Top 5 Tips to Know About Facebook Ads Before You Get Started

There comes a time, when you’re running your business, where you need to start thinking about advertising. And, these days, digital advertising and marketing is a major consideration. We’re talking about Facebook advertising, specifically, because it’s one of the largest platforms on which to advertise your business. With something like 1.4 billion members worldwide, where better to market your business to a wide audience? But there’s more to advertising on Facebook than clicking on a few buttons. There’s a lot to learn, and you need to do your research before you begin. Otherwise, you’re pouring money down the drain. So, here are our top 5 tips to know about Facebook ads before you get started.

#1: Install the Facebook Pixel on your website

First things first, there are some things you need to do before you even get started with creating your first Facebook ad. Laying the groundwork involves some technical stuff. So, getting set up with Facebook Ads Manager should be at the very top of your list.

Once you’ve done that, you can install the Facebook pixel on your website. This small piece of code tracks visitors to your website so you can re-target your ads to them and people like them in the future.

#2: Be clear about the goal of your ad

There’s no point in creating an ad if you don’t know what its intended purpose should be. So, ask yourself, do you want to get more followers? Do you want people to subscribe to your mailing list? Do you want enquiries or more people to buy a specific product? Knowing what you want the ad to achieve makes it easier to design and create it in the first place, but also to measure whether it was successful or not.

So, get clear on your goals before you start creating your ad.

#3: Know your audience and target them appropriately

Trying to aim your ads at everybody is impossible. The more you try to please everyone, the more likely you are to please no one. Be clear on who your audience is so you can target your ads to a niche. You’re much more likely to connect with a small group of people than you are with a much larger group.

Facebook has some excellent tools for targeting an audience. It looks at everything, from age, gender and location right through to likes and dislikes, websites they’ve visited and pages they follow. You can also use those targeting tools to find people who’ve already visited your website via that handy little pixel we talked about earlier. And, better yet, you can create audiences based on similarities to those who’ve visited. It’s a fantastic tool to help present your advertisements to the right people. So, know who your audience is so you can target them effectively.

#4: Have good copy and compelling visuals

It’s all well and good having a goal and creating awesome targeting. But without some compelling copy and eye-catching visuals, it’ll all be for nothing.

The Facebook Ads Guide has a ton of great advice here. Do also make yourself familiar with Facebook’s policies. Your ad will need to be approved, so stick to the guidelines to make that process as easy as possible.

#5: Split testing

Look, no one ever gets it right first time. And you’d be surprised about what kind of ads end up being successful compared to what you think should be!

Split test your ads by creating multiple variations of your advert. You’ll start to see which ones achieve better reach and clicks as you progress, and then you can let the less successful ones fall away.

When it comes to advertising, it’s always about testing and retesting and testing all over again. And keep going until you get it right!

Bonus tip: Don’t hit the boost button!

Or, more accurately, you should only boost a post if it already has impressive organic reach and engagement. Hitting boost on any old post is as good as burning your hard-earned cash. Kinda fun, I’m sure. But probably not very sensible. But if a particular post is already working well for you and you’d like to get it working even harder, a boost can be a good thing.

Of course, we know it’s a huge amount of work, so if you don’t want to face it and would rather leave it with an expert, guess what? We do Facebook advertising too! Get in touch to find out how we can get your Facebook ads working for you in no time.