Facebook Ads
Structure.

To use Facebook Ads, you must create a Business Manager account. You can do this at Business.facebook.com. We recommend linking your Business Manager account with your actual Facebook profile, because Facebook is not fond of businesses using fake accounts—there’s a chance your account will be banned if you do so. Business Manager makes it easy to give platform access to employees and/or your marketing agency.

Facebook Ads Manager is the overarching umbrella to your ad accounts. To navigate to Ads Manager, click the navigation icon at the top left of your Facebook Business Manager dashboard. If you have more than 1 business or Facebook page, you will manage all of these facets through your single Ads Manager account. If you want your marketing agency to solely manage advertisements, (not organic content) you can provide access within Ads Manager settings. Select “Add People” under “Ad Account Roles.” Next, enter the name of whoever you are giving access to and choose their role. Click “Confirm” and your marketing agency will immediately be ready to run advertisements on your behalf.

Do you have more than 1 business you want to run ads for? If so, you will need multiple ad accounts. (1 per business) For our purposes, let’s assume you have 1 business, hence 1 ad account. Within your Facebook ad account you will be able to see all of the data for your advertisements at any given time. This data is presented in three tabs: Campaigns, Ad sets, and Ads.

The final 3 levels of Facebook ads (ad campaign, ad set, and ad) are the most common sources of confusion among newcomers. Campaigns represent the types of advertisements you choose to run. For each campaign you will choose an underlying goal such as generating traffic, creating engagement, driving website conversions (purchases) and more.

If you properly understand the importance of a complete digital marketing strategy, it’s likely your business is not solely focusing on leads and sales.  You should also be aiming to create brand recognition, social engagement, and a sense of credibility. Each campaign you create in Facebook Ads will be labeled with one of these specific goals—this will assist with how Facebook tracks your ad’s success. The campaign layer is where you will set an initial budget, as well.

Facebook campaigns is the first element in the ad platform in which you must start naming elements. SunCity Advising cannot stress the importance of creating an organized naming system to BEGIN with, enough. A lack of a conventional naming system can lead to a massive increase in future work, as mix ups can occur regarding goals, audiences, and success metrics.

Ad Sets are essentially the specific audiences you are targeting. Inside each campaign you can have multiple ad sets which represent the multiple audiences you are targeting to achieve that campaign’s goal.

Successful Facebook advertisers test numerous audiences for each of their campaigns. Within ad sets you can target certain locations, ages, gender, demographics, interests, and behaviors. You can also exclude various groups if you wish to do so.

Extensive targeting options are what differentiates Facebook from other ad platforms. If you sell kitchen products that you think are great wedding presents, then you are able to show ads to close friends of newly-engaged couples. To complement this further, you can make sure these targeted people are “engaged shoppers,” meaning they click a lot of Facebook ad links and have bought numerous products.

You can also create and manage audiences within Ads Manager. Click the Ads Manager hamburger icon at the top left of your screen. Under the “Advertise” drop-down, click “Audiences.” This is a good place to compare the various traits of your audiences such as type, size, and availability.

This final element speaks for itself—the “Ad” level of Facebook ads represents what your actual advertisement looks like in a visual sense. This encompasses the photo or video itself, as well as the ad copy.

For each ad set (audience), you are going to direct this audience to 1 or more visual advertisements. Different audiences have diverging responses to seeing advertisements, so it is wise to test at least 2 (SunCity Advising recommends a minimum of 3) ads per ad set.

If you sell a wide variety of kitchen products, you can see how a specific ad set audience responds to each product. For example, show a single-photo ad for every one of your kitchen products (toaster, knife holder, etc.) and see which ad performs best. Another option is to test which ad TYPE the audience responds to best for ONE product. For example, show ads of your toaster in photo format, video format, and slideshow format, so you can optimize whichever ad type performs best.