Objective

The first step in creating a Facebook ad is to determine your objective. What do you want to achieve with your ads?

Facebook offers various objectives, including brand awareness, reach, traffic, engagement, app installs, lead generation, and conversions. Your objective should align with your overall marketing goal. In e-commerce that will be conversions or traffic to your website.

Target audience

Who do you want to reach with your ads? The success of your Facebook ad depends on the relevance of your target audience. Meta provides detailed targeting options based on demographics, interests, behaviours, and location. When you have products that can target different demographics, make sure to create multiple ads to reach each audience in the best way possible.

You can also create a custom audience based on your existing customer data or a lookalike audience based on your website visitors or Facebook followers.

Ad format

Facebook offers several ad formats, including a single image or video, carousel, slideshow, collection, and instant experience. Each ad format has its unique features and requirements, so choose the one that best suits your objective and content.

What we like to do is test as much different formats as possible with different captions and eliminate the worst-performing ads to become the best converting combination.

Creative elements

The creative elements of your Facebook ad are the visuals and text that capture the attention of your target audience. Your ad should consist of

- a high-quality image or video that showcases your product
- a compelling headline to capture the attention
- a description that conveys your message 
- a call-to-action button that encourages users to take action, such as Shop Now, Learn More, Sign Up, or Contact Us
- the primary text above your visual that outlines a recognizable situation for your audience. This can be a problem for example that your product (in the ad) is the solution for.
- a display link to your website 

Ad placement

Facebook offers a lot of different ad placements, including the news feed, right column, marketplace, stories, and audience network. Each placement has its advantages and disadvantages, so choose the one that best fits your objective and target audience. Here we also like the trial and error method to discover the best placements.

Budget and bidding

The budget and bidding strategy of your Facebook ad determine how much you will pay (within your budget) and how Facebook will deliver your ad. Facebook offers various bidding options, including cost per click (CPC), cost per impression (CPM), cost per action (CPA), and lowest cost. You can also set a daily or lifetime budget and choose between manual or automatic bidding.

Based on your budget, you will reach a bigger or smaller audience. Facebook does give an estimate of the reach and conversions, but this is not always the truth. It mostly depends on the match between your ads and your target audience.

Tracking

Finally, tracking and measurement are essential elements of your Facebook ads. Meta provides detailed analytics and insights on your ad performance, including reach, impressions, clicks, engagement, conversions, and return on investment (ROI). 

We strongly advise using the Facebook pixel to track website conversions and optimize your ad delivery.

Do you feel like setting up your own Facebook ads is a bigger challenge than you expected? No worries! Give us a call and we will do it for you.