Facebook Advertising: discover what it is and how it works

Why does Facebook advertise? Nowadays, for a company that wants to keep up with the times, it is essential to have an online presence on social networks and to dedicate part of its communication strategy to Facebook Marketing, since the latter is the social network with the most active users. Facebook Advertising is a powerful tool for reaching a wide audience.

What makes Facebook so important in digital communication strategies? Probably the ability to publish and view texts, images, videos, and everything to do with multimedia. Or maybe it’s the possibility of expressing one’s opinion without brakes and showing others what we do or what we like? The question to ask is not whether a company should be present on social networks, but how to implement an effective Facebook marketing plan.

In all of this, can advertising on Facebook generate revenue? The answer is yes, but it depends on the effectiveness of the campaign. Placing ads well on this platform is essential to obtain a positive ROI and this is possible thanks to the existence of Facebook Ads, short for Facebook advertising.

In this article, I’ll explain how to create Facebook Advertising campaigns, so you can program this type of ad.

The great effectiveness of social campaigns on the most popular network of all is so evident that specialized professional figures have been created, able to create content, manage budgets and programming, and monitor results. Check out the Facebook Advertising Course to get an overview of the skills you could acquire.

By continuing to read, you can download the free ebook guide to Facebook Advertising and other useful resources for marketing on FB.

What is Facebook Advertising?

It’s the system that allows you to advertise on the most popular social network, simply by creating an account on the Facebook Business Manager or Meta Business Suite platforms, where you can purchase spaces and have them displayed on the target’s Home page.

These announcements can be recognized by the wording “sponsored” and can be either in the news section or in the desktop side column. They contain advertising content for awareness, following, and commercial sales.

Facebook Advertising, unlike unsponsored posts, can appear multiple times in various periods, following the same pattern as web advertisements. The frequency of the message is defined by some parameters of the FB campaign, such as the budget and the frequency limit.

Learn how to set up successful Facebook campaigns!

FACEBOOK ADVERTISING COURSE

Why does Facebook Advertising

Although positioning yourself on Facebook is very important, unsponsored posts are unlikely to generate the same ROI as a Facebook Advertising campaign. You risk being disappointed by the results and thinking that being present on Facebook is useless, quickly abandoning this fundamental channel. In a social advertising campaign, on the other hand, the investment of money is proportional to the benefit that will be obtained.

The advantages of Facebook advertising are many and, at a negligible cost compared to traditional media, we can obtain:

• Dissemination of the shared message;
• Benefit from brand awareness and reduction of the company-customer distance;
• Effectiveness of the sales funnel;
• Increased number of sales and interest;
• Increase visibility with collaborations;
• Lower marketing costs;
• More revenue.

The first stumbling block of Facebook, however, is to obtain a following or rather fans who “like” the page. Once the follower has been obtained, it is no longer necessary to spend on a campaign dedicated to him. How to attract them? Creating interesting content. From scratch? Not, first a clear Facebook strategy is needed: the union between a good market strategy and good communication and empathy skills.

First of all, remember that Facebook is a friendly place: copying your institutional advertising communication can be counterproductive. Facebook users are drawn to ideas, not products or services.

How to create the best Facebook campaign

For each ad campaign, it is necessary to go to Facebook Business Manager and select “Create ad” from the Ad Management area. Alternatively, less complex campaigns can be organized directly from the page, using the “Promote” button.

To understand how Facebook Advertising works, it is necessary to investigate 4 macro themes into which this social advertising system is divided, namely:

• Campaign type;
• Public;
• Positioning;
• Budget and scheduling.

Once you set these factors according to your marketing strategy, you can create an ad for your Facebook page.

1. Set goals based on campaign types

Tracking results is at the heart of Facebook Marketing. To help you with your Social Media Marketing strategy, the social network provides you with various types of objectives that you can modify as you wish. Remember to choose well because, for each goal, Facebook optimizes your target according to user behavior. What is the goal you want to achieve? Facebook matches three types of campaigns to each of them:

• Awareness campaigns: generate interest in a particular product or service;
• Consideration campaigns: they allow you to interact with users and therefore establish a relationship to increase trust;
• Conversion campaigns: lead to the final stage of purchase or sale.

