 days, you can change the currency to pay for ads on Facebook, provided that you do not have a current balance. But when you change the currency, you will have a new advertising account created. In some countries (such as Brazil, Nigeria, and Venezuela), the ad account's company country must match the currency.

By creating an ad account in Business Manager, you'll have your campaigns, ads, and billing information all in one place. You can also share it with other people so they can manage your ads.

To prevent your advertising account from being blocked by the Facebook administration, it is enough to follow the advertising rules, which you can read here.

Overview of Facebook Ads Manager

Now let's take a closer look at the functionality of the advertising account.

1. Top navigation bar

Here you will find sections such as "Audiences" and "Analytics", you can set up reporting and set automatic rules, edit settings and much more.

2. Search and filters

The search will help you find the campaigns, groups or ads you need, and the filter will leave those campaigns that you plan to analyze using specific metrics: the names and goals of advertising campaigns, gender and geography of the audience, recent changes etc.

3. Button to create an advertising campaign

With this button you will start the process of creating a new advertising campaign, which we will describe in detail in the next section.

4. Ad account overview

Here you will find general information about your ad account, such as: reach or amount spent on all ads created, a detailed breakdown of the amount you spent on ads in the last 7 days, and any spending limits that you have set for the account.

5. Overview of advertising campaigns

In this tab, you can create and manage advertising campaigns: duplicate and edit existing campaigns, set up columns, and split the results according to the required metrics.

6. Overview of ad groups

Here you can create new ad groups within an existing campaign, edit, duplicate and view results.

7. Overview of ads

In this tab you can create new ads within an existing group, edit, duplicate ads, view their results.

8. Columns

Select one of the columns with the metrics you need or customize them yourself.

9. Campaign Breakdown

Here you can break down existing campaigns based on factors such as age, gender or placement.

10. Date Range

With this feature, you can set a specific date range so that advertisements are shown only for a certain period of time.

11. Campaign results

Here you will see the results of your active and inactive campaigns according to the selected columns.

Reports

Create standard or custom reports, export performance data as Excel or CSV files, and share reports with users who work with your ad account. You can also filter out those campaigns that you want to pay special attention to. If you need to send them to colleagues or a client, you can create a shortened link.

Creating an ad campaign in Ads Manager

As we mentioned in the first section, you can start creating an ad campaign in Ads Manager using the "Create" button.

Campaign level

At the campaign level, you can name the campaign, define the budget, purchase type and select the advertising objective. Let's take a closer look at target selection.

Target selection

The first step is to select a target. It is chosen according to your tasks - what you want to achieve. Choosing the right target will help you get the most effective results.

What are the goals?
1. Brand awareness
2. Coverage
3. Traffic
4. Involvement
5. Application settings
6. Video views
7. Lead Generation
8. Messages
9. Conversions
10. Sales of goods from catalog
11. Point visits
The target list is subject to change. If you have a new ad account or use its functionality infrequently, you may have fewer options. With its active use and taking into account many other aspects, you will probably be the first to receive all updates to the advertising account.

The goal you choose is also your way of optimizing. If you select the "Traffic" goal, the algorithm is optimized for those users who are more likely to click on the site, if "Application Installs" - for those who are more likely to download the application.

A little test of practical understanding: Let's say you've posted a blog post and published it on your business page. You want to promote it to increase the reading of the article.

What advertising goal will you choose?
1. Involvement
2. Traffic
3. Conversion
If you select Engagement, you will get interactions: ads will be optimized for those who like, share, comment, and make any other interactions. This means that if 9 out of 10 interactions are likes, then with this chosen goal, you will get a lot of likes for the article, but not transitions to the site.

If you want to get readers, then you should stop at the "Traffic" goal. In this case, the algorithm will be optimized for those users who click on the article.

If you want blog subscribers, for example, then your goal is Conversion. It will allow you to optimize impressions for those who subscribe to your blog. To do this, you need to use Facebook Pixel. About what a pixel is and why you need it, read our article.

⇨ The target is selected for optimization, but it is important to understand what you need to optimize for.

Another situation is also possible - adjacent goals with the same result.

For example, your task is to get leads. These can be collected through goals such as Lead Generation and Conversion. What to choose in this case? Let's simulate:

First, let's look at the cost per conversion:

↳ Lead Generation goal — $1. Goal "Conversion" - $3.

In this case, it is logical to choose the Lead Generation goal.

Next, we proceed to the analysis of the validity of leads:

↳ "Lead generation" - 10%, a valid lead will be $10. The “Conversion” goal is 50%, a valid lead will be $6.

Lead Generation loses in cost per valid lead.

