Facebook & Instagram Advertising Guide

Why Advertise on Facebook? Because you can’t afford not to

• Targeting can be extremely specific, for example everyone who has used a particular device or App
• With Facebook Ads you can reach one in 7 of all people on the planet
• 315m Europeans, 277m Americans and 522m Asians log on at least monthly
• Each young female user in the US has an average of 250 friends on Facebook. Many may have in excess of 1,000
• 93% of all internet users, 89% of those in the Middle East, use Facebook. Usage continues to grow in Asia, up to 35% year-on-year
• Now that Facebook owns Instagram you can reach an additional 400m plus users through their smartphone
• A total of 93% of US Internet users and 89% of those in the Middle East and North Africa use Facebook
• Where usage is less, such as in Japan with around 35%, year on year use is growing between 28-35% (that’s a figure for the whole APAC region)

The majority of people not on Facebook are either too young to hold an account or living without Internet access. Demographics are relevant to every business as well – you might not reach 5 or 6-year-old kids, but you do reach their parents who make decisions on their behalf.

A full 91% of US millennials use Facebook regularly, as well as 31% of senior citizens and 6% of all time spent online is spent using Facebook.

What about Instagram?

If your business is a visual or lifestyle one, you’ll want to post an Instagram ad, which you can do through Facebook. It’s literally as easy as ticking a box to reach an additional 400m plus users, via smart phone or tablet and pretty evenly split between male and female (51% male, 49% female). It is only for use on mobile phone.

As adults and family hijack Facebook, most of Instagram has become populated by the under 35’s, so millennials and teenagers. At least 90% of users are in this age group, so you might not want to put ads up for your retirement village, walking stick factory or dentures! At least a quarter of Instagram users appear to be from the US, and that number is predicted to reach 106.2m by 2018.

Instagram allows you to add links in the comments under photos, but they are not hyperlinks so the ‘click and buy’ experience is not seamless. Using good hashtags, following and mentioning very popular users and commenting on other posts will all increase your brand awareness though.

When should you Advertise on Facebook and Not Just Google?

There’s nobody you can’t reach through Facebook, but there are still some other options you might consider sometimes. There is definitely a ‘social advantage’ to advertising through Facebook because it is where users spend time catching up on news from friends, discussing products and topics and looking up brand pages, but there is more to it.

Google is for people who are actively searching for your product, and will not have the same targeted demographics (i.e not all user information is monitored and tracked the same way). The two companies collect and manage user information differently and this can mean one will work better than the other depending on your advertising needs and target audience.

Facebook is effective for people not actively looking for your product. It is also a much more visual format. Here are just a couple of examples of attention-grabbing ads you can create:w

If you are marketing a brand new service, or a business no one’s heard of yet, then you want to be on Facebook where users will come across your business through one of your sponsored posts or other ads, or because a friend of theirs raved about you and shared a link to your page.

To get started go to the dropdown menu next to your top profile photo and select ‘create ads’ you’ll then be taken to Facebook Ads and guided through the steps to setup:

Facebook’s Ads page, get there straight from your newsfeed:

Pro tip: You will want to keep monitoring Facebook ads consistently. When the frequency of ad delivery gets too high and conversions stop rolling on from Facebook, it’s time to change your ad creative.

Facebook Ads and Posting to Instagram

Now that Facebook owns Instagram, and the app is fully integrated, Instagram is already added to your audience for Facebook ads, during set up. You see it during placement when setting up any Facebook ad. You will reach the following screen after you choose your campaign and go through the first couple of steps. All you have to do is remove the ‘Instagram’ tick if you do not wish your ad to be displayed there:

You can also choose placement from the left hand menu at anytime to add the tick in to your ad:

Why would you want to add Instagram ads? Take a look at the demographic info for Instagram above, and you’ll see that if your target audience is full of Instagram users, you’ll need to be on there too.

Many young people have started using Facebook a lot less because their families are all now on it, but Instagram hasn’t hit the same exposure yet, so you’ll still find people spending a lot of time there.

