Facebook ads have an average conversion rate exceeding 9%—more than triple the 2.35% average for landing pages. If you’re not using Facebook for advertising, you’re missing out on an opportunity to build a community of followers who buy from you over and over again. Fortunately, you have access to a secret weapon that can take your Facebook ad strategy from zero to 60 in no time: The CMO step-by-step guide to Facebook campaign management.
We created this guide to help you better understand the benefits of incorporating Facebook into your digital marketing strategy. You’ll learn why Facebook is such an effective advertising tool, get tips for setting up Facebook Ads Manager, and find out exactly what you need to do to set up a campaign.
What Are Facebook Ad Campaigns?
Think of your Facebook ad campaign as an onion. The campaign itself has multiple layers, including ad sets and individual ads. These layers work together to achieve a single objective, such as driving more traffic to your website or convincing viewers to download a free trial of your app.
What Is Facebook Ads Manager?
Facebook Ads Manager is the holy grail of social media advertising. Once your Facebook page is up and running (if it isn’t already), you’ll use Facebook Ads Manager to create ads, determine when they’ll run, and monitor ad performance. This tool also makes it easy to do A/B testing to determine which versions of your ad copy and images are the most effective.
As an added bonus, Facebook offers an Ad Manager app, allowing you to monitor your ad account even when you’re on the go. The mobile version makes it easy to create ads, manage your ad budget, and schedule ads to go live at just the right time. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the beach or up in the air—you have complete control over your campaign at all times.
Setting Up Your Facebook Ads Manager Account
Before you work on ad creative, you need to set up Facebook Ads Manager. Follow these steps to access it from your Facebook business account:
- Navigate to the left sidebar of your Facebook page.
- Click “Ad Center.”
- Select “All Ads.”
- Click Ads Manager.
If you plan to access Facebook Ads Manager on the go, download the app from the App Store (iOS devices) or Google Play (Android devices).
Now that you know how to access Ads Manager, look at the upper-left corner. That’s where you’ll find your personal ad account ID. The final step is to set up a verified payment method. Facebook needs this to charge you for the ads in your campaign.
Granting Access To Team Members
One reason many companies use Facebook instead of other advertising platforms is that Meta makes it so easy to add multiple team members to an account. If you don’t want to be glued to Facebook Ads Manager 24/7, consider adding at least one other person to manage each ad campaign.
Here’s how to add another user to the account:
- Go to your Ads Manager Settings.
- Look for “Ad Account Roles.”
- Choose “Add People.”
- Enter the person’s name or email address. The individual must have a personal Facebook account for this to work.
- Select a role from the dropdown menu.
- Click “Confirm.”
Finding Your Way Around
Before you get started with Facebook marketing, take a few minutes to explore Ads Manager and make sure you know how to access its most valuable features. Clicking “Home” takes you to your Business Suite, which gives you access to your Facebook and Instagram analytics.
The stacked menu on the left (AKA hamburger menu) takes you to Creative Hub, Events Manager, and other Facebook tools. You’ll see account notifications, settings, and a search tool at the bottom left side of the page.
On the right, you’ll find everything you need to edit a Facebook ad campaign or view the history of a campaign. The center of the page is like the center of a Tootsie Pop. Sure, the whole page is important, but the center is where you go to view all of your campaigns in one convenient location.
Facebook Advertising Step-by-Step
Now that you’re ready to put the power of Facebook to work for your business, here’s what you need to do to create high-converting campaigns.
Create Your Campaign
When you create a campaign, Facebook gives you the option of using Campaign Wizard or Quick Creation. If you’re new to Facebook advertising, give Campaign Wizard a try. The tool makes it easy for beginners to develop ad creatives and get their campaigns up and running.
Set Budget & Duration
To open the Campaign Wizard, click the “Campaigns” tab and then click “Facebook Campaign Wizard.” After you enter a name for your campaign, it’s time to set an ad budget. You can set a daily budget or a lifetime budget. Each option has its own unique pros and cons.
A daily budget allows you to control how much you spend per day on each ad set. The main benefit of choosing a daily budget is that it makes your spending more consistent. You won’t spend $500 one day and $10 the next.
Setting a daily budget does have one major drawback. When Facebook knows you’re willing to spend a certain amount of money every day, it tends to show as many impressions as necessary to push your ad spend to the max. With daily budgets, you also have no control over ad scheduling.
Lifetime budgets allow you to send a maximum budget for the entire campaign. One of the main benefits is that you get to decide when your ads will run. If you know the people in your target audience aren’t online on Sundays, for example, you don’t have to run your ads on Sundays. When you set a lifetime budget, Facebook also pays more attention to performance, which may help boost your conversion rate.
Choose a Goal
The next step is to choose a goal, also known as a campaign objective. Facebook allows you to set goals that closely match the stages of the buyer’s journey. For potential customers in the consideration stage, you may want to drive traffic to your website, generate new leads, or convince audience members to download your free app.
Need extra inspiration? Here are some more examples of goals you can use for your Facebook ad campaign:
- Messages: One of the best ways to engage potential customers is to have personalized conversations with them. Consider creating an ad campaign that aims to convince people in your target audience to open Messenger conversations with one of your company’s reps.
- Videos: Drive traffic to your company’s YouTube page if you want to show off your company’s expertise or give potential customers a sneak peek of a new product.
- Engagement: Optimize your ad campaigns to get potential customers to claim a free offer, sign up for an event, or follow your business page.
