Facebook, that behemoth that employers and bosses around the world hate for the lack of their employees’ efficiency during work hours, and the familiar network we all use to stalk our friends and neighbours.
In the recent years, however, Facebook has shown a completely new side of itself, with the advertising numbers in massive rise and new features such as video advertisements being rolled out on a near weekly pace.
But why would you want to advertise in a place where everyone else is already advertising?
Isn’t that a waste of money, since all your competitors are there already?
Well, no it’s not, and no they aren’t.
With over 1.4 billion users and more than 900 million visits daily, there’s plenty of people to advertise to. And besides, I can guarantee that not all of your competitors understand the importance of good advertising, or that they think it’s too expensive.
I’ll show you how you can do some simple Facebook advertising for just $5 per day, without having to fear your wallet will be drained or that you won’t get anything good out of it. Trust me on this one, you’ll want to give it a try.
When To Use Facebook Advertising
Facebook is a social platform first advertising platform second, or at least when you’re asking its users, because their business plan might disagree with that statement.
But we’ll keep thinking of it as a social network, which means that you have to promote something of interest to a bored office worker browsing Facebook during his lunch hour, or a single mom ‘just quickly checking what’s happening’ when she should be catching some of that precious sleep.
And how can we achieve that?
First of all, you must know when to use Facebook as an advertising tool, and that’s why this paragraph exists. To educate you on the possibilities of a brilliantly planned and executed advertising campaign on Facebook.
If you’re selling clothes, you’ll want to promote sales and offers on Facebook. If you own a blog or a magazine, you’ll want to reach new people within your target audience, and what better way to do that than by utilizing Facebook advertising.
See the pattern?
Anything that is of any value or interest to the consumer directly will most likely succeed as a Facebook advertisement. Anything with the hint of some viral value will most likely do quite well as a Facebook promoted post, and skyrocket on its own because of Facebook’s inbuilt sharing and tagging abilities.
To put it simply, use Facebook as a way to reach your audience better and to promote to them products, services and content that you might think they’d appreciate and find useful.
What Do You Need To Start?
A Facebook page! Now that we’re finally getting off to a concrete start on this advertising matter, head over to Facebook for Business and click the ‘create a page’ button shown in the image below.
First Facebook asks you to choose who or what you’re creating the page for, and this is what you will see.
After that you’ll need to enter in a few details, such as page name, category and so forth. You being a business or a website owner yourself, I’m sure you know all of these details about the company you’re creating the page for, so I’m not going to hold your hand and teach you to spell your website’s address.
For example, if you’d be creating a page for your dog walking service, this is what you would do.
Finally you’ll need to complete a simple four step process, which I won’t go too far into due to this being an article about advertising on Facebook, but here’s an image for you to make sure you’re in the right place.
Oh, and make sure to define your audience well, because Facebook will help you by suggesting good groups and keywords to target later on as it knows your audience.
After completing the four step process, congratulations! You are now an owner of a brand new Facebook page!
It’s not much yet, but fill in all the details, polish it out and give it a beautiful cover picture and you’re on your way to success.
Let’s Begin – Step 1
Facebook offers you multiple ways to promote your brand, from promoting your Call to Action all the way to promoting an individual post.
Here’s what it looks like when you click on the small blue button that says “Promote” in white letters.
You need to choose the type of promotion based on what you wish to achieve. For example, if you’re looking to acquire new customers for your dog walking service by having them come by your doggy centre, choose the ‘Promote Your Local Business’ option.
Or if you’re trying to amass boat loads of fresh visitors to your website, you might wish to select the obvious ‘Promote Your Website’ option. This step is as simple as it looks and sounds like, just choose the type of promotion you think fits your purposes best, and go for it.
Now being marketers who are using ClickFunnels, generally your ultimate goal is to attract a mass amount of leads to your website and have them fill in your form (name, email, phone number etc.)
We’re not going to go too deep into the technicalities of goals when Facebook Advertising (we’ll be leaving that for another post) but if you directing traffic to a landing page, “Promote Your Call To Action” generally does quite well.
As you master Facebook Ads you’ll be able to go even deeper into using Power Editor and more.
Write Your Copy – Step 2
Next step is to write some compelling advertising copy, Mad Men style for your new Facebook Ad.
