Setting Up Your First Facebook Advertising Campaign
Learn how to make Facebook Ads work for you with this step-by-step description of how to start a campaign.By Zac Johnson
With Facebook now at over 250 million members, it’s never been a better time to take a stab at Facebook advertising. For those of you who have never tried the Facebook Ads program, now is the time to learn something new and maybe make some money in the process. In this article, I’ll provide a step-by-step description of how to set up a campaign.
For some reason, whenever you start talking to someone about Facebook Ads, you either get the response, “I just kept losing money, so I went away,” or “Facebook Ads is awesome! I love it!” The truth is, Facebook advertising can make you money, just as easily as it can make you lose your shirt. It’s all about testing, setting up your ads correctly and managing your daily balance.
Let’s go forward with setting up a Facebook campaign. For this walk-through, I’m going to use a 3G iPhone e-mail submit from Tatto Media, which pays $2 per submit. This will be a good example to use for when we go over targeting.
1. Design Your Ad
Destination URL: You can use your affiliate link, or a landing page. There are no quality scores, or full sites needed. In most cases, you can link directly to the affiliate URL.
Title: The title is what your user is going to see, and make them click. The better the title, the higher the click-through rate.
Body Text: This is usually the generic information that helps in deciding if Facebook will approve your ad. In this particular example, Facebook likes you to list the process needed for the viewer to take to receive their free iPhone. Again, the better the writing, the better the click-through rate.
Image: Usually more important than your title, is your image. Depending on the ad used, you can get creative with this. Draw attention to your ad by using a funny picture, or something out of the ordinary but still relevant to the ad. Take some extra time to choose a high-quality image and do any necessary cropping so it fits correctly.
2. Targeting
The ad copy is the face of your ad campaign, but the targeting is where you setup who should see your ad. There is no reason why a single guy in Florida should see an advertisement for “Married Women in New York.” Thanks to Facebook Ads’ targeting, this will never be a problem again.
Most of the targeting options are self-explanatory. Just for demonstration, I checked off that I want to target only “Married” “Males” interested in “iPhone” and living within the “United States” to see this ad. 56,540 Facebook users matched this description.
Keywords: The keywords are what will make or break your ad campaign. If you don’t place any keyword specifications, your advertisement will be shown to over 66 million Facebook users in the United States. This will result in not only a horrible click-through rate, but can also deplete your account of funds in no time.
I selected “iPhone,” “iphones” and “Apple Iphone 8gb.” This means only people with these listed interests will see my ad. In addition to the keywords I selected, Facebook listed a few “Suggested Keywords.”
3. Campaigns & Pricing
Now that your ad campaign is created, you just need to set everything up for going live and setting your ad pricing. The most important setting in this whole step is your “Daily Budget.” The thing with Facebook is that their audience is so huge that you can go through a few hundred or even thousands of dollars in just minutes. When setting up a campaign, you will need to test what CPC amount is right for you to spend. While testing, I would set the daily budget in the $5–$20 range. As for the CPC rate, I usually put 30–50 percent of what their actual suggestion is. Once you have some traffic flowing through the campaign, you will have a better idea on how to manage your CPC and daily budget.
4. Review Your Ad
The last step is to simply review everything you have just set up. Once you verify everything is correct, you simply need to click “Place Order,” and your campaign will go into queue for approval.
Important Notices for Facebook Advertising
- Your daily spend limit will increase in increments until you meet $1,000, and then you can contact an ads manager to get boosted to $5,000+ daily range.
- Facebook Ads’ team will deny your ads. Keep submitting new ad copies and resubmit whenever they are denied.
- Take advantage of non-U.S. traffic. Facebook is big worldwide, and these markets are less saturated then the United States.
- Facebook Coupons: For new accounts, several networks and sites offer $50–$100 coupons for Facebook advertisers.
(Search around for the latest coupons to go live.)
- Set up multiple offers and ad copies. Keep higher CTR converting offers, and close out the others.
- The higher the CTR, the lower you will have to pay per click.
- Once you master CPC, move over to CPM advertising for better ROI results.
Zac Johnson is an affiliate marketing expert. Visit his website, Inside the Secret Life of a Super Affiliate, at www.zacjohnson.com.