Notoriety

• Brand awareness – brand awareness and web page visits; SEO optimization.
• Nearby notoriety – awareness of the page in a small place through Facebook Local Marketing.
• Coverage – enlargement of the target basin.

Consideration

• Traffic – increase in the number of page likes and follows of visits to a web page.
• Engagement – increase interactions through likes, reactions, and comments on posts.
• App installs – the highest number of advertised mobile application installs.
• Video views – growth in video views.
• Lead generation – lead generation strategy (name registrations of users on external websites as interested users).

Conversion

• Conversions – sales of products or services linked to the post.
• Sale of products in the catalog – increase in sales of products featured in the post.
• Store Visits – Increased traffic to the physical store generated through Facebook.

2. Identify the right target

Choosing the target on Facebook is a fundamental aspect of a successful Facebook Advertising campaign. Remember that every impression (ad view) is paid. If you don’t want to risk wasting your budget, select the audience in the best possible way through the various targeting that Facebook allows you to do. But how to find your target?

Consider that thanks to A/B tests you can progressively identify the target in focus, even if Facebook doesn’t let you manage budget percentages very easily. It tends to allocate 90% of the budget to the best-performing ad. Better to run two simultaneous Facebook Advertising campaigns and divide the budget, checking their effectiveness over time.

Many times it is also convenient to carry out several campaigns for each target, always dividing the budget. For example, if you want to target both men and women, don’t do general targeting. Run a male-only campaign and copy the data for another female-only campaign. Divide your initial budget and you will hit both equally, monitoring the data of the two targets separately.

Ask yourself what types of targets there are in your audience, for example:

• Fans who “liked” it.
• Similar audience or with interests similar to those of your target and even more to those who have “liked”.
• Visitors or those who have already visited the FB page and those who have visited your website, in the meantime connected to Facebook via Facebook Pixel.
• Targeted Audience. Include and exclude increasingly defined characterizations, to obtain a more precise target and not waste the budget. You can outline it through these characteristics: locations, age, gender, languages, interests, behaviors, and other categories. In the latter feature, it is possible to add customized ones. In detailed targeting, it is also possible to associate and exclude one characteristic with another.
• Fans of fans. The advertisement will also be visible to the friends of those who have “liked” it, who will be curious to find out what their friend likes.

Furthermore, with the acquisition of Instagram by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook marketing can also directly involve other social platforms or choose to act differently. Currently, Instagram Ads campaigns can also be managed from Facebook.

Take your Facebook Advertising to new heights with our guide on social media marketing—click here to download the free ebook and optimize your campaigns!

3. Choose the Placement of the Ads

Placement indicates in which spaces and devices your ad will appear. Spaces include newsfeed, right column, interactive articles, apps, third-party websites, and Instagram feeds.

Devices primarily mean the distinction between ads for computers only or for mobile devices. You can also choose the type of operating system, perhaps useful if the campaign is for an application for Windows or iOS.

Consider that the attention span of mobile users is less than that of desktop users. For some campaigns, it is recommended to split into two campaigns and invest more in computer users.

4. Set your campaign budget and schedule

How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook? Once the campaign has been decided, it is necessary to decide how much to invest and when to make it active. Facebook allows you to establish two types of budgets:

• Daily budget;
• Total budget.

The daily budget establishes how much to invest per day. The total budget instead how much to invest for the whole campaign. In both cases, Facebook automatically optimizes the visibility of ads during the day so you don’t waste your budget at night.

However, you can decide through the “Programming the duration” option to choose specific days and time slots to which to dedicate the budget. This is useful if, for example, you own a business that focuses primarily on the weekend or is only open at night.

