The Business Owner's Guide to Getting Started with Facebook Ads

If you follow social media at all, you heard about the latest and greatest Facebook algorithm bomb announced last week. If you haven't heard, Mark Zuckerberg vowed to “fix” Facebook by showing more content from your friends...which means less content from brands.

Ever since the news hit, every single small business owner and social media manager I know has been in a tizzy, wondering how this will affect our business. How will our content find a way to shine through, especially when we don’t have large budgets for paid advertising?

The fact that remains is this: Facebook is social media--but if you're using it for business, remember--it is media. Media has always been a pay-to-play system. Just as you’d never expect to place an ad in the newspaper for free (unless you have some great arrangement, and if so, please let me know about it!), you can’t expect that you can post on Facebook for free and that organic (non-paid) content will be enough to replace any type of paid campaign.

People often see Facebook as the answer because it’s “free,” when, in reality, to get the most out of it, you do need to spend some marketing dollars. Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place for organic content, and there are certain things you can do to push your content through the algorithm. But having a budget for your Facebook strategy is a must.  

It's depressing to small business owners (and even medium and large businesses!) who think they don’t have the budget to run ads on Facebook, but don’t despair--you can make an impact on Facebook with a small budget as long as you are optimizing your content correctly.  

This means you need to learn how to use Facebook ads.  (Insert groan here).

And I hear you: pretty much every single business owner I know feels they don’t have the time to mess around with Facebook ads. However, once you know what you are doing, you can streamline the process, and get the most bang for your buck.

How do I know? Because I, too, had to learn Facebook ads.

In fact, most Social Media Managers are self-taught. Facebook ads are ever-changing, which means even those young enough to learn about them in school still don’t have the most up-to-date information on them. (Stay tuned for my upcoming post on My Continuous Education in Social Media!)

So, you, as a small business owner or beginning Social Media Manager, are not far behind!

What is a Facebook Ad?

In order to get started with Facebook Ads, you first must understand the difference between a sponsored post and a Facebook ad:

A sponsored post is where you post a status update and then once it’s live, you choose a dollar amount and duration to put behind it. Facebook then pushes it further out in the feed. This post could be a graphic, a fun fact, or a video. A sponsored post should feel very organic in nature. It should NOT feel like an ad. It should feel like you are just sharing content with your audience, and does not necessarily require a CTA (call to action).

For the purpose of this article we will be talking about Facebook ads. They don’t get created in the regular part of Facebook where you post your status, but in another part of the application called “Facebook Ads.” You build the ads step by step, starting with your CTA, then adding in your creative, and choosing a specific demographic (audience) who you want Facebook to show that ad to. The type of ad you can run is incredibly varied, from the way they look, to who sees them--you even have the choice to place them on Instagram at the same time!

Here are 5 Tips to get you Started Creating Ads on Facebook

1. Learn Facebook Ads.

We can argue that Facebook has done a lot of things right and wrong throughout the years, but they have set up the platform for you to create an ad from start to finish, right there in Facebook. Now, you might need some help with creative (the actual piece of material you are putting onto Facebook--the text and artwork), and you can hire someone to create that for you, or you can use one of the free tools out there such as Canva. Once you have this, Facebook will walk you through creating your ad, start to finish, as well as giving you the guidelines for the size and dimensions for what creative you put into your ad. There are many classes out there to learn Facebook Ads, including free demonstrations and webinars. If you have a business account, Facebook will provide you with a rep who can answer questions. Find your favorite Social Media Guru/Ninja/Rockstar, and watch their tutorial. Trust me, almost all of them have one floating out there. Need help finding a tutorial that works for you? Just ask!

2. Define your Goals for the campaign you want to run.

This goal will manifest itself as the CTA (call to action). Facebook will ask you up front what this is, so they can best help you create the right type of ad. For instance, when your audience sees your post, what do you want them to do? Here are some examples:

• click through to a website
• Download an ebook or white paper
• Buy something
• Sign-up for an email list
• Like or follow your page

The great thing is that Facebook creates the ad based on your CTA. You don’t have to guess what type of ad to create; as long as you know your CTA--there are buttons right there in which you can sign up to meet your goals!

Remind yourself of the campaign goal as you create the text and graphic. If you want someone to download a very specific place of your website, the language should be clear. If you want them to buy something, don’t ask them to follow you on Twitter.

Facebook let’s you choose and define an audience. That means you can target your baby clothes line to women from 25-29 living in the Midwest, and your fitness app to executive men on the East Coast. This is one of the best reasons to use Facebook ads--the way you can get to an extremely specific target audience.

3. Define your metrics.

You might have heard these called KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). How will you measure the success of your ad? Do you want a huge audience to see the ad? To click on it? To convert to a download? The end goal is NOT always going to be someone converting to a purchase. Remember that there is value  in building your brand identity and awareness of your brand. People seeing your page, following you, or engaging with your post may be the KPI you are looking for.  When you are ready to review these metrics when your campaign has finished running, all the data you need will be right there in Facebook ads. You can look at it there, or download it into a spreadsheet for further analysis.

Important: Make sure you have the Facebook Pixel embedded in your website. This is a piece of code Facebook gives you that tracks people coming from Facebook onto your site. Even if you have Google Analytics or other tracking on your website, this will provide the most accurate data of how many people came from the ad.

4. Let’s talk turkey.

And by turkey I mean budget. Here we have to work backwards. You must define your marketing budget for the year/quarter/month, and decide how much you will spend on social media. From that decide how much you can allocate for Facebook, and then remember to divide between sponsored posts and Facebook ads.

People always assume that their budget is too small. Did you know you can run a Facebook ad for as little as $5? You don’t need hundreds of dollars to start with Facebook ads. If you can devote $20 a month, you can still see results!

5.  Test Test Test

When I create and run a Facebook Ad, my rule of thumb is to let it run from 1-3 days to see how it does before devoting its full budget to it. Also, run two different versions of the ad to see which does better. You might choose two different photos with the same text,  two different sets of text with the same image, or a carousel versus a singular image. You can honestly drill down and try 1000 different variations, but if you have a small team I suggestion starting simply--use two different graphics with the same text or a carousel versus a singular image.

Before you create any content, make sure that your graphics/images/text are all following the ‘rules’ for Facebook to publish them. Meaning, to be optimally displayed, graphics for certain types of ads should be a certain size, and only so much text will show up underneath your photo, etc.

Next step? Get out there and do it!

When in doubt of what to do, ask! Facebook ads may seem complicated, and I know they definitely scared me until I had a baptism by fire and had to learn them for one of my first clients. If you enjoy social strategy and creating content but find yourself like a fish out of water when it comes to analytics, ask a friend or colleague for help in analyzing the data.

There are plenty of “number nerds” out there everywhere who really get into the stuff (and take pity on those of us who are more right-brained!) Are you a business owner on the analytical side and have no idea how to craft great images or tantalizing text? There are a ton of freelance graphic designers/wordsmiths out there who are ready to help!  

If you’ve gone through the process and educated yourself but feel that there are still pieces you are uncomfortable with? Know that you can hire a large agency to do this for you, but you will pay a premium for them to set up ad run your ads. My suggestion? Learn the basics of Facebook ads, and see what you can do for yourself. Then hire a social media consultant or social media/digital strategist, or a freelance social media manager who can help you where you run into trouble, whether that is creating the content, setting up the ads, or running the analytics.

Facebook ads are here to stay. If you want your small business on Facebook, it pays to know the score. So learn what is going on now...before it changes again next month. Thanks Zuckerberg.