Facebook Ads – Guide

Facebook Ads

Facebook is the most targeted advertisement platform to reach the potential audience. Here you can learn the history of Facebook and a complete guide about how to create Facebook ads to promote & improve your business and also benefits of facebook ads.

History of Facebook & Introduction to Facebook Ads:

Let’s start with the history of Facebook. Facebook was founded in february 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, Andrew Mccollum.  The company was founded in Harvard dorm room with all the co founders being friends and roommates. It was started for Harvard students and went on the extend to all the people eventually.The company became public in may 18 of 2012 at the valuation over $100 billion.

As now Facebook has over 1.6 billion users and have famously acquired and running internet companies such as Whatsapp, Instagram, Oculus and other 72 companies. Facebook ads are second biggest ad platform ( first being google ads).

History of Facebook ads origin & launch

Before becoming Facebook ads (current version) Facebook had gone through various forms & many experiments. Facebook ads was formally introduced on 2008, April. Facebook ads initially offered engagement ads which helped brands to push messages within the Facebook page. In late 2009, Facebook introduces more targeting options such as language targeting, interest targeting, geographical targeting.

In 2011, Facebook introduces desktop sponsored stories. Next year Facebook introduces mobile ads. In 2013, Facebook introduces lookalike audiences which is targeting largest set of people who qualify based on a certain type of conversion action.

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data scandals

Despite being a greatest company ever created, throughout their journey they have faced several scandals and worst PR campaigns in the history of Facebook. Right from the founding, company was always in the headline for bad things. Initially there’s a controversy involving founding company ownership issue Eduardo Saverin which was eventually settled in court. Later Winklevoss twins along with Divya Narendra who alleged Mark Zuckerberg stolen the idea of Facebook from them.

In 2018, Facebook was hit my Cambridge analytics scandal. This was the largest scandal in history to this date which involved Facebook. In simple terms, 87 millions user’s data was exposed and it was used by the Cambridge analytica – which is a political consultancy firm which was handling the trump campaign. This scandal was so huge which forced Mark Zuckerberg to congress hearing.

Getting started -How facebook ads work?

Want to know how big Facebook ads are before learning nitty gritty’s of Facebook ads. Learn how Facebook took the online advertisement by strom and toppled TV as a preferred way to reaching tens of thousands of people at scale.

Know the basic anatomy of a Facebook ad copy and it’s parts, so that it will be easy for you to follow on on next chapters. Facebook campaign goals are briefly explained. Learn how Facebook manages to deliver ads copies form the advertisers to users in the same time without eliminating advertisers or over delivering ads to its users.

A detailed explanation on Facebook ad auction is explained with examples to help you understand the real time auctions better.

How useful is facebook ads?

Well, Facebook ads are quite useful for creating a buzz about a product or creating awareness and also having more benefits. Facebook is the largest display channel which is also happens to be a social media.. So for certain campaign objective Facebook should be go to platform.

With Facebook , advertisers are capable of creating an awareness for a product or service. Facebook contains mostly a top of the funnel audience who would like love to explore and research about a particular product or service. Facebook is also a excellent platforms to create social proof campaigns, since it has more than 1.6 billion users.

The major benefits of Facebook ads are extremely good for creating engagement campaigns. Facebook is the number one channel for creating effective re-targeting channels.

Facebook Ads – Campaign Objective

Facebook is good enough to put your product/service messaging across tons of people. But it takes a smart marketer like you to figure it out what objective to choose. In simple sense how to instruct Facebook algorithm what to do with the campaign and your ad budget.

It might seem very obvious, but just imagine a scenario. You want to sell a water heater with your new Facebook campaign. However you have chosen an objective as awareness ( because if only people aware of something, they’ll buy it) and Facebook shows a massive audience reach. Thrilled by the offering, you start the campaign and in few days you see very little sales. The money you got on the sales is no where matching the campaign cost. You worried Facebook ads might not be working for your product. You should have chosen sales as a campaign objective.

This is a classic problem with choosing wrong campaign objectives. If the campaign objective is awareness people will be made aware of the product they won’t necessarily buy it. Facebook learns about user’s buying, research behavior history, and has created campaign objectives accordingly. As a smart marketer, you should make sure the business objective and campaign objective are same.

Learn more about facebook campaign objectives.

Facebook ad copy optimization

User’s in social media platforms such as Facebook, don’t want to see ads. Unlike google where people came seeking some information, to research about something or to know about someone or someplace. Google is sort of knowledge powerhouse whereas Facebook is sort an emotional place.

People come to Facebook to feel good about themselves, to catch up with friends, make new friends & obviously see some funny cat videos. When you advertising to people on social media, all the traditional strategies for ad copies won’t work. You need a special strategy which echoes the same warm and enthusiasm with users.

Know how to create Facebook ads and the best practices you can implement to increase the relevance and click through rate. Learn how to optimise facebook ad copies

How to target on Facebook ads

One of the important benefits of Facebook ads is it has the best targeting options for a display network on the internet. Targeting options can be grouped into 3 ways. Interest, demographics & behavior.

Facebook targeting – Interest

To master, interest targeting you need need things to know:

  1. Know how Facebook determines someone’s interest
  2. How to use interest targeting
  3. How many ways you can use interest targeting
  4. How to do interest targeting research
  5. Knowing what are the interest targeting available

Learn how Facebook uses many factors to decide what are things users might be interested in. what are the information users give about themselves in their Facebook history. Know what are the primary indicators Facebook uses to determine the interest.

Interest targeting usually contains larger ad inventory. Learn how you use interest targeting to add more benefits to facebook ad campaigns. Know how you can target people broadly and specifically using interest targeting in Facebook.

Targeting battle is half won, when you have targeting options ready. I can help you with how to target but what to target – you need to come up on your own ( since targeting options can vary based on the campaign)

Learn how you can quickly complete a targeting research for your campaign using the hacks mentioned in this chapter. Finally all the interest targeting options are explained with examples so that you have plenty of options in your mind when it comes to targeting.

Facebook targeting – Demographics

Sometime you might want to run a campaign to target people based on basic things like age, gender, income, location etc. While interest might be the right targeting method for niche things, to target broad level you need to use demographics targeting.

Learn all the demographics Facebook ads is offering to advertisers. You’ll be surprised by the amount of demographics options available on the Facebook.

The demographics such as education, home, life events, parents, politics, relationship & work are explained in detail with examples. Know more about facebook demographics targeting

Facebook Targeting – Behaviour

Behavior targeting in Facebook explores about user preferences to culture, health, hobbies etc. In this guide learn how Facebook collects behavioral data about its users from third party providers. Learn who are those providers. This targeting options have been likely impact by the Cambridge analytica scandal.

However, this still contains relevant targeting options that you can use in the campaigns. Know how many types of behavioral data & targeting exit and it’s availability across various countries. 11 types of behavioral targeting is explained in great details with real world examples. Know about facebook behavioural targeting.

How to optimise facebook ads

When it comes to marketing success having set up a good campaign is only a half victory. In digital space, a lot of things can go in unexpected ways. Only after a good analysis you can know what worked well and what don’t. You can create a data backed fool proof optimization plan to improve campaign performance.

In this guide you’ll know how to optimize the Facebook campaigns. You’ll know how to segment campaign performance based on the device, gender, ad copy. You’ll also learn Facebook ads advanced analytics options activity history & breakdowns.

Learn how to optimise facebook campaigns

By yathav

I'm very passionate about technology, marketing & analytics. Using WordPress and working on blogging & search engine optimization for almost 8+ years, I'd like to share my thoughts, hacks and best practices about what i do professionally & what I experience.

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