While the total budget type closes it once the campaign is finished and does not keep the registered settings, setting the daily budget means you can open and close the campaign as you wish, keeping the registered settings. For this reason, the daily budget is usually chosen, so as not to always do it all over again.

So how much to spend on Facebook Advertising? Calculate that the average CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) is €2. Help yourself with the use of the “Estimated daily coverage” tool positioned to the right of the space where you enter the amount. Try to fill at least half of the orange bar, i.e. the budget to reach at least half of the target.

You can also use the Optimization function for the publication of the advertisement, depending on your objective (chosen in Campaign type), and decide whether the bid amount is automatic or manual.

If, for example, to beat the competition on Facebook Advertising, a manual rather than automatic setting is better, to aim for the same visibility as much as possible. Remember that for any campaign it is necessary to invest adequately, and so does your marketing budget well to hit the majority of your target, as a professional Social Media Manager would do!

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5. Create the ad on Facebook Advertising

With Facebook Advertising, I will provide you with the tools to create an ad that brings concrete results to your strategy. Technically, the procedure for creating sponsored posts is simple if you follow the instructions on Meta Business Suite step by step. Evaluating which Facebook Advertising to publish and which tone of voice to use, on the other hand, is a choice that depends a lot on the type of company and the result you want to achieve.

The brands that make the most of social channels are usually companies looking for loyalty and an ongoing relationship; in this Facebook is optimal. Follow the steps below carefully.

6. Set up the Facebook pixel

You can measure conversions from Facebook to external sites thanks to the Facebook Pixel. A system for which you just need to insert a simple string of code on your website to track conversions.

If you use a CMS like WordPress, it will be even easier for you by downloading a plugin. Facebook will record the various conversions allowing you to understand the performance of your advertisements and your communication strategy. Facebook Pixel is also useful for improving your targeting by inserting the code into the various referral sites.

Another way to measure micro and macro conversions through Facebook is by analyzing the results of the Facebook referral with Google Analytics.

7. Monitor the campaign: Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights is the interface from which you can analyze your Facebook Advertising page and campaigns. It has eight categories, each with its function. While it’s a data measurement system, it’s less complex than you think. Data is easy to understand when used in the right way and is fundamental in terms of KPIs.

They can also be more conveniently downloaded to an Excel file thanks to the Download option. Furthermore, for each function, it is possible to decide which period to analyze, by clicking on the appropriate tick. The functions of Facebook Insight are divided into:

• Overview;
• “I like”;
• Coverage;
• Page view;
• Actions on the page;
• Posts;
• Video;
• People.

I’ll explain them to you in detail.

• An overview is just a general view. Thanks to it we can see the main data of all functions.
• In “like” it is possible to see the trend of likes on the page. In addition to this basic function, there are also (and more interesting) net “likes” and the origin of the “likes” of the page.
• The net “likes” function is the overall result of the “likes” in “dislikes”, organic “likes”, and paid “likes” and is used to monitor the health of the FB page.
• The origin of the “likes” function allows you to monitor the origin of the likes, or from which position they come. The function divides the “likes” into ads, page suggestions, about your page, computer navigation, and others.
• Reach monitors (in addition to the number of views) audience reactions by dividing them into two views. The first allows you to see actions, comments, and shares. The second is dedicated to negative reactions such as: hide posts, hide all posts, mark as spam, and dislike. This a great way to understand what performs more or in a negative way.
• Page Views show the number of views of various sections of the page. The sections are diary, home, information, photos, videos, and others. Differentiations can also be made according to the target.
• Page Actions refers to the number of clicks on links that invite action or call to action. How can it be an event, the opening of the map, the phone number, and so on? Here, too, differentiations can be made.
• Posts show the average number of people online in a given period and also the visibility of posts of your choice even outside your account. In this way, it will be easier for you to decide when to launch Facebook advertising, once you understand at which times of the day and of the week your audience has greater presence and attention. It also has a second dashboard where it is possible to monitor the progress of every single post analyzed for reach and interactions.
• Video shows for each video the number of interactions and views (of at least 3 seconds), differentiating the results into organic and paid views.
• People, on the other hand, produce a socio-demographic report by dividing users into various characteristics such as gender, age, origin, and other parameters. Useful for an increasingly in-depth analysis of the target.

