What is a Facebook Advertising Campaign?

If you want to dive deep into the Facebook advertising world, then you probably have some questions. It’s understandable.

For the first couple of months it existed, Facebook was actually an ad-free space. It can be a very hard thing to imagine today, where the average user is likely to stumble upon roughly eight ads each day in their news feed, some of which they’ll also click on. But back in 2004, Facebook was ad-free.

That only lasted for a short while. As the platform grew, the company soon saw the potential of getting some revenue for advertisers. So, it introduced its Facebook flyer feature that allowed you to add your banner just like on websites. These banners targeted students, Facebook’s premiere audience at the time. The flyers didn’t last long because, quite frankly, they were not as sophisticated as what we see today.

But by 2006, Facebook had its sales team focusing on sharing ad space on the social media platform. With these new advertisers, also came the strict ad policies that would ensure all the ads run on Facebook don’t mess with the overall user experience.

And the changes paid off, considering Facebook now has over six million advertisers active and creating campaigns. Advertiser accounts can create Facebook ads for multiple pages, so the number of businesses that use this tool is actually a lot higher.

But before you start creating your own, here’s everything you need to know about Facebook advertising campaigns.

Explaining the Terms

Simply put, a Facebook ad campaign is the overall structure of your promotion. The social network needs three big components to run ads: a campaign, the ad set, and the ad. All these three parts go into your overall campaign structure. Understanding these components is crucial to running ads that get to your target audience and generate great results.

Facebook also allows advertisers to set a certain objective for the ads, which will be established at a campaign level. For instance, if your campaign goal is to get more people to like your Facebook page, then all the ads within the campaign will follow that objective.

At the ad set level, you can define the targeting, the budget, and even the schedule. Lastly, the ad component is the creative aspect of the process, where you set up the ad, ad the copy and the visuals.

Choosing the Right Objective

The campaign goals essentially tell the ads how to behave, or what type of behavior you expect from the people who view the ads. These goals can change over time along with the growth of your business.

For instance, if you’re new to Facebook, an initial campaign goal would most likely be to build brand awareness and slowly grow an online community around your business. Over time, however, the goal may evolve to driving traffic to your website, acquiring new customers to increase your revenue, or even signing up for an event you are hosting.

There are different types of goals to choose from:

1. Making People Aware of Your Business

This goal promotes brand awareness, and you can use it to tell people what makes your business so great. There are two main options to fulfill this objective:

• Reach people near your business;
• Engage with as many users as possible;
• Increase video ad views

For instance, if you have a physical store, it might be better to first focus on the people living near it, as you can increase the chances of having them stop for a visit. Then, you can grow the audience by choosing to engage with more people.

2. Finding Potential customers

With these goals, you are telling Facebook to show your ads to the users most likely to be interested in your product or services.

Your objectives may be:

• Increase conversions by encouraging people to visit your website;
• Collect leads for your business by building an email list;
• Promote an event to get people to attend;
• Encouraging potential customers to message your business directly.

3. Increasing Sales

Lastly, you may now or at some point be interested in increasing the number of sales through Facebook ads. These campaign goals can allow you to effectively track the number of people who’ve seen the ad, and the ones who bought something from you. That is a very big perk, as you can really see if your ads are effective or not.

Your objectives may include:

• Creating ads with discounts and coupons, and getting people to claim them;
• Getting people to install your app;
• Encourage the users who already have your app to interact with it more;
• Connect with users through messages, and convince them to make a purchase through this channel.

Once the campaign goal established, you can move on to the ad set.

Creating the Ad Set

As we said before, the ad set is a group of ads within the overall campaign. You can have various different ad sets within the same campaign, meaning with the same overall goal that can help you reach your business goals.

This is the stage where you can create the audience you want to target using Facebook’s targeting options in the ads manager.  Different criteria, such as from location to gender, age, likes, and more define your target audience. You’ll also have to create the budget and establish a schedule for the ads, as well as their placements.

1. Choosing the Audience

You need to target that group of users you care about, meaning the ones most likely to be interested in your business. There are two main options to do it:

• Target a specific audience – you establish strict descriptions of what your ideal audience looks like;
• Target a broad group – relying on the delivery system to find the best people to show your ads to. If you’re unsure who your target it, this is the best option.

Here’s what information you can use to define your audience:

• Location;
• Age;
• Gender;
• Detailed targeting – allows you to include or exclude people from an audience;
• Connections – target or exclude people already connected to you;
• Custom audiences – audiences made up of people you already know, but can use to encourage more action (such as sales);
• Lookalike audiences – a target created from a source and searches for people similar to the source.

2. Budget and Schedule

The ad set budget is the amount of money you’re willing to spend to run the ad. It’s possible to establish a budget at an ad set or campaign level, but regardless of what you choose there are two main types:

• Daily – the average amount you want to spend every day for an ad set to run;
• Lifetime – the amount you want to spend through the overall duration of the ad set or campaign.

You can also control the date and time when the ad set runs. It’s also possible to set up campaigns and programs and have them run at a later time, depending on when you want these ads to start appearing in news feeds. Moreover, if you know your audience is more active during specific times of the day, you can schedule the ads to run only during those windows.

Creating the Ads

The ad is what Facebook users see in their newsfeeds. There are several different formats to choose from, including images, video ads, text, call-to-action buttons, and more. You can have multiple ads within the ad set, all with different types of formats. However, remember that all the ads will run under the same audience and budget (as established in the ad set), and the same goal (as established in the campaign).

Here are the main types of ad formats:

• Image ads – adding a relevant image of your product or service to connect with the target audience;
• Video ads – effective if your goal is to reach more people and engage with audiences;
• Slideshow ads – combining multiple photos to create a slideshow video, complete with music from the Facebook library, and transition effects;
• Carousel ads – up to ten images of video in a single ad, each with an individual link to the product or service page
• Collection ads – combining video, slideshow or image content with product images from a catalog;
• Instant experience – a mobile-only feature that can be combined with all ad formats to encourage mobile shopping.

What Is Ad Delivery?

Facebook has its delivery system that determines who the ads will be shown to when they appear in news feeds, and what is their placement.

For instance, if you choose as your campaign goals to increase sales, then Facebook will show your ads to those users most likely to buy something. It looks at the audience you’ve chosen to know who you want viewing your ads, then it prioritizes those who’ve already make online purchases to get you better results from the ads.

When creating the ad, you can also control where Facebook will place it by manually selecting the placement. It’s also possible to let Facebook decide on its own what the best placement would be.

Here are the different options:

• Feeds – appearing in user news feeds, mobile and desktop;
• Right column, only available for desktop browsing;
• Instant articles – within the mobile app and Messenger;
• In-stream video – ads popping up in Facebook videos;
• Stories – ads appearing in stories both on Facebook and Instagram;
• Marketplace – ads appearing in the Marketplace homepage for the app or mobile browsing;
• Instagram – apps appearing in Instagram feeds and stories;
• Messenger – inbox, stories, or sponsored messages that appear in the Messenger app.
• Audience network – ads appearing on websites in the Audience Network in the form of banner ads, interstitial ads, native ads, rewarded videos, and in-stream video.

Back to You

And there you have it, a guide to Facebook advertising campaigns. All these steps described here are linked together and will affect the general performance of the ads, so you should pay attention to all of them and choose the options that are best for your overall goals.

Need an extra hand? Contact Australian Internet Advertising today!