How to Create a Facebook Ad Campaign (2018) Edition

Facebook recently streamlined their advertising dashboard within Business Manager, consolidating the Power Editor and Ad Manager.  Learn how to create your first Ad campaign with this instructional and Video.

First Get a Business Manager Account

Go here:  business.facebook.com and sign up for a business manager account.  This will give you access to the valuable and powerful marketing research tools that Facebook offers to page owners, free of charge.  It is a tremendously valuable asset and all you need to do is have an active account on Facebook.

Define your Marketing Objective within the Context of Facebook Advertising Options

A successful Facebook advertising campaign is contingent on many different factors, but the main one is understanding and defining your advertising objective.    Facebook provides 3 different advertising types to choose from (I have bolded the ones I personally use):

  1. Awareness
    1. Brand Awareness
    2. Reach
  2. Consideration
    1. Traffic
    2. App Installs
    3. Video views
    4. Lead Generation
    5. Post Engagement
    6. Page Likes
    7. Event Responses
    8. Messages
  3. Conversion
    1. Conversions
    2. Catalog sales
    3. Store Visits

Think of each objective as a step in a funnel.

Awareness

Awareness is intended for brands that are just wanting mass exposure to a new audience.

Consideration

Consideration for driving traffic where you know a little bit about the audience, but they don't know anything about you.  You want to target your advertising to a segment of people that you *think* might be interested in what you have to offer.

Conversion

Conversion is for hot “ready to buy” traffic.  This is the final step in your advertising journey – this is where the money will be made (if that is your desired intent).

Social Media is About Engagement

I want to emphasize the importance of the intent of social media and advertising.  Just because we are given the privilege to advertise using social media, doesn't mean that social media is an advertising platform!

Some key things to keep in mind:

  1. Social media is for engagement, not selling.
  2. Never move in for a “kiss” on the “first date” – in other words, if your objective is to get a new customer, don't just send them to your sales page from your ad!  You will need to first introduce your brand to a new customer, warm them up, and THEN convince them to buy.
  3. What are you trying to achieve?  More page likes for your brand fan page? Post likes? Website traffic?

Understanding these things will help you lock in on your objective and also help increase your conversion rates.

Usually, I prefer to start with Consideration and select Traffic, if my objective is to drive traffic to a landing “bridge” page – a pre-sales page in a deeper sales funnel that is intended to deliver high-value content at no cost to my potential customer.

This helps introduce my cold prospects to my products/services and also builds trust by giving them something to evaluate and no risk.

Important: Install a Facebook Tracking Pixel on your Destination URL page

I install a Facebook tracking pixel on any page that I am collecting important data,  so I can track actions on the page (such as entry of an email into an opt-in form), and then I can use this tracking pixel to “re-market” my “paid offer” through future advertising campaigns, using the Conversions advertising objective.

Watch this Tutorial on How to Set Up your First Advertising Campaign

In this instructional video, I will walk you through how to set up a Consideration campaign to drive traffic to a web page (in this example, my blog page).

Do you want my Facebook Ad Campaign Strategy Mind Map?

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