But the analysis does not stop there, if you control the unit economy and end-to-end analytics.

The average check for valid leads through the Lead Generation objective, for example, may be higher, but CLV lower. Then, if we measure the average check and we have a one-time purchase, then perhaps the goal of "Lead Generation" can be more cost-effective. In any case, measure everything in terms of money.

If you're measuring results by taking into account the total amount of revenue for a customer, then you should stick with the Conversions goal.

⇨ The main point of your campaigns is profitability. Therefore, it is important to test the goals and see the results for different metrics.

Campaign-level budget selection

Budget is the amount of money you will spend showing ads to people. It is also a price control tool.

By setting the budget at the campaign level, the system spends it automatically on the best results among all ad groups within the campaign.

But the best results for the system may not necessarily be the best for you. Let's imagine that you have created several personas, and the results in groups of some persons are more expensive than the results in others. In this case, the system will spend the budget on the group with cheaper results. But after analyzing the groups, you can see that the cheaper groups have much lower CLVs. To manage this, set a budget at the ad group level.

Ad group level

For example, select the "Conversions" goal at the campaign level and start creating an ad group and give it a name. Next, select the place where you want to drive traffic - website, application, Messenger or WhatsApp. Having determined the required entry point, the system will request clarification. For example, if you select "Website", the system will ask you to select a Pixel with events to track and optimize for conversions.

Next, Facebook suggests creating dynamic creatives or offers.

Dynamic creatives

You just need to upload images, headlines and other creatives, and the system will automatically create combinations, selecting several components (for example, images, videos, headlines, descriptions, etc.) for a given audience. You can read more about them here.

Offers

Offers are discounts that you offer Facebook users to encourage them to make a purchase online and/or offline. When a person sees your offer in the feed, a person can not only like it and leave a comment, but also save it in the Offers tab. Facebook will remind the person of the saved offer up to three times, depending on their personal notification settings.

Budget and schedule

Here you define how much you want to spend and set the period for which the ad will be displayed. The budget can be set daily or immediately for the entire duration of the advertising campaign. If you select "daily budget" your bid can be correlated throughout the week, and if you select "lifetime budget" - throughout the entire period. You can also set an end date for your campaign, which will be disabled automatically.

Audience Selection

Next, we move on to choosing the target audience: create a new one or use the saved one.

When you create a new audience, you include or exclude the collected audience lists for retargeting or look-alike audiences.

You can also specify socio-demographic (social) targeting:
- Location
- Age
- Floor
- Languages
- Detailed targeting. Here you can select all the interests, demographics, behaviors and other parameters you need.
When creating multiple ad groups and using detailed targeting in them, audience saturation is possible. This issue can occur if you are targeting with different conditions by including and don't use exclusions. For example, the same user can simultaneously be included in an interest group and in a group who visited the site. How to prevent the problem of audience attrition in advance, read our article “Audience satiety: How to avoid early and correct it in time”.

Relationships

You have the option to include, exclude, or target friends of users who follow your business page or use your mobile app. You can also include or exclude people who checked in to the event.

Types of placements

Placements include 2 categories: device types and platforms.

In device types, you can select desktop and/or phone to select the devices on which ads will be displayed. On the platforms, you define the ad zone (location) where your ad will be shown - on Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network or Messenger. When editing placements, you can select not only certain devices and platforms, but also configure additional settings.

Platforms and device types can be separated into different ad groups for content customization and testing. But we recommend combining them for more effective optimization. However, it is important to see how ads will look on all devices beforehand at the ad level.

Optimization and display

Next, we move on to choosing the option to optimize ad display. It will help the system understand how to deliver your ad. If you select "Conversions", the algorithm will select the audience that is more likely to make the specified conversion on the website. Delivery options depend on which advertising objective you are using.

When creating a Facebook ad campaign with the "Conversions" ad objective, you can choose the following types of bids to optimize: your ads with different intensity to all users from your targeting. "Impressions" - with a frequency of up to 4 per day, "Daily reach among unique users" - up to 1 per day.

"Link Clicks" or "Landing Page Views" - optimize impressions for those who are more likely to click on a link or view a landing page.

"Conversions" - optimize ad impressions for those who are more likely to make the set conversion on the website.

Bid strategy

One of the important steps in setting up an advertising campaign is choosing a bid strategy.

In order for the right audience to see your ad, you must win an auction with other advertisers. In the Facebook auction, the ad with the highest "total value" wins. The total value is not the amount you are willing to pay to display your ads. When determining this indicator, 3 factors are taken into account:

Rate
Approximate frequency of actions
Advertising quality and relevance

Rate is how much you are willing to spend. It controls the cost per result in case the auction wins and the impression is completed.

