Increase your visibility & Likes with Facebook ads

If you feel like the free methods did not bring you enough new followers, it’s time for you to have a look at Facebook CPC or CPM advertising. The ads are usually located on the top right hand corner of your Facebook page or amongst all other posts in the users newsfeed.

They will always appear in the middle of all other posts in your newsfeed in the mobile version of Facebook. They will be branded Suggested Page or Post or Sponsored or Promoted. They will only be shown to users you’ve specifically targeted. These users do not need to be your followers. You can set up a daily budget for these ads and they will show until it’s depleted.

1. Facebook advertising: getting started

There are a very high number of ways to create Facebook ads, from many locations on the platform. For the purpose of this exercise, we’ll assume you already have a Facebook page for your business and are using Business Manager. Click on Ads Manager in the top left corner next to the Facebook ‘F’ logo. Then select Ads Manager. Quick Creation will probably be turned on, leading you to the creation screen.

2. Choose the destination for clicks

We will focus this guide on getting more likes for your Facebook page. If it’s your website you want to send traffic to, simply enter your URL in the box. Otherwise select the Facebook page you want traffic to go to in the dropdown selection.

External URL or Facebook page?

This is a difficult question: unless you have an app on your Facebook page to process orders, you won’t be making any direct sales from this traffic. On the other hand, you may be able to get some sales if you send clickers to your website but they will be very limited even if you’re selling very cheap products. And your conversion rate from click to sale will be extremely low. Because one thing you need to keep in mind is that people who will click on your ad are not actively looking for your products and services and a lot of the clicks you will get will be mere curiosity.

On the contrary, you will be able to get a lot of new followers (provided your ads are appealing enough) if you choose to promote your Facebook page. Once again you need to look at Facebook as a tool to gather interest, interest that can be turned into sales in the long term. Since the exercise here is to gather more followers, we will opt to promote the Facebook page.

3. Choose the type of promotion

You will be given different options here:

• Get more pages Likes: selecting this option will allow you to create a personalised ad like the one below where people will be able to like the page directly or go to your Facebook page to learn more about your business or special offer.
  You need to write an ad that will make people want to like your business because a simple click to your Facebook page without a Like is useless as you won’t get a chance to turn this visit into a sale later on.
• Promote page posts: this is pretty similar to the More Likes option except you will get more Likes for a particular post. You can choose to promote an existing post or create a new one if you wish. This advertising option is very useful if you want to make sure a particular post is seen by all your followers. If you decide to target users outside your followers be aware that it won’t increase your total page Likes.

Whatever option you choose you will also get the possibility under Advanced Options to advertise your page through your current followers. If you opt to Get more pages likes you can have sponsored stories about your followers liking your page showing on their friends’ newsfeed. For Promoted page posts these sponsored stories will show your Likers’ friends all interactions they’ve had with your posts (like, comment or share).

Please note that even if you’re not advertising Facebook already shows that sort of stories to your likers’ friends. But activating this option while running an ad will make sure these sponsored stories show more prominently in your followers’ friends newsfeeds.

4. Choose your audience

This is probably the most important part where you can decide who will be able to view your ads.

• Location

  If you’re selling your products and services nationally, you may want to start by focusing your ads on a smaller region, maybe the one where your headquarters are based and people know you best. Facebook ads can be very costly and you want to get as many Likes as possible for your allocated budget so start where people have already heard of you.
  
  Unfortunately the targeting for the United Kingdom is pretty limited and you won’t be able to target a whole county for example. Let’s hope they will change this soon but at the moment you can only target people per city and within a certain radius around this city. Anytime you add filters to your target audience, the tool will update the number of people targeted.

• Age & Gender

  Are your products and services more attractive to women than men? Make sure you only target the right gender. If you’re selling women’s beauty products for example there’s obviously no need to target men. Also analyse your current customers to try and find out if there’s a specific age range for your products and services then target your Facebook audience accordingly.

• Interest targeting

  This is where you can reach a very specific audience and almost get the guarantee they will have an interest in your products or services. If for example you wish to promote your hand-made jewellery business, you will target people who have already expressed an interest in those products or you can even go further and only target people liking specific pages on Facebook under Precise interests.

  Alternatively if you find the number of people targeted is too limited through precise interests, switch to broad categories just underneath. This should increase the volume of targeted people.

• Connections targeting

  Here you can specify whether or not you want your current followers to view your ads. The advanced options also let you be very specific as to whom within your circle of connections can view your ads.

  

• More targeting options

  Married men or single men for example have different concerns so use this to your advantage and make sure you only select the right type of people. Other targeting options include love interest, language, education and workplaces. You should look into all of these to try and get the best audience possible according to your business particulars.

  

5. Choose daily budget & campaign schedule

• Campaign Schedule

  The options are pretty limited here compared to Google Adwords for example. You cannot select only weekdays if you wish: all you can do is select a date range when your ads will appear. This will be useful if you decide to run a short test on Facebook ads or have a special offer that only runs between specific dates. Make sure you get this right from the start as you won’t be able to change the start date later on.

• Budget & bids

  When it comes to your budget you have 2 options available: daily or lifetime budget. Keep in mind that whatever option you choose, your budget may be depleted very quickly. I would recommend splitting your budget in 2: you will spend the first half over a certain number of days while the second half will be used as your lifetime budget. As said earlier it may be spent very quickly which may be a problem if you have a low daily budget as your ads will only show for a short period of time over a day.

  Testing both options will allow you to check what seems to work best. The bid should be within the range suggested by Facebook. If the bid is too low your ads may end up not showing at all. You will then need to select your optimisation option. It is recommended to select Optimise for clicks then Manually bid for clicks and enter a PPC bid within the suggested range. This way you will only pay for clicks on your ads.

6. Writing your ads

Facebook will allow you to write several different ads. Test and experiment then check which ones work better. In this particular example we’re trying to get more Likes so keep your goal in mind and write ads that will trigger those ‘likes’. A competition is usually the best way to get what you want. Try to be original. Don’t offer a Kindle like everybody does. Offer 10. But only if you reach a certain number of ‘likes’. Have an engaging and colourful picture in your ad but make sure it’s in line with your cover or profile photo.

Have a strong call to action too that will speak to your targeted audience. In the example below the target was women interested in knitting. Please note that the review of your ads can occasionally take quite some time. If your ad has not been approved after 48 hours contact Facebook support. It is better to create your campaigns on weekdays though, the approval will be quicker.