Pro tip – If you have great imagery you can’t go wrong with generating brand awareness, starting discussions using hashtags and showing off products. You can write as much as you want underneath a photo, create a series of ads and now include video and filter effects as well.

Why is Power Editor Important for Facebook Advertising?

• Download all your information from Ads Manager
• Run multiple campaigns at the same time
• Advanced monitoring
• New features often rolled out in Power Editor first
• Improve Ad performance by showing ads at specific local times
• Advertise to specific mobile devices, or when users connected to WiFi

Power Editor is a tool for Facebook ads. It allows you to bulk edit, and manage ads. There are also a few types of ads that cannot be done unless you use Power Editor. Features are more advanced than what’s available in Ads Manager.

Get the basics on how to set up Power Editor, and answers to FAQs before using it. You can take a video tutorial on the Facebook help center too. You’ll need to have Google Chrome as your web browser when you’re setting up and using Power Editor.

Power Editor lets you download all your information from Ads Manager before you work on each campaign. You then re-upload changes back into Ads Manager to actually start your campaigns running. This is mainly helpful for large business running multiple campaigns.

As you’ll soon see, there are a lot of ways to create ads in Facebook according to your goals. A different name for this eBook was going to be ’50 shades of Facebook’ actually, because there might as well be that many. One thing they all have in common is that you cannot get the tracking results and ad types you need to work for you without using Power Editor.

You would not be able to monitor a lot of campaigns, make fast changes and include everything you want to, especially if you want to test multiple campaigns at once (which you should do!) without Power Editor.

Before You Start: Tracking, Ad Sets Targeting and Remarketing

You’ll need to choose a campaign type from the list below, but each type works on three levels:

1. Campaigns: A campaign is your main objective – such as ‘product x launch’

Pro tip – when setting up your campaign make sure you have clear instructions form your team on overall goals and targets for best results.

Pro tip – don’t worry about setting up too many niche campaigns, you can narrow your targeting and experiment with different creative, split (A/B) testing and more in the Ad Set and Ad levels. Tie this to a big overarching goal.

1. Ad Sets: For each campaign you’ll create Ad Sets – a series of ads for different locations, target audiences and maybe different stages of the launch.

Pro tip – you set your budget at the Ad Set level, and decide whether you do a daily or lifetime budget.

Pro tip – positioning and optimization are also done here, so you can select whether you want website conversions, or engagement and placement (where your ad will be shown, eg mobile, desktop, right hand column or newsfeed for example).

1. Ads: Within each Ad Set you can try a handful of individual ads – say up to five at a time. These will have tailored creative to suit each group you are targeting.

Pro tip – this is where you will try different color images, copy etc., but keep messaging and objectives very consistent

Pro tip – you will need to adjust the text length for different placements. Some allow more characters, some less between desktop, mobile and newsfeed

After selecting which type of campaign to run, you’ll need to set up pixel tracking and insert the Facebook conversion Pixel into any page of your website that you are driving ads and traffic to. Facebook for Business has a simple guide explaining how to do this, with instructions. You select which type of tracking you want during setup too:

Pro tip: You will need the Facebook tracking pixel up on all relevant pages of your website before starting any campaign. Do it early so that Facebook can start learning about which users convert on your website (even users who aren’t using Facebook to click through, but are logged in anyway, will be trackable)

Ad Setup:

You’ll select placement and targeting, set your budget, type your text and upload images all from the same couple of screens within Power Editor and/or Facebook. This is also where you review and edit ads. You access Ad Setup from your main Facebook Ads screen:

You’ll also be able to turn ads on and off (activate or deactivate) from the same screen where you track them.

To use different ad accounts, and manage each campaign, as well as to access Power Editor, you select ‘Manage Ads’ from the drop down menu next to your profile:

Ways To Remarket Facebook Ads:

You can use different ways to target your ads for remarketing. Using information form your conversion pixel is a safe enough bet, but others are worth trying too.

