Facebook/Instagram Ads Guide
Facebook & Instagram Ads
Facebook and Instagram Ads are display ads, as opposed to search ads. This means that the intent of the person clicking the ad is lower (ie. they weren’t looking for what you were selling them at that moment!), so being clear and attention-grabbing (“scroll-stopping”) is key.
The good news is that they can be incredibly targeted. You are able to choose demographics, locations, preferences, activities, etc. of the people that you want to advertise to. They are also incredibly trackable, allowing you to immediately adjust course based on your learnings. This is called direct response marketing.
Facebook and Instagram ads are offered via an auction, which means that you are bidding against others who want the same audience.
Begin by setting up your business manager, pixel, and (potentially) product catalog.
To set up your Facebook account, visit Facebook Business Manager and follow the prompts.
Be sure to also set up your Facebook Pixel. This is unique code that will track your website traffic and allow you to retarget those website visitors with ads. Even if you don’t use retargeting ads right off the bat, it’s a good idea to get this set up on your website so that you can start tracking that information.
Finally, if you have an online store, you’ll want to set up your Product Catalog.
Ads Manager is the “dashboard” within Business Manager that organizes your campaigns, ad sets and ads. Facebook and Instagram can be managed here together.
The Account Overview is where you can track your spend and results.
There are three main sections within Ads Manager that organize the three distinct parts of Facebook/Instagram advertising: campaigns, ad sets, and ads.
Campaigns are how you organize the objective.
Are you looking for awareness? Are you aiming for a specific result, like a click or a purchase? Are you targeting Android vs. Apple users? These questions would help you decide the objective for your ad campaign.
The major types of campaigns are:
Traffic: used for driving website visits
Conversions: using standard or custom events, these optimize towards a specific action like checkout, upgrade finished, landed on confirmation page, etc.
Reach: used for building brand awareness and consideration; optimizes your ads to show to as many unique people within your audience as possible across a certain time period.
Video Views: effective to use when you are promoting a video and your primary objective is to get more people to view your video to learn more about a product or service; should not be used if you want them to click off site or convert.
Engagement: shows your ad to people who are more likely to like or comment, but aren’t necessarily more qualified. Engagement campaigns have definitely faded out in the last few years since likes and comments have shown to have no correlation to brand awareness, sales, etc.
Catalog sales: a conversion campaign that retargets customers based on views to items in your product catalog.
When setting up a campaign, consider the following:
Simplify. Don’t overcomplicate things, and aim for just a few campaigns.
Split Tests afford the ability to determine the best performing and best resonating ad to your audience. These can be very helpful for those trying to determine a creative direction.
Campaign Budget Optimization allows the algorithm to optimize between both Facebook and Instagram to help you achieve your desired goals and objectives.
Daily Budget vs Lifetime Budget
Daily Budget refers to a set amount of budget the platform can spend per day.
Lifetime Budget refers to the total amount of budget the platforms can spend across a designated time period.
The recommendation is typically to go with a Lifetime Budget to allow the algorithm to do the magic. If you are limiting your campaigns to a certain amount per day, you could be stunting the algorithm from driving efficiencies and results.
Ad Scheduling allows you to specify certain hours or days of the week you want your ad to run. This is typically implemented for conversion campaigns once initial data is reported (i.e. if your consumer tends to convert only on the weekends, then it might be beneficial and cost saving to only run on weekends.)
Ad Sets are the audiences that you are targeting.
This is where you can target exactly who will see your ad.
In general, there are three categories of ad sets to market to:
Warm, retargeted: a custom audience who has been introduced to your brand already. For instance, you can advertise to:
those who visited your website and have been tracked using a Facebook Pixel
custom lists that you upload, like your mailing list, a list from a tradeshow, past customers, etc
users who engaged with certain posts on your social media accounts
Cold, targeted: a group of people that Facebook chooses for you based on interests or other demographics you specify. You can choose gender, age, marital status, interests, recent activity, etc.
