How To Create Your First Facebook Ad

So you’ve decided to make the plunge and are ready to start advertising on Facebook.

But how exactly do you do it? What types of things are you supposed to keep in mind?

If you’re asking these questions then you have come to the right place! Littlejohn’s Webshop has run many successful Facebook ad campaigns and if you want to start running your own then you should know that there are many aspects of an add that makes it successful.

Here are just a few things to keep in mind when designing your Facebook Ad campaign.

Objective

The first step in creating your first Facebook Ad campaign is deciding what your objective is. Everything else will stem from this first decision.

Do you want to get more likes? Do you want to get sales leads? Do you want more traffic on your Facebook page or Website? Are you trying to grow your mailing list?  How do you want your audience to engage with your ad?

Whether it’s for brand awareness, traffic or conversion, answering this basic question will set you on the correct path and set your campaign up for success. Take your time and really understand how this decision will impact the efficacy of your campaign.

Get Comfortable

Since this is your very first Facebook ad, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with Facebook’s Ad Manager. Facebook has spent tons of money and resources designing their ad manager to be as user-friendly and sophisticated as possible so that small business owners like you can run successful Facebook ads on their own.

After clicking around the ad manager you’ll be surprised to see how many different ways you can set up your campaign. After running a couple of campaigns and seeing what works for you and your audience, you’ll be able to really delve into Facebook’s ad campaign settings.

Audience

Now is the time to decide who your audience is going to be. This will strongly depend on step 1 (objective) and is one of the most important aspects of a successful Facebook ad campaign.

You can have the nicest looking ad design and the most perfect ad copy but if your advert doesn’t make it to the right audience, it will fail. Luckily one of the greatest parts of the Facebook ad manager is the audience targeting settings.

You can target virtually any demographic you want, and Facebook gives you access to an extremely large user base to narrow as much or as little as you want. For instance, you can target things like age groups, genders, location, interests, relationship status, and more.

You can also decide if your ad will target those who have liked your page or your competitor’s page, or if they have never seen your page. All of these settings are tied closely to your main objective because that will decide who you want to put your ad in front of.

Budget

By this point you’ve probably already decided your advertising budget and a portion of it may already be accounted for in other advertising mediums. However you will need to figure out how much of a budget you’re going to give your Facebook ad campaign.  

Facebook ads are fairly inexpensive for what you’re getting, as the average cost per click is around $0.30. In case you are unfamiliar with CPC (cost per click), it means that the ad will run for the targeted audience you set but you only pay for the ads that are clicked.

You can also set up your campaign for you to pay for impressions, which means that you pay for every time your ad shows up on your audience member’s page. How you decide to pay for your campaign will rely on what your objective is.

Here’s a detailed article on Facebook ad budget that will help you understand how it works.

Design

After you’ve figured out your objective and your target audience, it’s time to design what your ad will look like. There are many things to consider while designing your ad, and it’s a good idea to make several designs and try them all out.

Another great aspect of the Facebook ad manager is that all of the results of your ad are tracked and archived. If you run a few different designs you can see the analytics and figure out which ones worked.

It’s important to try to understand what exactly made one ad design better than another. Maybe you added a button to one that you didn’t have on another or maybe you used a different color scheme.

Once you have run a few different ad designs and have seen which ones worked for you it will only get easier to continue to run successful Facebook ads.

Patience

It’s natural to expect results quickly when advertising online, but you have to remember that this stuff takes time. Be patient with yourself and be patient with your campaigns.

While Facebook has made it fairly simple to set up your ad campaign, actually running your own will require some expertise that will come with time and experimentation. If you don’t have time to learn this stuff or you want faster results, it may be a good idea to hire an expert.

If you’re looking to run your own Facebook ads, it’s certainly doable. Running your own ads can be a fun and exciting hobby that if done right is a highly sought after skill.

If you don’t feel ambitious enough to do this by yourself then the marketing experts at Littlejohn’s Webshop can handle it for you. We’ve run many successful Facebook ad campaigns and can guarantee results.

For more information on Facebook ads, or for a quote, contact Littlejohn’s Web Shop now!