Lookalike Targeting:

You can allow Facebook’s algorithm to target for remarketing based on specific interests or demographics:

1. Using your free trial optin (users who have converted)
2. By uploading your customer e-mail list, or
3. People who actually finish a purchase from your conversion pixel

The size of your audience will obviously vary depending which method you use. Your free optin conversion pixel is a safe bet though. Those are people who saw your ad and clicked, so they have some interest, and might be ready to buy soon.

You can allow Lookalike audiences to be created based on responses to your mobile placement, desktop placement or newsfeed. It can also be all three.

Pro tip – You can choose different time frames, within Power Editor, for your remarketing. So one Ad Set for people who have visited within 7 days, one for within 1 or 2 months, etc

Pro tip – Make sure you create an audience using your e-mail list and people who have already signed up for your free trial or optin. You’ll need to exclude them. You don’t want to be wasting money or paying to serve ads to converted customers

Pro tip – You can create Lookalike audiences for each new country you want to target too. The size of the audience will vary according to the size of the country, of course.

E-mail remarketing is worth a little bit more attention.

E-mail Remarketing:

You can import your customer e-mail list and market to them using your ads, as long as you have a list of at least 100 e-mails. Based on who is in your e-mail list Facebook will do audience targeting around their interests and preferences.

You can also segment different e-mails lists, and target

• Previous Facebook offer signups
• Paid subscriber e-mail addresses
• Free subscriber e-mails
• Fans of your page
• Website visitors – from the whole WWW or a particular traffic source, or segment

Remarketing can be an absolute silver bullet, but we highly recommend seeking professional advice before doing this sort of campaign.

Ways to Advertise on Facebook you Need to Know

Facebook begs you to advertise at every single turn as soon as you login. Before diving in and paying to do it, you need to understand the main ways that’s possible, how they impact your audience and WHY you would pick one method over the others. Think through a proper strategy based on your business goals before getting started. Here are the questions to ask very simply:

1. Do I need to attract more page likes and engagement, or drive conversions and sales?
2. Do I have an effective sales funnel set up for driving Facebook traffic? A lead page and free opt-in or free trial, followed up by a thank you page. Do I need a sequence of e-mails to keep customers interested?

This way you’ll correctly divide your budget across different social media platforms and get the best overall results. They’d all like to think that they are the only one out there, but you know better than to believe them.

You also need to remember that Facebook owns Instagram, so that’s another important medium to consider. Your account will prompt you to boost posts or create ads but it’s up to you to figure out what’s going to be effective for your business, and in line with your goals.

Pro tip: Do not rely on high engagement and page likes in Facebook and tell yourself you don’t also need to build an e-mail list. Building e-mail lists and remarketing them is one of the most overlooked advertising methods

General – Website Clicks & Conversions/Sales

How It Works:

You create an ad linked to your chosen page, relevant to your target market and a target audience based on who would buy what you’re selling. You should have a relatively strong picture of your target audience, so you can set parameters like location, age, gender and list a fair few interests your target audience would likely have on their profile and through their activity on Facebook.

Why Choose General Ads?

This gets you eyeballs on your page, and can produce limited conversions or sales too depending on how well it’s done. If you’re a new brand or launching a new initiative, this is a great way to increase awareness. If you’ve got a good sales funnel it can convert. You can also spark engagement with your posts on your website in the comments thread.

Lead Generation Advertising

How It Works:

You set up an ad where users can directly click on a button to sign up to your offer (an opt-in). They enter their e-mail address and you collect leads from your ad. The offer has to be catchy and relevant for this to work.

Lead generation ads can also be hooked up to your business’s CRM system. This makes it a seamless and really efficient way of getting new customers.

Lead generation is even easier through Facebook, because it prefills basic information, like your name and e-mail address, and phone number if you have provided it. You can also edit the form and change pre-filled information.

Why Lead Generation?

Because you won’t have to work quite as hard converting page and post likes, or capture so many leads through other platforms. This can be highly efficient and save you valuable time and expense elsewhere.

