Creating an ad on Facebook has never been easier. Assuming you’ve got your business’ account set up, head over to facebook.com/business/goals.
There, you’ll find a variety of advertising goal options to choose from, such as Generate Leads, Boost Sales or Build Your Presence. Each option leads you through a step-by-step process to build an appropriate ad for your specific goal.
“Facebook’s advertising has become a simple, intuitive process that takes just minutes to set up,” says Kelly McMahon, digital advertising coordinator for Babcox Media. “With a few clicks, you can share a promotion or advertise your shop with a budget and timeframe that you control.”
Once you’ve built your ad(s), you’ll want the right audience to see it. Facebook’s Power Editor guides you through this part of the process. According to Facebook, “With Power Editor, you can edit, duplicate and manage multiple ads, find what you want to work on quickly with search and filters and import new ads using Excel.”
(Click HERE for an explanation of how to use Facebook’s Power Editor.)
“Facebook’s ad targeting enables you to drill down to any audience,” says Emily Sandberg Gold, founder and CEO of TwiceSocial digital and social media marketing company. “With more than 2 billion monthly active users, every consumer market imaginable is on Facebook. The Social Network is simply too big to ignore — yet that’s exactly what so many small businesses are doing.”
Sandberg Gold suggests a few tips for achieving sales from your Facebook ad efforts. Her first piece of advice is to set up a Facebook audience though Power Editor. “You can customize your audience to include/exclude users based on age, location, relationship status, page affinities (e.g. the user “likes” other pages similar to yours), job title, household income and so much more,” she says.
Sandberg Gold also suggests creating a free offer and/or offering a small service upsell, and assures that you “don’t need a giant budget to advertise on Facebook.”
“Advertising on Facebook has become an easy way to reach quality customers,” says McMahon. “Even with the smallest budgets, it can have a high return on investment both in dollars and exposure for your shop.”
Click HERE for Sandberg Gold’s full article, which goes into detail about testing different types of ads and other key considerations for Facebook advertising.
You also might want to check out the article “Our 3 Favorite Types of Facebook Ads” by Jessica Lucas, a social media specialist at Autoshop Solutions.