For instance, a marriage counseling app may target women, ages 20-44, married, who like Duolingo, Peloton, or Instacart, and/or who are Parents of a child under 3.
Cold, lookalike (LAL): an audience that Facebook creates based on data, aimed to find people most similar to your best customers.
When setting up an ad set, consider the following:
Detailed Targeting/Audiences: who is most likely your customer? Targeting to the “right” group of people will make your adverting spend much more efficient. Don’t waste money on folks who would not be your customer.
Connections allow you to target ads to people who are connected to your page, app and/or event. A person may be considered "connected" to one of those if they've engaged with them or are a friend of someone who has. This is recommended for retargeting/follow-up campaigns.
Placements
Automatic Placements give control to the Facebook algorithm to show your ad anywhere across its landscape (in feed, messenger, audience network, marketplace, etc.)
Edit Placements allows you to pick and choose where across the Facebook/IG landscape you want your ad to show (in-feed, stories, audience network, etc.).
Audience Size
If you are optimizing to a higher funnel objective (i.e. reach), you want to have an audience size where you are able to reach at least 50% of them with your given budget; you want your investment to make an impact.
If you are optimizing to a conversion objective, the bigger the audience, the better! Allow the platform to do the work and find those in your audience who are most likely to convert.
Audience Overlap refers to the idea that you could have multiple audiences that are targeting to a large number of the same people (ie. “Women in Atlanta” and “Shoppers at Target” may have quite a few of the same people in both ad sets). If you are advertising to overlapping audiences, this means that you are bidding against yourself! You’ll want to keep the overlap to under 20%. Read more about how and where to check this here.
Ads are the actual creative (imagery and text) that are being shown.
There are four main parts to an ad:
the creative (image, carousel or video)
the primary text (main ad caption)
the headline (the bold text next to the CTA)
the CTA (the one-two word phrase form a list of options that show up on a button)
When setting up an ad, consider the following:
Be “scroll-stopping”. You are trying to capture someone’s attention in a split second. An ad that feels too much like an ad will quickly be scrolled-over. However, something that is either strange, super-relevant, or familiar will be attention-grabbing. If it takes too long to process, you’ve lost. Quickly explain what they are seeing and what their next step is.
Ads should be mobile-first: the large majority of those on Facebook/IG are on mobile devices.
Stats and quotes often work well as the headline (ex. 94% report stronger marriages / “This app saved my marriage!”)
Make sure that the Facebook Pixel is turned on.
Any tiny change to an ad’s content will delete all engagement (comments, likes, shares); this could be good or bad ;)
It is recommended to have creative for different placements. If you want to run an in-feed campaign and a stories campaign, those should be two different campaigns or ad sets with different creative.
If using video, keep it short: ideally under 10 seconds with branding within the first 3 seconds. Be sure to choose/upload a custom thumbnail and to upload SRT files for captions, as no one listens to Facebook audio!
Tips & Best Practices
Wait a few days to a week (depending on the campaign length) to let Facebook optimize before scaling spend or making decisions.
Comments on your ad can affect performance and ultimately cost. Aim to get some positive comments or even shares. However, unless vulgar, discriminatory or extremely inappropriate, resist the urge to delete negative comments. Brands who delete these comments are looked at as dishonest and disingenuous; rather, use it as an opportunity to engage with the customer and provide great customer service.
Remember that Facebook tracks in PST, and sometimes costs and results get attributed later.
Give your creative enough time to wear in (typically 2-3 weeks); however, typically after a campaign flight of 8-10 weeks, it is time to change your creative.
Using bid caps doesn’t always work in your favor. Trust the algorithm to do its job; Facebook wants you to succeed (they get more money that way!) Allow lifetime and daily budgets to be your cost moderators, not bid caps.
Additional Resources
Perpetual Traffic is a podcast that is extremely helpful as you aim to stay up-to-date on new trends and platform updates.
Look into local Facebook groups like Marketing & Communications Women of Atlanta as a place for specific ad feedback and learnings.
The Facebook Business Help Center is full of very nitty gritty tutorials.