There are 2 bid strategies: Low Price and Target Price. Read more about them in our article How to Choose a Facebook Bid Strategy.

Delivery type

This parameter determines how fast your ad will be shown. You can use standard mode or set up accelerated impressions to get results faster. In the second case, your bid will be raised in order to get a higher place in the auction and get more impressions.

Ad level

Let's start creating an ad creative.

First you need to choose from which page the advertisement will be shown. If you have specified Instagram as one of the placements, you must also specify the desired account here.

Ad Format

Facebook offers several ad formats to choose from. Choose the appropriate format depending on the purpose of promotion and content.

Upload your own photos or use stock. On the right, you can find the image parameters recommended by the social network for the best selection of pictures. You can create up to 6 ads at the same time. You can find all the recommendations from Facebook on creating creatives in the "Creative Center" section.

All ad settings occur on the left side of the page. On the right is a preview of your creative in different placements.

Next, you fill in the required fields: title, text, link to the site, call to action, etc.

When the ad is ready, click the "Confirm" button and your advertising campaign will be sent for moderation.

It is important to remember that the effectiveness of an advertising campaign is determined by the communication in your creatives - the settings only correlate the cost per result. The target audience makes decisions according to what they see in the advertisement.

Working with Acquisition and Retention campaigns

We have analyzed the creation and setup of an advertising campaign from A to Z. But how to apply this knowledge correctly and get effective results?

If you have a website or mobile app, before launching an acquisition campaign, start by setting up a retargeting campaign.

For this you need:

Install Facebook Pixel or Facebook SDK.
Create a funnel for retargeting.
Set up the necessary events for the approved funnel.
Create saved audiences to distribute them to ad groups in campaigns.
Create an advertising campaign with the advertising objective you need.

Why start with retargeting? While you are setting up an advertising campaign for a cold audience, you will be able to start communicating with existing traffic.

Retention (retargeting campaigns) is a system promotion. And its task is to reach all relevant users/visitors and lead them to the final goal. At the same time, each stage of the funnel needs to be improved by increasing the Conversion Rate. In the case of acquisition campaigns, it is important to test in order to find the most profitable cost for achieving the goal.

What is the target for a retargeting campaign?

If you are sure that your audience is of high quality, then the percentage of the target audience tends to 100. In this case, you do not need to worry about the type of delivery and optimization of the advertising campaign. In this case, the goal is to reach everyone. Choose the Reach objective to reach everyone in your sample and get a lower CPM.

If someone has already worked with the sample before you and you are not sure about its quality, then stop at the “Traffic” goal and optimize for clicks to reach only those who are more likely to want to receive your offer.

If the audience is of poor quality, then select the "Conversions" goal and optimize for conversions. You will lose volume, but at the same time you will not spend money on inappropriate impressions.

To be sure that you have chosen the right goal, we recommend testing and analyzing the results. The selection of an advertising goal for retargeting is the search for the ratio of the optimal price per result to the number of results received.

If you're getting sales for, say, $10 per unit for the "Conversions" ad objective, but your KPI is $15, try switching to the "Traffic" ad objective. The cost per result will likely fall while still being within the KPIs, but sales volumes may rise as more people see your ad.

If you don't plan on active promotion, it's definitely worth launching retargeting campaigns. This will help you reach the entire loyal audience and lead the funnel to the result for a penny. Most of the spending is always on acquisition campaigns. If you don't have enough budget, run only retargeting campaigns.

How to work with acquisition campaigns?

Planning and implementing acquisition advertising campaigns is completely different from retention campaigns.

The first stage is testing. Persons are created, a number of messages for each of them, a list of target groups, and saved audiences (targeting combinations) are loaded. Additionally, saved audiences are created based on data, and not only on portraits of the target audience (lookalike audiences from the database, lookalike audiences from events, etc.).

When testing is in progress, you need to move on to stabilizing the results and optimizing them. How to do this, we described in detail in the guide “Optimizing and scaling Facebook advertising campaigns”.

Conclusion

With the help of this article you will be able to create and set up an advertising campaign without any experience with Facebook Ads Manager. In the process of improving your skills, you will understand how you can manage the settings to get more effective results from communication with the audience.

Important points we would like to recap:

Decide how much value you want to bring to your business by launching an advertising campaign. This will help you choose the right advertising goal and optimization method. For example, you shouldn't drive traffic to a website without conversion optimization if you have a specific goal of selling something or getting a lead.

Research your target audience to select the right communication strategy. Compiling various insights that you will use in an advertising campaign will help you find exactly the way of communication that will allow you to get the most profitable result.