Add Your Visuals
Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. Even if you have the greatest ad copy in the world, some people won’t read it if your visuals don’t draw them in and make them want to learn more. Facebook offers these tips for creating attention-getting visuals that make your ads convert like crazy:
- Don’t forget about mobile users. More than 5 billion people own mobile devices, making mobile-friendly design more important than ever. Whether you’re using carousel ads or single images, your visuals should look great on smartphones and tablets.
- Try video. Facebook has been in business for more than a decade, so static images are kind of old hat at this point. Innovative marketers are experimenting with playable game previews and ads that open Messenger when clicked, making it easier to connect with audience members.
- Make your visuals as appealing as possible. Bold colors, easy-to-read fonts, and crisp images are one of the keys to success with Facebook ad creation.
Define Your Target Audience
Now you get to decide who sees your ads. Another benefit of using Facebook for advertising purposes is that Meta allows you to create custom audiences. Instead of wasting money on impressions from people who have no need for your products or services, you can create a laser-targeted audience and display your ads only to people in that audience.
Facebook’s ad targeting is extremely precise, as you can target people based on their demographics, hobbies, behaviors, and other characteristics. For example, if you want to display ads to attorneys between the ages of 25 and 35 who like soccer and badminton, you can do so.
Select Ad Placements
The next step is to choose your ad placements (where you want your ads to appear). You can do this by clicking “Placements” from your Facebook Ads Manager. If you have a lot of experience with Facebook advertising, choose manual placements. Otherwise, choose Meta Advantage+ placements.
Meta recommends Advantage+ placements because they expose a larger audience to your message, increasing brand awareness and making it easier to achieve your campaign objective. These ad placements maximize your reach without burning through your budget.
Publish & Monitor
Once your first campaign is live, monitor it regularly. Although Facebook makes it easy to “set it and forget it,” you should check on it at least a few times per week. If the campaign isn’t performing as well as you’d like, you can split-test different versions of your ad copy or swap static images for a video to see which one converts better.
Tips for Managing Your Facebook Campaign
Run Retargeted Ads for More Conversions
Retargeting allows you to advertise to people who’ve already visited your Facebook page, website, app, or e-commerce store. Retargeted ads are highly personalized, which may help increase your conversion rate without increasing your ad budget.
If you want to retarget people who’ve visited your website, you’ll need to add a Facebook pixel to your code. This pixel is a small piece of code that tracks visitors and pays attention to what they do when they visit your site. You’ll also need this pixel if you want to retarget people who’ve used your company’s app.
Focus on Mobile-First Ads
Mobile-first means that you design your ads with mobile devices in mind rather than designing for desktop computers, crossing your fingers, and hoping that your ads display the same way on smartphones and tablets. Creating mobile-friendly ads may boost your conversion rate and make your Facebook campaigns even more successful.
Recognize Ad Fatigue
One of the drawbacks of social media marketing and advertising is that users see the same ads so often that they start to ignore them. That’s why you shouldn’t create an ad campaign and then let it run for months and months without making any changes.
To diagnose ad fatigue before it drives up your costs, pay close attention to campaign performance. Take a look at these metrics:
- Higher cost-per-conversion rates: If audience members are tired of seeing your ads, you may notice your CPC increase. Try coming up with new ad creative to see if you can drive it back down.
- Lower click-through rates: A steadily declining CTR may indicate that audience members are bored by your ads.
- Reduced impressions: The less audience members interact with your ads, the lower your impressions will be, as Facebook doesn’t want to display ads to users who have no interest in them.
You also need to consider cost per thousand (CPM) impressions, relevance, and frequency. Frequency refers to the number of times a user sees your ad within a specific time period. If your frequency is too high, audience members may become annoyed at seeing the same ad over and over again. They may also become annoyed if they keep seeing your ad when it's irrelevant to them.
Understand All the Metrics
Monitoring your advertising metrics makes it easier to know when to tweak your ad creative or set up a new campaign—but only if you understand what those metrics mean.
- Ad impressions: How often your ad is displayed
- Relevance score: A rating (1-10) that helps determine how relevant your ads are to audience members
- Geographical location: Where your target user lives or works
- Audience demographic: A specific segment of the population, usually based on characteristics like age, income level, marital status, and household size
- Cost per result: The total amount of money spent on an ad campaign divided by the result achieved (e.g. website visits, app downloads)
- Video views/video percentage watched: The number of users who viewed your video/the percentage of your video watched on average
- Engagement: Any action taken on one of your Facebook posts or pages (e.g. comment, follow)
- Result rate: The number of times your ad achieved an objective
- Click-through rate: How many times users click on your ads after seeing them
- Frequency: Number of times a user sees your ad in a certain amount of time, such as a week or a month
- Cost per conversion: The total amount of money you spent to acquire a customer or drive some other type of conversion
- Conversion rate: Your number of conversions divided by the total number of ad interactions in certain amount of time
- Return on ad spend (ROAS): The amount of money you earn for every dollar you spend on advertising
Consider Hiring a Pro
If you don’t have time to monitor your Facebook campaigns closely, or you’re just not sure about what you’re doing, consider hiring a professional to help you set up your account and teach you how to create ad campaigns that get results. You can even hire an outside marketing agency to monitor your campaigns for you.
Kick Your Advertising Efforts Into High Gear
Facebook gets its share of criticism, but no one can argue that the platform isn’t useful for small businesses and companies with limited marketing resources. If you want to succeed at lead generation or boost your conversion rate, give Facebook advertising a try. We’ll be here cheering you on.
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