The different formats of Facebook advertising

The macro-categories are photos, gifs, videos, links, advertisements, and canvases. Each post is programmable and viewable in drafts, better to publish at precise and constant times. For each piece of content, the presence of a call to action (CTA) is essential, which indicates to the customer what action we would like them to take, to help them get further information or even generate a conversion.

One tip on how to create Facebook advertising is to use as little text as possible and leave a link to pages with more information.

• Photos are easier to view but not enough to create interest. Two aspects are therefore necessary: ??professional photos and the originality of the content (perhaps in combination with a good post). It must be clear right away that these are not amateur photos, and that the company has invested in them. You can also create photo albums: with the post image split into the preview of the first 4 images. They are also presentable in Carousel, i.e. a series of images that scroll horizontally.
• GIFs are an animated image format of a very short duration, which plays in a loop. They are quite functional in Facebook advertising campaigns because they break up the uniformity of the contents and are fast. Currently, it is easier for these formats to appear in the Home.
• Videos are attention-grabbing content on Facebook. They are more difficult to do though, but the professionally produced ones are taken into consideration. Taking into account that they are usually displayed within scrolling, a preview of the first seconds or first frames is automatically seen, without audio. There are two recommended techniques: product presentation accompanied by a good storytelling technique or storytelling with the product shown only at the end, with the company logo and claim at the end. Video can be very useful for Digital PR: relying on influencers as testimonials or established web content creators who can spread the message to their fans.
• 360° and live video are two new high-performance functions. Usually shot in exclusive events or backstage, they are a great way to bring the customer closer to the reality of the brand. During live broadcasts, it is possible to receive comments in real-time from users who are happy to comment on this type of content.

• Links can be useful for generating conversions quickly, but as they are more specific toward a purchase or complex content, they are less appealing. The most classic is page post links or posts with an image that, when clicked, leads to the desired link. Both the title of the link and its description can be modified: they would automatically correspond to the name of the web page and its initial text. Whether it’s a product, content, or related news, a link is ideal for taking the user from Facebook to other web pages, especially for generating leads.
• Canvas is a content type for mobile devices that allows you to take advantage of the space of a post from which you can access an immersive multimedia experience. By clicking on the image, a section opens where you can find all kinds of content.
• The advertisements are created to lead the user to the macro-conversion. They are great for businesses that don’t have a website and want to experiment with social selling. If the product is convenient, showing the prices will immediately generate a potential propensity to purchase. Facebook also allows you to present numerous products in a carousel within the same ad. However, it is advisable to limit the number of products and put those that are easier to sell first.

Recommendations and Trends on Facebook

In the variety of Facebook content, investment is not enough to get noticed in the market. Furthermore, consider that advertising is usually not free for Internet users, therefore it is necessary to set up a content strategy to carry out Facebook advertising campaigns.

There is so much interesting content, it is, therefore, appropriate for companies to try to emerge by focusing their attention on the target audience and only on that. Generating interest is key. The presence of the brand is taken for granted, surprise will be a winning strategy.

Take care of the storytelling

It is therefore necessary to create engagement with interesting content. Only by engaging in a dialogue with your audience will you get visibility and a positive ROI. This communication technique, on which you can base your Facebook Advertising strategy, requires specific expertise. It is not a question of telling a story, but rather of creating a suggestion.

One of the advantages of storytelling is to allow a potential increase in conversions and greater customer loyalty at low costs, feeling part of the brand.

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Collaborate with influencers

Also, consider collaborations with influencers. Relying on posts advertised with content in collaboration with those who have great knowledge of the social network and to whom the public corresponds to a good authority, can frighteningly increase the brand reputation, especially towards their market niche.

