More than two billion people use Facebook every month. And 1.6 billion of them are connected to a small business on Facebook. So there’s no ignoring the platform’s potential for advertising your business.

When you post to your company’s Facebook Page, people who’ve liked or followed your Page can see your post, and can like, comment or share it. This organic reach can help your Page gain new likes and followers, but your audience will grow slowly.

To gain new followers and grow your business more quickly, you can pay to boost your posts so they are seen by more people. You can also create and run paid advertising campaigns through the Facebook Ad Manager, which is designed to make it simple and straightforward to grow your business using Facebook.

What is the objective of your Facebook ads?

The first step when creating Facebook ads is to choose your objective. Consider what your business wants to achieve through paying to advertise on Facebook. What is the outcome that will benefit your business the most?

To make this easier, there are 11 common objectives for you to choose from when creating an advert in Facebook Ad Manager. These are organised into awareness objectives (including brand awareness and reach), consideration objectives (like lead generation or traffic) and conversion objectives (store visits, catalogue sales and other conversions).

These objectives will help you clarify your goal for your ads and focus on the return you want from your investment in Facebook Advertising.

Who do you want your Facebook ads to target?

Once you have chosen an objective, you can specify who you want to target with your advertising. Facebook Ad Manager features three audience selection tools to help with this: Core Audiences, Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences.

Core Audiences lets define your audience based on location, interests, behaviour, connections and demographics like age and gender.

Custom Audiences allows you to connect with people who have previously shown an interest in your business, whether as a customer or through visiting your website.

Lookalike Audiences enables you to use what you know about your existing customers to reach new people with similar interests who are likely to engage with your brand. When targeting the right audience, Facebook ads offer an effective way to gain new fans and future customers.

Choose a platform, budget & ad format

Within the Facebook Ad Manager you can choose where you want your ad to appear, whether that’s just on Facebook, or on Instagram, Messenger or across all platforms. You can also set a daily or lifetime budget, allowing you to only spend exactly what you want to and what your business can afford.

There are six ad formats to choose from, which combine images, videos and text to communicate with your audience. Each format is versatile and can be easily customised for your brand.

Measure & manage your ads

Once your ads are up and running, you can monitor how they are performing and make any tweaks or adjustments through Facebook Ad Manager. You can view analytics for your whole account or for individual ads, letting you measure the results that matter to your business. Over time, this will allow you to compare the success of different adverts and see what works best.

Need a hand managing your Facebook ads?

Facebook Ad Manager is a user-friendly platform that makes it easy to create, manage and monitor your business adverts. But ads still take time to set up and track, and you may feel a little out of your depth. If that’s the case, Unity Online can help take the hassle out of Facebook advertising, leaving you to focus on running your business. Find out more by getting in touch today.