How to Market Your Business with Facebook Ads

Updated: Jan 19

Facebook offers businesses the ability to create and run ad campaigns with their tools, tracking and reporting. If you are new to Facebook Ads, this post will guide you through the process of how to market your business with Facebook Ads and give you helpful pieces of information to make the best decision for your business. Remember, there are no magic formulas - you will likely need to make adjustments and try different approaches until you find the ads that works best for your business.

How do I set up a Facebook ad?

There are two places to start a Facebook ad: from your Business Page and through the Ads Manager. We are going to start with creating ads from your Facebook Business Page.

From your Facebook Business Page, you have the ability to promote visits to your website, promote your Page, promote an Event and more (see image above). Here are the main types of ads you can create:

Boost a Post

Once you post on your Page, you can "boost" the post to turn it into an ad to reach more people with your content. The only visual difference between an organic post and a boosted post is the addition of the "Sponsored" label under your Page name. A boosted post can:

Increase the number of people who see it
Increase engagement
Get seen on both Facebook and Instagram (if accounts are linked)

Deciding which posts to boost comes down to which content you think will get the most people interested in your business. Here's what a boosted post can do:

Increase awareness of specials or sales
Share the products and services your business offers
Photos and videos of your business location
Other relevant content to get people to engage

For example, an Illinois restaurant boosts a weekly post of their weekly menu items and gets 25% more business from those posts.

Boost an Event

After you create an event on your Page, you can “boost” it to help increase awareness, encourage RSVPs and drive ticket sales. A "Boost" turns the event into an ad that appears in user's news feeds.

For example, Dish Catering offers monthly cooking classes for $20. She created an event from her Page so people can easily view the date and time, location, and other important details, and users can purchase a ticket from her website.

The objective for this campaign was to increase ticket sales and reach more people for awareness of the event.

Promote Your Business Locally

If your business location is listed on your page and you want to reach more people who are close to your location, use this option. Select a Call to Action the fits your goals and select the right audience, duration and budget.

Promote Your Website

When users click on this ad, they will be directed to a web address you select. This can be your homepage, a landing page, a specific product page, etc. You can use the Meta Pixel (also known as Facebook Meta Helper) tool to track conversions by website visitors.

Promote Your Call to Action Button

You can select which Call to Action button you want listed on your Facebook business page. Users can contact you, buy, request more information and more. You can promote your Call to Action on your page.

Note: If you change your CTA button while running an ad, the ad will stop and go under review. Once changes are approved, the ad will start up again. If you delete your CTA button, the ad stops.

Promote Your Page

Users who like your page will generally see your posts in their news feed. Facebook uses intelligence to show your page to people who have shown interest in your posts, or page. So, just because someone has Liked or Followed your page, does not mean they will continue to see your posts unless they engage regularly. This ad type will help you reach new customers who are likely interested in your type of business plus show your post to users who already Like but do not regularly engage with your page.

Get More Leads

This ad type requests contact details from users so you can follow-up with them regarding newsletter sign ups, price quotes, calls and more. Users can learn more about your business and help you find customers more likely to make a purchase. The forms are built into the ads, pre-populated with information users have already shared on Facebook and you can customize which information is collected. Download the leads from your campaign or connect your CRM for seamless transfer of information.

Use these types of ads for print mailers, e-newsletters, sending sales and promotions and sending quotes or information.

STEP BY STEP

Click the Promote link from the menu of your Business Page which will take you to the area where you select the type of ad you want to run:

Automated Ads
More Website Visitors
Promote Your Business Locally
Promote Your Page
Boost a Post
Boost an Event
Promote Your Call to Action Button
Get More Leads

EXAMPLES:

If you are just starting out with Facebook Ads and want to increase followers of your Page, try Boost Post or Promote Your Page.

If you are trying to build awareness of your business, service and/or products by reaching more people, use Boost a Post, Boost an Event, Promote Your Business Locally or Promote Your Page.

If you are trying to generate leads and find new customers, use More Website Visitors, Promote Your Call to Action Button or Get More Leads ads.

If you want to increase consideration of your products/services among people who already know about them, use Get More Website Visitors, Promote Your Business Locally, Promote Your Call to Action Button, Boost a Post or Boost an Event.

Use Get More Website Visitors to increase online sales.

The first time you create a promotion from your Page, you will need to enter your payment method.

To create ads quickly use the suggested text and images for your ad in the Ad Creative. You can also choose to customize your ads with a different photo, video and text.

Find the right audience: FB helps identify who sees your ad by creating audiences based on things like age, gender, location, interest and more. You can create a new audience by selecting "People you choose through targeting". You can name your target audience, save and reuse these demographics for future ads.

Set your budget for how much you want to spend in the Daily Budget field. You can use a pre-filled budget, or enter your own amount.

Select the duration of how long the ad will run. You can use 7, 14, 28 days or a custom duration with the "Run this ad until" field. 7 - 10 days typically work well but you will want to monitor results to shorten or extend.

Monitor campaign results from your Page's Ad Center. You may need to make adjustments and try different approaches until you find one that works. You may decide to increase your budget, make changes to your audience, or modify the length of the campaign. Note, you cannot edit text, images or video on Posts or Events.

To make changes to your ad, go to the Ad Center > View Results > Edit Promotion. After you make changes, select Save.

To pause an ad, go to Ad Center > View Results > flip the Active switch to pause the ad (the switch will read Inactive until you flip the switch again back to Active).

To delete an ad, go to Ad Center > View Results > Settings (lower left) and click on Delete Ad.

If you are new to Facebook Ads, it is recommended you create ads from your Page. If you want more options for ad objectives, creative choices, placements, targeting and more, you can build ads in Facebook Ads Manager.

Measuring Campaign Success

View the Ad Center at the top of your Page to get a summary of how well your ads have performed both overall and individually. See how many users were reached and the total number of leads you have received. If you aren't getting your desired results, try adjusting your budget and the selected targeting.

The Insights tab provides overall Page performance information regarding how users are engaging with your content.

Optimize Your Ads

Now that you have the results of your ads, you can look for areas of improvement. Start here:

Target different demographics. If the majority of your engagements came from women, target just women in your next ad.
Create a demographic based on your current customers. This is called Lookalike Audiences.
If you have a physical location, target people within a set radius of your business.
When your budget is too low for the amount of people in your target demographic, your ads will get pushed aside by larger advertisers looking to reach the same audience. Create a more tightly-focused audience, such as a smaller location.
Run your ad less than a week, then change your image and text to create a new ad.
Test different types of creative - video vs static image.
Create multiple ads. For example, if you want to increase traffic to your website, create both a Promote Your Call to Action Button ad and a More Website Visitors ad.

You can use Facebook Ads Manager to run ad campaigns similar to using the Promote button directly off the Business Page. However, the Ads Manager has additional features, such as additional business campaign goals, A/B testing, manual placements and more. This will be explained in a later post. Again, if you are new to Facebook advertising, you likely want to start with the on page ads as described in this post.

Are Facebook ads still worth it?

Compared to Google ads, you can get better targeting, less expensive ads and more objective types when marketing with Facebook ads. Because there are so many more businesses online than ever before, it is important to start by testing what works for your campaigns before jumping in with both feet.

Depending on your business, you could start by spending as little as $1 a day. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, you will need to make adjustments to your campaigns and try different approaches until you find the ad(s) that works best for your business.

If you are looking for assistance strategizing your marketing campaigns, schedule a Strategy Session here.