Choose professionals who are in line with the brand, who speak the same language as you and who are references for your target. It will be a further investment but the results will be better.

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Take advantage of Real-Time Marketing

Real-time marketing is one of the most effective ways to run Facebook Advertising campaigns. Ideal for those brands that can afford a friendly and not too institutional language.

It is a question of capturing the topics of greatest interest within the social network at the moment and commenting on them with an ironic or imaginative post using one’s brand.

It works precisely because it is in the spirit of Facebook! To do this, you must always pay constant attention to trends and possibly follow the most interesting scheduled events by commenting on them or generating related content. If you can’t do it on your own, you can rely on an up-to-date and creative Social Media Manager.

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Manage your community

Checking the progress of the community is essential in terms of performance. If our ads are filled with negative comments or unanswered questions, our ads will still not perform (at best).

Responding to users requesting the information is crucial for conversion. At least 2-3 monitoring sessions a day are recommended, always in a friendly and informal tone. Tolerance is also a fundamental element: banning and obscuring any criticism can prove very counterproductive. Better to answer by highlighting the misunderstanding and trying to fix it.

Managing the community on social media is an important tool for web reputation, which is why in recent years the request for the digital figure of the Community Manager dedicated to the management of the virtual community has increased by companies that want to operate online.

Monitoring what is said about the brand goes beyond the boundaries of the social networks on which to publish ads, and then the Community Manager may not be enough. We are talking about Digital Public Relations which, in addition to monitoring reputation, serves to understand where to improve and which brand values are not effectively transmitted to the public. Both on social networks and the web in general, remember that in the event of fierce criticism, it is better to respond by trying to moderate your tone. Take good care of Digital Public Relations and be transparent and available.

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You also run Instagram Ads campaigns

Once you understand how ads are done on Facebook, when you think about implementing a marketing strategy that includes sponsoring your brand on social channels, it’s only right that you do it on Instagram too. The two social networks have different targets and different communication strategies: Instagram focuses on images.

Through Instagram Ads campaigns you can sponsor an advertisement or post by paying the platform to advertise your content, making it visible to interested users.

There are different types of ads, here are the most interesting ones:

• Stories Ads;
• Listings in Explore;
• Collection Ads;
• Shopping Ads.

Mistakes to avoid

• Always be transparent and don’t ignore criticism.
• Social media is an opportunity for dialogue with customers, don’t publish without listening.
• Avoid controversial and hasty communications, think: on the web communications remain forever and your own goal can be fatal. The public is sovereign and sometimes ruthless, cross and delighted by social media.
• Avoid leaving influencers dissatisfied. It’s the best way to get negative publicity.
• Each campaign must be defined in a precise and measurable way. Random posting is underperforming.

Making Facebook Advertising is necessary to improve the ROI of your Facebook Marketing. It is essential to invest and rely on professional consultants. Given that sponsored posts require a budget, it is good to put the investment in safe hands: there are certifications to manage social campaigns well, such as the Facebook Blueprint.

Conclusions

Social media is a channel that should not be underestimated and Facebook is the environment where most people seek communication, where they concentrate most of their time.

Good Facebook marketing can be fundamental in the decision of one brand rather than another and it is an increasingly expanding market.

Take advantage of it before having too many competitors, follow this Facebook Advertising guide to create your campaigns and make the most of your page, get ahead of them! The more attention you attract around your profile, the more opportunities you have to focus the public’s interest on the content on your page, published for free.

Satisfied fans are the best advertising possible, and Facebook is the king of word of mouth. Once the right communication has been found, they will do everything themselves: their friends will see the interactions and will be intrigued.

Facebook marketing is transparency and entertainment, the most interesting way to communicate intensely to the customer’s soul.

If you think you want to become a Facebook Advertising professional to advertise your product/service or to work as a Freelancer, I suggest you rely on our Digital Coach experts for totally free career advice.

Have questions or need guidance with Facebook Advertising? Click here to contact our team of experts and get personalized assistance!

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