2019 Facebook Ads Guide to Becoming a Pro

Facebook Ads is an exceptional platform for all levels of businesses.

Whether you are service based or sell products, there is a way for you to use Facebook ads to grow your business.

Why is it so powerful?

There are two key ways to target your potential customers in the network of 2.1 billion users.

The first and most common way is to go by the interest based method.

That is, you are targeting those who with particular set of interests.

Say for example, you own an ecommerce store that sells wolf mugs. The best wolf mugs in the world.

You know that your mugs may be adored by those who like wolves, right?

So you head over to the interest picker in your ad set.

And you can select interests based on characteristics of people you believe will enjoy your wolf mug, and potentially buy.

You can even narrow down your interest by selecting the narrow down feature to ensure you target a specific group.

Maybe you want to target Game of Thrones fans too?

So you have a group of people who like wolves and Game of Thrones.

The second and most powerful way to target your potential customers is by building a Lookalike audience.

You upload a custom list of at least 200 contacts to Facebook, and Facebook will find people who have a similar profile to your custom list.

You can choose anywhere from 1% to 10% match.

This allows you to take out the guess work in your Facebook ads and solely focus on building the best ad creatives.

What you need before getting started

First, you’ll need a personal facebook account to open an account manager account.

Then create Facebook page and instagram page for your business.

Finally you’ll want to have a game plan approach on what products and services you plan on offering to whom.

7 questions to answer before you start

What product or service you plan on advertising?
Who am I targeting?
What is my customers pain point?
How will I solve my customers problem?
Which stage of the funnel are they in?
What is the goal of my campaign?
Do I want leads, brand awareness, site visitors, sales etc.

Overview of Facebook Ad structure

Similar to Google Ads, the Facebook ad structure consistent of:

the campaign, which is where you select your objective.
the ad set, where you select your target audience and placements
the ad creative, the image, video and copy your audience sees

It’s important you understand the structure to help you visualize each element as you build out your campaign below.

Choose your objective

Your answers from question 6 & 7 will help you navigate which objective you wish to select.

If you have multiple objectives, you may wish to test multiple campaigns to see which one out performs.

You’ll quickly learn that there is no one answer to facebook ads, you want to test everything (assuming you have a budget for it).

Choose your target audience

You should have some idea of who may use your product or service based on past experiences and customer data.

If you’re a local business and have a limited reach, you can adjust for that.

You can enter your address and choose your radius.

Then you can start selecting age ranges that you know work best.

The followed up with these other ways you can target Facebook users:

Custom audiences: those specific users from your email list
Lookalike audiences: similar profiles to your customer list
Demographic targeting
Location targeting
Interest/Behavioral
Connection targeting, those who like your page on FB or Instagram.

Choose your ad placement

Facebook, which includes instagram, has several methods of placement options for your ads.

Here are the options:

If you’re just starting off, I’d recommend leaving the ‘Automatic Placements’ option ticked on.

This will allow the platform to run ads across all platforms.

Then you can come back after some time to learn which placements work best for you and edit to turn off the ones that don’t.

Choose your budget

I’m a personal fan of running $5 ad sets.

This means you create multiple ad sets with various targeting options and run them at $5 per day.

Then you’d come back 2-3 days to check on them and adjust your budgets according to the success of each one.

If you’re just starting off, you don’t want to change any features in the optimization category just yet.

Developing your ad creative

Once you’ve set your budget and choose your target interests, your next step is to create your ad content.

Be sure to include your landing page website URL.

A catchy headline to entice readers, and a creative ad description.

[BONUS TIP] – one great hack to learn the best ad copy for your business is to mimic your competitors.

Use the Facebook ad library and type in your competitors profile (they need to be large enough or running ads) and you’ll quickly learn what ads they are running.

Here’s an example of Uber’s ads:

You can see which ads have run for the longest which shows a good chance that ad creative is working.

Again, there is no right answer to the best ad copy. But there are consistent themes throughout most ad copy.

Final thoughts

Facebook is still one of the most profitable companies is the world because of it’s super powerful ad platform.

Building your first campaign is fairly simple if you follow the steps and tips above.

Before you begin, think about your game plan for Facebook. Consider that there is no right answer, and you’ll need to test all sorts of sections such as the ad target audience, copy, creative, placements, etc.

As you start running your tests, within the facebook platform you can begin to analyze the data and adjust your campaigns accordingly.

Remember, there is no bad data.

If you’re still struggling getting the results you wish for, or simply don’t have enough time to spend 40+ hours a month on your data then you should consider hiring an agency to help with this.

At RunAmplify, we specialize in Facebook ads (and Google Ads) to help businesses of all sizes with their digital campaigns.