In our last blog, we explained why just having a Facebook page wouldn’t be beneficial for your business’s online presence. This time, we’re going to explore the world of Facebook advertising! Facebook ads are simple to create, easy to monitor and can help you market your business to potential clients.
Fortunately, Facebook is proactive in helping smaller businesses and individuals understand how to use their tools. They know that it can be hard to look after both your business and your social media. We’ve compiled the most important pieces of information that you need to start your advertising journey, along with helpful links and accompanying articles to get you started.
Create a Business Manager Account
In order to advertise on Facebook, you need to create a business manager and ads manager account. What is a business manager account, you ask? Essentially, a business manager is where you control your ads. It’s where you can plan, create, and track your advertisements. This can seem confusing if you’ve never had to do this before, so bare with us while we explain.
First things first, go to business.Facebook.com and click the ‘Create Account’ button in the top right corner.
You will then be prompted to enter some details (Name of your business, your name, your email, etc). Fill this out and click ‘Next’.
Then, you need to fill out your business’s information (Address, phone number and website). You will then be asked whether you’re using this business manager to promote your own business or another business (only important if you’re working at an agency and you’re creating the BM on behalf of your client). Click ‘submit’ once you’ve filled out the form.
You will then receive a confirmation email from Facebook. Confirm this to continue with the next steps.
Add Your Business’s Facebook Page
Your next step is to add your company’s Facebook page to your newly created business manager. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Go to your Business Manager dashboard and click the option ‘Add Page’. Click ‘Add Page’ again on the second step.
2. Type in the name of your business’s page into the box. It should autofill with your company’s page so click it and it will be added. Click the ‘add page’ button if you’re confident that is the right page.
Setting Up Your Ad Account
If you already have an ad account connected to your Facebook page, then all you need to do is add it to the business manager. To do this, go to your business manager dashboard and click ‘Add ad account’. Follow the steps from there to set it up.
If you’re starting from scratch and do not have an ad account, then we’re going to talk you through the process.
1. From the business manager dash, click on the ‘Add Ad Account’ button to get started. Then click ‘Create a New Ad Account’.
2. Fill out the form with your details. Make sure that you’ve selected the correct currency and timezone, as you can NOT change this after!
3. Tick the box stating you will be using this ad account to promote your own business and click ‘create’.
Now that you’ve created your ad account, we can work on combining the Ad Account to the Business Manager. To put it simply, if you want to advertise on Facebook then you need both of these account managers to a) Access the ad account and b) Run the ads through the ad account. If you think of it this way - Your Business Manager is your homepage and your overall settings but the Ad Account is where the advert magic happens.
Add People to Help Manage Your Account
So now that you’ve successfully created your Business Manager and Ad Account, you can start filling out the important details. If you’re planning on doing your paid ads on your own, then this step isn’t necessary. However, if you have a small marketing team to help, then this step is necessary to continue.
From the business manager dashboard, you will see three lines in the top left corner. Click this and a menu will appear. Go to the tab that says ‘Business Settings’ and it will direct you to a new page. On the left-hand side of the page, you will see different options. At the top, it should say ‘People’. This is where you add other members of your team and give them access to the business manager.
To add a new member, click the ‘add’ button. Make sure that the email you attach is the email they use to log into Facebook with. From there you can decide whether they have ‘Admin’ access or ‘Employee’ access. Admin means full access, whereas Employee gives you limited options. However, still enough to help you manage the page.
Once you’ve done this, you need to add the same people to the ad account. Go down the list on the left and click the tab that says ‘Accounts’. Go to ‘Ad Accounts’ and invite your team onto this too.
Billing Information
Now that we’ve set up the managers, we need to move onto billing. This is important, so make sure you do this step before trying to create your first ad! Again, go to the three lines on the Business Manager’s dash and click ‘Billing’. Once the page has loaded, look to the right hand side of the page and you should see a small button named ‘Payment Settings’.
Here, you will be able to add your business card details. This billing page is where you should look in the future once you start running your ads, because it’s where you can find your invoices from each ad you have run.
Your First Ad
We’ve started from the bottom and now we’re here! Give yourself a well deserved pat on the back. Like we said, this can all seem complicated when you first get started but you’ll get to know your way around in no time. To create your first ad, go to your Ad Account (To access this, go to the drop down menu in Business Manager and click the tab that states ‘Ads Manager’). From here, you can control all of your ads. Facebook gives you a lot of freedom with ads. For example, you can create an ad that will finish at a precise time (E.g, 12:32). You can even target specific audiences, but we’ll get more into that later. Now that you’re in your Ads Manager, go ahead and click ‘Create Ad’. From here, you will be asked a few questions. Firstly, you need to choose your marketing objective. This basically means, what do you want this ad to achieve? The options are: - Brand Awareness - Reach
- Traffic
- Engagement
- App Installs
- Video Views
- Lead Generation
- Messages
- Conversions
- Catalogue Sales
- Store Traffic
As you can tell, what you choose will depend on your business and what services you offer. For example, if you run a hairdressers and you would like more people to book appointments on your website, you would pick the ‘Traffic’ objective.
However, if you had just started your business and wanted to create a buzz around your business, you could pick ‘Brand Awareness’.
You can learn more about what each objective means and what it does here. (link to FB article) Once you’ve decided on an objective, use this step-by-step guide on how to set up your first ever ad.
The Finishing Line
So there you have it, you’ve set up everything you need to market your business on Facebook effectively. You have everything in one place, allowing you to access all the essential information quickly and effortlessly. To learn more about Facebook ads, they have a lesson suite called Facebook Blueprint which is filled with classes that teach you how to use their management tools. Visit our next blog (link) to understand how ads work, the different objectives, what targeting options you should be using to benefit your business and how to track your results.