We get it, you have some great products or services you would like to advertise online and chose Facebook as the place to do so. Rightfully so, as it is still the number one social media platform. However, as soon as you open the Facebook for Business help centre or your Ads Manager, you get a little bit intimidated! There are so many links to click and lots of unknown terms. Luckily, we are here to help you on your way! This blog will serve as a beginner’s guide into Facebook Ads Manager, in which we will explain to you the basics.

Our guide is divided over several blogs, so you won’t get too overwhelmed. In this first blog, we will talk about:

• The ad objective
• Setting the right budget
• Your target audience

What is Facebook Ads Manager?

But first of all, what is Facebook Ads Manager? If you have created a Facebook Business page (if you did not do this yet, read Facebook’s Business Help Centre on how you can create one), you can use the Ads Manager as a tool to create and manage advertisements that will be shown on either Facebook or Instagram, both in the same tool. Ads manager allows you to view, adjust and see results for all your advertising campaigns.

Various ad types

Facebook ads are all about getting your message in front of the right segment of people, the people that most likely want to buy or use your products or services. It offers a wide variety of different ads such as image ads, video ads, carousel ads, instant experience ads, and collection ads. In our second blog, we will also delve deeper into the different types of ads.

Choosing the right objective for your product or service

When you create a new campaign in Ads Manager, the first thing you will have to do is pick the right objective. What do you want to accomplish with your ad? Facebook allows you to choose from 11 objectives, such as brand awareness, reach, traffic, engagement and so forth.

Matching ad objective with customer journey stage

Before deciding on the one that perhaps sounds the most attractive to you, take a step back and think about the product or service you wish to advertise. In which customer journey stage are the potential clients? The awareness stage, the consideration stage, or already in the conversion stage? Do you have a new product that as many people as possible have to see? Or do you rather prefer engagement on for example an event you have organised? Perhaps you want to encourage people to contact your business by using Facebook Messenger. Take the time to read into the different objectives and learn what they are for. Picking the right objective ensures reaching the right results.

Set up your budget

To get straight to the point; having a larger budget doesn’t necessarily mean that your ads will become more successful! It is all about the right placement, scheduling, as well as a little bit of experimenting with your budget until you find what works best for you and your product or service. You can set an overall budget for your entire campaign with campaign budget optimisation (CBO) or set individual budgets for your different ad sets. If you are fairly new to Facebook Ads Manager, it is recommended to use CBO. This allows you to set one overarching campaign budget that continuously distributes in real-time to ad sets with the best opportunities. You may choose to set individual budgets for your ad sets if you prefer more control over delivery within specific ad sets.

Daily versus lifetime budget

Besides that, you can choose either a daily or a lifetime budget for your ads. The daily budget sets an average amount you want to spend on an ad set or campaign each day. The lifetime budget is the total amount you’re willing to spend over the entire runtime of your campaign or ad set. If you run your ads on a schedule, Facebook will automatically be efficient with the budget and spend most of it when your target audience is most likely on Facebook. You can only set a schedule if you create a lifetime budget for your ad.

Build a target audience

When creating your campaign in Ads Manager, you will have to build a target audience ­– the people you want to reach. You can select the location of your preferred target audience, age, gender, language and so on. Note that you can also specifically choose to exclude certain people. Try to use the exclude option as much as possible, for your budget to not be spent on irrelevant audiences. If you have, let’s say, a product for European men aged between 20-40, you might not want to reach women under 30 in the US. The more specific you define your target audience, the better.

Audience size indicator

While creating your audience, keep an eye on the audience size indicator (audience definition), which can go from specific to broad. Try to be more on the specific side than the broad side, as an audience that is too broad will be difficult for Facebook to target. You will also see an estimated number of daily results. These estimates will be more accurate if you run multiple campaigns or did some campaigns before, as you provide Facebook with more data to work with. Keep in mind that these are just estimates though – it doesn’t guarantee you anything but can be a great indicator of how successful your ads might be!

And with that, we conclude our first blog about Facebook Ads Manager. In the next blog, we will talk about ad placements, ad specs, and delve deeper into ad costs. See you in the next one!