Welcome to the realm of digital marketing where social media advertising is the superhero for businesses trying to connect with their audience. In a world buzzing with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, the potential to reach and engage customers has never been more exciting. If you're just starting out, this beginner's guide is here to clear the air on the strategies and options available for social media advertising on Facebook.
Before we begin we must state that there's a difference between running full-fledged advertising campaigns and simply boosting your posts. This week, we're zooming in on the latter, offering you a step-by-step guide on how to make your posts stand out. Stay tuned for a deeper dive into more advanced advertising campaigns next week.
To understand if Facebook is the right social media platform for your business, we recommend reading our blog “7 Tips to Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Business”.
Understanding the Basics:
Boosted posts are like the training wheels of Facebook advertising – perfect for beginners. They help your posts get noticed by a wider audience, beyond your current followers. Great for spreading important news, promotions, or just really cool content. But if you have bigger goals, like generating leads or boosting brand awareness, we'll get into that next week.
Step 1: Getting Started:
To begin, pick a post, any post, and click on the "Boost Post" button. Easy peasy.
Step 2: Goals
Now, let's talk goals.
What do you want to achieve with your boosted post? Facebook can help you decide automatically, or you can choose from options like getting more messages, engagement, leads, website visitors, or calls.
Step 4: Advantage+ Creative
Feeling a bit fancy? Try out the Advantage+ Creative option for single image or video ads. It's like having your own personal ad stylist, creating variations based on what each person is likely to love.. It will adjust things such as the size, style, location, brightness, or text based on the options you provide it with.
Step 5: Call to Action
Following the Advantage+ Creative, is the Button Label, as seen below.
Ever heard of a Call To Action (CTA)? It's that button you click. Customize it based on your goal – "Book Now," "Learn More," "Send Message," or "Call Now." Your choice!
Each option will direct the audience to a different screen, with some directing them to your website, and others bringing them to your Facebook messenger to speak with you directly.
Step 6: Special Ad Category
If your business falls under certain industries like credit, employment, or housing, Facebook needs you to spill the beans. Choose the Special Ad Category option, and Facebook will add the necessary info to your ad.
Ensure to overlook your advertisement, if your business is under this blanket of industries, and this option is left off, Facebook will remove your advertisement.
Now, let's talk about the cool stuff – your audience, how long you want your post boosted, and how much you're willing to spend.
Step 7: Audience
First, the audience is the group of people your ad will be tailored to. Many differentiating factors are in play when deciding your audience. Everything from their preferred gender, age range, location, interests and hobbies will be considered. You have two options, either using the “Advantage Audience” or to create your own audience.
With the “Advantage Audience” Facebook will automatically fill in these options to showcase your advertisement to the right demographic of people that will find it of value. For new Facebook pages, we recommend this option as a way to diagnose your target audience.
If you already have an idea of who your target audience is, then creating your own audience is the perfect option for you to customize the demographic that you want your advertisement to appear on their feed. Here you will have the ability to decide on the options we stated above.
Remember to refer back to the Facebook Insights page to discover what audience has shown the best interaction with your advertisement to assist in picking the perfect audience in the future.
Step 8: Duration
Under duration, you will have the ability to select the desired length you wish to have the post boosted for. This can be anywhere from 1 day to 364 days as the maximum amount of time. Generally, the best results come from posts that run from 4-14 days, but this is all dependent on the budget you wish to spend per day.
Facebook will provide a very, very rough estimate on the amount of accounts you will reach in this time.
It is important to note that the range they provide is very wide, and often incorrect, so do not use this as an exact benchmark. However it can provide some insight into how successful your advertisement will be.
Step 9: Budget
Arguably the most crucial factor of the advertisement, as with all forms of marketing. The Budget. Though typically, way more cost effective than any other means of marketing. The more budget you have, the more accounts you will reach. Note, we did not say the more effective, as effectiveness will be dependent on a combination of everything we have gone over thus far. A poorly created ad with a larger budget, often wont out perform a higher quality ad that is run with a low budget. Keep that in mind.
You are provided with a slider that ranges from $2 to $1 000. This number will be your lifetime budget or the cost of the ad through the entirety of the campaign. Furthermore, the amount you spend per day won't be exact.
For example, say your budget is $30 a day, one day it may spend exactly $30 dollars, but most often it will balance the budget out, to spend less on days when your ad is performing well, and more on days where it doesn't perform well. So one day you may spend $25 and the next day it may spend $35. But by the end of the campaign it will never spend more than the total of $35 per day multiplied by the amount of days in the campaign.
For the highest level of advertisement effectiveness, we recommend anywhere from $15 to $50 per day, depending on how long you wish the advertisement to run, and how deep your pockets are.
Step 10: Advantage+ Placements
This is another option that's tied in with Facebook Advantage+. When turned on Advantage+ Placements will make the most of your Ad spending budget to increase the exposure of your advertisement from showcasing it in multiple locations across all Meta platforms. This means it will be showcased in other areas than just the Facebook and Instagram feeds of your audience.
It will first display your advertisement in lower cost locations, before spending more to showcase it directly on the feed of your audience. This will assist your advertisement in generating more results at the same price. It will update itself in real time, to adjust to where it is most effective, and target that location more often.
Step 11: Meta Pixel
Below Advantage+ Placements is the “Meta Pixel”, which is specific for advertisements that direct your audience to a web page. This is a very in depth analytic tool that requires its own article explanation.
In short, the pexel is a line of code that is attached to your site to track each visitor and their behavior on your site. When you provide a link to your website from an advertisement, the Meta Pixel will track each person that clicks that link, and what they do on the site to allow you to better gear your advertisements to them in the future. If this is of interest to you, we recommend doing an indepth dive into the Facebook Business Help page, to gather a better understanding.
Step 12: Pay Up
Last but not least, how are you paying for this party? Input your card or PayPal info, and you're good to go. Sometimes, Facebook might not spend your entire budget – no need to panic. It's all based on how well your ad is doing. In some cases, Facebook may not utilize the entirety of your budget, spending on how effective the advertisement was. So if you set a budget of $100 and are only charged $70, do not be alarmed.
When paying for an advertisement, you will either be automatically charged when you reach a certain number (this number is lower for newer ad accounts) or you can prepay the ad charge, by uploading the funds into your account, and have Facebook draw them out through the campaign.
And there you have it – a crash course in boosting your Facebook posts. Stay tuned for our next guide, where we'll tackle the nitty-gritty of advanced advertising campaigns.
Until then, happy boosting!
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