Facebook Page Promotion (‘Like Page’ Ads)

How It Works:

You use this type of ad if you’ve recently set up a new page and want to attract new likes and comments on your posts. It’s one of the oldest formats available and is extremely common on Facebook feeds for users. It’s quicker and easier than publishing a long boosted post, or works well if you do both those things together.

Why Page Promotion?

You’d do this just to create awareness, and get noticed next to the competition. It’s generally very flexible with how much you spend and how long you run a campaign like this for, so it can also be a good way to test a target audience. Make your message short and sharp, and to the point and you’ll increase your page likes.

FB Event Promotion

How It Works:

With Event Promotion you create an event within Facebook, and pay to promote that page in people’s newsfeeds. This encourages them to join and attend your event, provides links to tickets and other information, and is easy for your contacts to share to their friends.

Creating an event takes around 5 minutes. You do it from your profile, and then use that link in your ad:

Why Event Promotion?

Event Promotion is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get the word out about an event you’ve organized. You don’t have to send users through a number of landing pages or posts, they have all the information they need and can join the event to RSVP and get updates with one click.

FB Canvas

How It Works:

Facebook Canvas allows you to showcase video, image and multimedia content at fast download speeds, and tell a story in full screen on your mobile or tablet. Video, photos and call-to-action buttons can be used in the same ad to appeal to customers on many different levels in one add. You can also still create a one-click to buy experience with the use of the right call-to-action buttons, or have users sign up to your optin or offer after seeing a short video ad.

You can learn more about Canvas on the FB Canvas website, and see examples there. It is immersive for consumers, allows you to use multiple images and formats in one campaign and is far more dynamic and interactive than traditional ads.

Why Facebook Canvas?

Facebook Canvas showcases faster technology, and is suited to entertainment and tv style commercials, or content you’d otherwise post on You Tube, such as the video for your Kickstarter campaign, or from ‘behind the scenes’. You can show off your product, offer parts of your backstory and encourage users to convert all in one. This sort of technology makes great use of Facebook Ad features, so it’s well worth looking into.

App Install

How It Works:

This type of ad specifically encourages users to tap and install your app on their smartphone, directly from Facebook. It will click out and take them to your page on the App Store and let them download or purchase immediately. It’s very straightforward with one simple purchase, for use when you launch a new app, or add features.

Why App Install?

App Install ads will spread the word about your app and what it does, creating a seamless way for users to experience it for themselves. It’s essential to create a short message that explains what the app does so that people are not confused, but if you do that it should be successful in getting you downloads.

App Re-engagement

How It Works:

App Re-engagement is also only available to mobile device users, but they are usually the ones who will be using apps anyway. These ads will specifically tell existing app owners who are on Facebook that you have a new version, new features or some other reason for them to come back and start using your app again. You will need a compelling offer, but if you have that this should be highly effective. You could promote a discount or competition to do with your app or just the way new features have improved the experience.

Why App Re-engagement?

App re-engagement is the easy way to entice customers back. It lets you explain what you’ve changed, and how you’ve made things better for the user. They can start engaging with your app again.

Paying For Facebook Ads

Facebook uses the Cost Per Click (CPC), or Cost Per Mille (CPM) model – which is per thousand impressions. You choose which one you want to do on the budget screen during setup.

How you set your budget can be defined and capped, or you can set a daily budget and run the campaign between particular dates. It’s important to experiment and trial, but continually monitor what you’re spending on each campaign to understand whether you’re spending your budget wisely.

When used properly Facebook can be your biggest source of leads, so it is worth investigating and understanding budget allocation properly.

The Secret To Success With Facebook Ads

Now that you know the basic advertising models, you’ll be able to experiment with different audiences, campaign types and budgets. That’s really what will bring you results. You’re still in marketing and that will never change. Keep trying until you hit on something that works and when you do, make sure you understand it and leverage it. Do a lot of testing and if something doesn’t take off, make simple tweaks. An image color, new line of text, short piece of video or fantastic graphic can make all the difference. You’ve got the world at your fingertips with this platform, so use it. Good luck!