When writing Facebook advertising headlines and text, it can be a bit difficult to structure something that you know will work.
AdEspresso recently analysed 37,259 Facebook Ads and found and shared:
It seems Facebook advertisers have taken this to heart. The median length for a headline is just 5 words long. This means that their ad is immediately clear and to the point each time.
By keeping to this approximate length, you’ll be able to get your point across to your audience clearly and succinctly without any distractions.
Make It Pop – Step 3
Make your ad catch the attention of your audience by uploading a nice and relevant image. Remember, only 20% of the image is allowed to contain text when advertising on Facebook.
Yes I know it can be super frustrating but you also need to remind yourself the platform you’re choosing to advertise on. You want creative which is native to the surroundings so it doesn’t just stand out like another flashing banner ad.
HubSpot exclaims in one of their posts about some of their examples of ads which actually work that:
“A beautiful and relevant ad is great, but without a call-to-action (CTA), your viewer might not know what to do next. “
One of their examples used was from NatureBox:
A Facebook advertisement like NatureBox’s above is clean, visual, relevant and most of all has a clear call to action to the target audience.
Location, Location, Location – Step 4
You really don’t want to be spending your hard earned advertising dollars on people clicking on your advertisement in a completely different country than where your target audience lives.
That’s why you‘ll be giving Facebook the specific location or locations you want your ad to be shown in amongst an array of other targeting options.
This targeting option specifically allows you to promote certain posts or pages to an audience in one country, and certain posts and pages to an audience in another country.
With Facebook’s targeting options you can very specific with your location targeting.
In face, with their newest updates, you can now even drop a pin in the location you’d like to advertise and select a radius of people to target.
(NOTE: This is ideal for local brick and mortar businesses)
Using Interest Targeting– Step 5
And this is where you can make or break the whole advertising campaign, mastering the interest selection.
This is where it comes in handy if you properly narrowed down your page’s audience for Facebook before, because the system can recommend you some really solid groups and interests to target here.
You should try to enter at least three different interests in this selection to attain a good reach for your campaign. Too few people to see the ad and you might just miss out on the whole results side of advertising.
Before you ask “What’s the ideal target audience size?” Facebook advises you that:
“Ad sets perform better when they’re targeted to at least a few thousand people. Consider removing some of your targeting options if your audience is too small.”
Budgeting and Running Your Ad – Step 6
Finally, the budget side of things! This is the moment you’ve been waiting for, and it’s finally here.
Select the amount of money you wish to spend each day on your promotion campaign, and select the duration of the run.
Personally I’ve used many different campaign durations, but I’d recommend running the ad continuously and keeping an eye on its results on a day-to-day basis after the first 5 days.
You need some initial data to be able to get an idea of its performance before tweaking the ad.
Preview the Results Then…– Step 8
You’re ready to publish your ad! If you like the preview of your newly crafted Facebook Ad then you are ready to hit that sweet ‘Promote’ button at the lower right corner and enjoy the results!
So What Now?
Welcome to the world of Facebook advertising, you’re now part of those smart business people and entrepreneurs who understand the value of good old fashioned advertising techniques combined with the modern wonders of technology!
If you’ve got any suggestions, experiences or comments you’d like to share with me, the ClickFunnels team or your fellow readers, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment in the comment section below! We’d love to hear from you.
Last but not least, don’t forget to tune in soon for our next instalment in the beginner advertising article series on AdWords.
Hey Stephen
Great post, I’m in the process of taking my business to the next level using paid advertisng, this post will help me along the way.
Thanks again
Kevin
Glad it will help Kevin. Let me know if there’s any questions you have along the way.
Stephen,
Thanks for an awesome post. I have been wanting to use Facebook advertising for a long time now. I have used it before but without much luck. You have given me the information that I need to boost my confidence and give it another go. I am starting my campaign tonight. Thanks again.
Welp! I’ve followed the instructions on this blog to start advertising my first funnel. I had already finished the funnel months ago, but I’ve been nervous about advertising it. I’m hoping my first ad test works out. Wish me luck!
I am formulating a strategy for advertising my Creative Business Law practice to the music industry in Nashville. I have some “hook” pages I am using but don’t see many other lawyers using the Click Funnels system. Can you assist?