Set up an advertising account and specify the correct currency, otherwise you won't be able to change your choice later — after changing the currency, you will create a new advertising account.

Install Facebook Pixel or SDK to track the events you need and optimize ad impressions for them.

Before launching acquisition campaigns, start working on creating retargeting campaigns.

Create saved audiences for acquisition campaigns to target the same target groups in order to nurture a need for your product.

Do not forget about satiety and audience overlap, so as not to get bored with advertising and not lose loyalty, which is very long and expensive to restore.

Effective results for you! 🙂

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How to set up targeted advertising on Facebook: a step-by-step guide

Facebook has 1.49 billion daily users, so businesses are actively using this platform for promotion. Today we will talk about what is targeted advertising on this social network, and give step-by-step instructions on how to set it up. Yulia Davidenko, Targeted Advertising Specialist and Lecturer marketing school LVL80 .

Reading time 15 minutes
You can go directly to the section you are interested in:

Overview of Facebook Targeted Advertising Settings
- Targeting settings
- Advertising campaign targets
How to set up targeted ads on Facebook
- Detailed targeting
- Placements
- Optimization and display
- Advertisement setting
Terminals

What is targeted advertising

Although targeted advertising is popular, some still do not quite understand what it is and confuse it with other types of promotion. Therefore, to begin with, we will clarify this issue.

Targeted advertising does not include:

pay-per-click or 100-impression ads based on keywords, as in the case of Google context;
creation and publication of content;
work with opinion leaders;
“cheat” of subscribers and likes by bots.

Therefore, it makes no sense to contact a specialist in targeted advertising in the hope of getting the full range of services for promotion in social networks. He will not lead your brand page or “catch up” with subscribers there.

  Learn about targeted advertising in our detailed article "What is targeted   ads:   types, examples, features".

Ringostat for a marketer

Prove to management that the advertising you set up is effective - show call tracking and end-to-end analytics reports.
Learn how to make campaigns even more effective - analyze what potential customers are asking and what to add to your ads.
Control how the sales team processes the leads you bring in - listen to audio recordings of calls and see reports of missed calls;
Get more value for the same budget - find out which campaigns are not working and turn them off or optimize them, and invest the freed money in the most successful activities.

Learn more

How to advertise on Facebook: an overview of the settings cabinet

The advertising cabinet is very similar in structure to the analogous Google Ads cabinet. Advertising on Facebook and Instagram will be configured from one Facebook advertising account. This happens according to the same algorithms with identical rules and features of work. Therefore, everything that we will talk about advertising on Facebook applies equally to Instagram.

  Read more about promotion on Instagram in the article “How to use Instagram   for business.

An example of an advertising account for targeted Facebook advertising

Here, settings are exactly the same at three levels:

campaigns;
ad groups;
announcements.

At the campaign level , only the objectives of the advertising campaign are selected, if necessary, the budget, campaign duration and cost limit are set.

At the ad group level , all targeting settings occur:

audience parameters;
placements - places where ads will be shown;
optimization methods;
advertising schedule;
budget;
Expiry date - if not set at the campaign level.

At the ad level , creatives are added - photo or video, text. As well as a link to the landing page, if we are talking about advertising in order to get traffic to the site.

Targeting settings on Facebook

Here, the settings for targeted advertising are radically different from contextual ones. The first thing you need to specify is the place of residence. You can select one country or several, individual cities or even a radius around a specific place. Next, age, gender and language are set.

At the stage of setting detailed targeting, you can already set many parameters:

marital status;
life events;
field of activity;
hobbies and interests; preferences;
lifestyle;
operating system or phone model and more.

An example of setting up an audience in the Facebook advertising account

Audiences can be narrowed down using additional parameters or some targeting parameters can be excluded from it. If you're advertising a steak restaurant, you can easily exclude vegans from your targeting.

In addition to the so-called "cold targeting", you can use custom audiences. They are generated based on site visitors, customer lists, people who interacted with your page, etc.

Ad campaign goals

The most popular goal in targeted advertising on Facebook is traffic. But besides it, there are others that are no less effective for various tasks.

Awareness (brand awareness and reach) . Allows you to show ads to as many people or a specific group of people as many times as possible.
Involvement . Used to promote an existing publication in order to get maximum coverage and engagement: likes, comments, reposts.
Application settings . The name says it all – this ad target is aimed at advertising the app.
Video views . Allows you to get the maximum number of video views. Well suited for the first phase of a new product launch. First, you talk about a product or service in a video. Then you collect an audience of people who watched your video - after all, they have already become acquainted with your product. And in the second stage, you launch direct advertising to this audience.
Lead Generation . If you do not have a website, but need to test the demand for a product, this goal is suitable for you. Similarly, if you have a landing page, you need to compare the effectiveness of different advertising methods. After clicking on the ad, the user sees a short information and a data entry form. Through it, the advertiser collects contacts of potential customers and then works directly with them.
Messages . This goal allows you to engage users directly in a Messenger conversation and also doesn't require a website. Further, you can communicate with the user directly or connect a flow-bot.
Conversions . For the user, this is no different from advertising with the goal "Traffic", because he also gets to the site. The only difference is optimization. In a traffic campaign, algorithms target the people who visit your site and serve ads to those who are more likely to visit your site. And when advertising for the purpose of "conversion", the system analyzes users who have completed the necessary target action. Based on this data, Facebook selects the audience for the subsequent display of ads.
Sales of goods from catalog . Most often, this goal is used by online stores with a large number of products. It allows you to create ads based on catalog cards. Also used for dynamic remarketing.
Point visits. Used to advertise offline businesses - beauty salons, restaurants.

  Learn more about the posting rules in the article Why Google and Facebook Advertisers Can Get Banned.

How to set up targeted advertising on Facebook

Let's take an example of how to create an advertising campaign on Facebook with the most common goal - traffic.

Go to Ads Manager, press the button Create campaign and select the goal Traffic .

Give the name of the campaign, the first ad group, ad and save the draft.

If necessary, set the budget and duration of the campaign. But usually this is done at the level of the ad group, to the settings of which we go.

Budget selection. Here we have two options: daily or for the entire period of validity. From myself, I can say that I prefer to manage the daily budget - increasing or decreasing it, depending on the situation.

The launch date is set automatically on the day the group was created, but the ad will not start until you enable the campaign. If you want the show to start on a specific day, set the desired date. Same situation with end date . You can schedule it in advance, or you can not specify this date.

Next, go to setting up audiences . And the first thing that is offered is to choose an individualized or saved audience.

If you don't plan to use them, skip this step and proceed to setting up cold audiences.

The first thing to set up is the socio-demographic indicators.

Places. First, choose who in the area you want to reach: all people, locals, travelers, or recent visitors. Next, specify the region itself — it can be a country, a city, or a certain radius around a given point on the map (from 1 km). Regions can be added, and certain areas can be excluded from the already selected ones.

With age and gender , I think no one will have problems.

As for the language , I advise you to always specify the language in which the ad is written and the landing page itself.

How to set up targeting: detailed settings

Here you set the criteria that your audience should meet. Interests can be selected from the drop-down list by pressing the button View, or by entering them manually.

Here you can set marital status, education level, life events, hobbies and hobbies, field of activity, different preferences, mobile device model or PC operating system, behavior, etc. Interests can also be excluded or narrowed down.

Contacts . Using this option, you can set up ads to be shown only to page subscribers, friends of subscribers, or completely exclude them from targeting. You can also set up links to an event or application.

After you create an audience, you can save it for later use.

Placements

In this field you specify the places in which the advertisement will be shown. When choosing automatic placements, the system will choose where to show ads. But you can also set them yourself. We will not dwell on individual placements - when you hover over the desired item, you will see a description and a good example.

Optimization and delivery

The last thing you need to do in the groups settings is to set the parameters that the system will rely on when selecting an audience for displaying ads. In this case, you can set optimization for clicks, landing page views, impressions, and reach. Optionally, you can set a bid limit per click. But at the initial stage, it is better to stick to the minimum price strategy.

Advertisement setup

This is the last step. Here you set what the user will see: image, text, title, description of the link and the link to the landing page itself.

This completes the ad creation process. Then you can add new groups and ads to the targeting campaign, launch and optimize them.

Frequently asked questions

Why is targeted advertising effective?

Because it is shown not to everyone, like a TV commercial, but to an audience that is potentially interested in buying. This increases the likelihood that the person who viewed the ad will make an order from you.

Why is targeted advertising expensive?

Not always. If you choose the right audience to which advertising will be shown, then it will pay off doubly. To do this, you need to research who your typical buyer is and take this into account when setting up campaigns.

Who is targeted advertising for?

Almost all companies that understand who their target audience is. Targeted advertising is not suitable only for those companies that, in principle, do not promote online.

Conclusions

Targeted advertising, like contextual advertising, suits almost everyone. But the features of promotion with their help are fundamentally different. In the case of context, we work with formed demand - we show our offer to people who are already looking for a specific product or service. In targeted advertising, we form an audience based on socio-demographic data and range of interests.
Learn more