A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Advertising

pdfcrowd.comopen in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API
A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook
Advertising
By Michael Patterson on August 5, 2014
ADVERTISING HOME
Sprout Social Call us at:1.866.878.3231 LO G IN
INSIGHTSFilter: NONE ARTICLES RESOURCES EVENTS

Advertising Facebook
Since 2004, Facebook has grown a staggering user base, boasting over 1.23
billion active users at the end of 2013. So unless you’re selling one of the most
niche products on the market, there is a very good chance that your target
audience has a presence on the site.
Facebook has a number of different advertising solutions to help you effectively
engage with your audience, but social marketers sometimes don’t know which of
these solutions will work best for their brand. In this piece, we’ll guide you
through determining which Facebook advertising solution is ideal for your
situation.
The ideas here are all based on Facebook’s paid advertising solutions, so if
you’re not quite ready for paid social ads, don’t fret; there are plenty of great tools
out there like our own Sprout Social that can help you maximize organic
engagement with your customers.
Create a Facebook Page for your business
Getting started with Facebook ads
Choosing an objective for your Facebook campaigns
Using Ad Sets to create a budget
FREE TOOLS
CONNECT
Visit our social media
channels:
TwitterLinkedInFacebookGoogle+
RSS
FEATURED
Try our free
Engagement
Report
Share jobs on
social with Job
Board

Choosing the perfect target audience
Selecting where you want your ad to display
Determining which type of ad you want to create
How to Create Your Facebook Business Page
First and foremost, you need to create a Facebook business page if you’re going
to advertise on the site. Once you’ve created the page, you can then create a
brand persona on the site in order to provide your audience with a resource to
learn more about and engage with your business. You can create the Facebook
page for your brand at this link. The first thing you’ll be prompted to do is choose
a category for your business based on these 6 choices:
1. Local Businesses or Places
2. Companies, Organizations or Institutions
3. Brands or Products
4. Artists, Bands or Public Figures
5. Entertainment
6. Causes or Communities
To demonstrate the rest of this process, we will create a page for a fictional
restaurant, Sprout Cafe. Once we’ve selected our category, Facebook will
serve this prompt:
7 Steps in Creating a
Winning Social Media
Marketing Strategy
Social Media in Higher
Education: Strategies to
Make You Best in Class
How to Find the Best

Twitter Hashtags
36 Free Tools for Creating
Unique Images
How to Use Hashtags on
Every Social Media
Network

After you’ve uploaded your company’s profile photo and chosen whether or not to
add your new brand page to your favorites bar, Facebook will then prompt you to
start advertising your new Page.
VIEW MORE ARTICLES →
Always Up-to-Date Guide
to Social Media Image
Sizes

It’s completely up to you whether or not you want to immediately begin paying to
promote your page. If you decide to wait, you can always go back and start
promoting it at any time. Next step is to click “Skip,” and voila! We have a brand
new Facebook Page for your business.
How To Start Advertising Your Page on Facebook
There are two different options for creating a Facebook advertisement — the
Facebook ads creator and the Power Editor. I would recommend using the Ads
creator if you’re newer to the advertising platform. It lacks some of the
functionality that Power Editor has, but it’s much simpler to get your first
campaign off the ground.
Once you feel comfortable with creating Ads with the Ads creator, it could be
time to move on to Power Editor. This tool has a handful of features not available
in the Ads creator, such as:
Developing and advertising unpublished posts
Filtering your view by campaign, ad set or any tag you create
Creating bulk advertisements with the ability to import and export excel
docs
Using the Audiences selection to make “Saved Target Groups,” “Custom

Audiences,” and “Lookalike Audiences”
Choosing a Facebook Campaign Objective
Not all Facebook advertisements are created equal. Some of them are great for
getting people to “like” your Page, some are great for getting your fans to engage
with you on a more personal level, and some are great for prompting your
audience to click a post that will send them to your website. Here’s a full list of
the different campaign objectives Facebook gives you to choose from.
Page Post Engagement: Promote your Page posts
Page Likes: Get Page likes to grow your audience and guild your brand
Clicks to Websites: Get people to visit your website
Website Conversions: Get people to perform certain actions on your site
(requires adding a Facebook pixel to your site)
App Installs: Get people to install your mobile or desktop app
App Engagement: Get people to use your desktop app
Event Responses: Increase attendance at your event
Offer Claims: Create offers for people to redeem in your store
Shown below is how you choose your campaign type once you’re in the Ads
creator.

It’s important to note that the objective you choose is done so on the campaign
level, which means that if you decide you want to create a campaign to drive

clicks to your site, all of your Ad Sets and advertisements must also target that
same goal.
Choosing Your Campaign Budget
Once you’ve set up your Facebook campaign, you need to set up an “Ad Set.” The
Ad Set lives directly underneath the campaign and is the place where you set the
budget of how much you want to spend. Facebook recently changed it to where
budgeting is done on the Ad Set level so that users can allocate certain amounts
of spend to specific markets or objectives. A budget can be set on a daily or
lifetime basis, and advertisers can also choose to pick their own advertisement
start and end dates.
Choosing Your Facebook Audience
You can spend a ton of time and money creating an amazing advertisement with a
beautifully designed image and great copy, but if you aren’t showing it to a
relevant audience, then what’s the point? For this reason, Facebook is one of the
best platforms out there for advertisers. It has a fantastic ability to segment an
audience. The ability to target is done on the individual advertisement level,
which is housed under the ad sets, which are housed under campaigns. Here are
just a few of the ways you can segment an audience on Facebook.
Location
Age

Interests
Gender
Languages
Education Level
Relationship Status
Political Views
Whether or not they are connected to your page

Facebook also gives advertisers the ability to upload their own information in
order to make Custom Audiences. With Custom Audiences you can target users
by:
Email addresses
Phone numbers
User IDs
Mobile advertiser IDs
People who have visited your site
You can then take these Custom Audiences and have Facebook create “Lookalike
Audiences” based on the demographics they all share.
Choosing a Placement for Your Ad
Now that you’ve decided which users you want to target and what you want them

to do, it’s best to think of where to place your advertisement. There are three
main locations on the site that you can choose to display your ad, each with their
own pros and cons.
Facebook Newsfeed Advertisement
The News Feed post is the most prominent of the Facebook advertising
placements. These ads show up seamlessly in a user’s feed along with the
content that they see from their friends and the people that they follow. Though
users are told it’s a sponsored update with a disclaimer saying “Sponsored,” the
posts still seem genuine since they can be liked and commented on like any other
post.

Facebook Mobile News Feed Advertisement
As most people know, a good amount of the world’s Internet traffic is shifting
towards mobile devices. In fact, Facebook has stated that there were 1.01 billion
mobile monthly active users on the social network as of March 31, 2014. With such
a large user base, it would seem like advertising to users on mobile devices
would be a given, right? The answer to that depends on whether or not your
company has a mobile-friendly site. You wouldn’t want to pay to drive traffic to
your site if they’re going to have a poor user experience, which is something all
advertisers should bear in mind.

Facebook Right-Hand Column Advertisements
The advertisements on the right-hand side of the screen sit directly beneath the

“Trending” topics section. These ads are actually currently in a state of change as
Facebook is moving away from an advertising format with several ads per page to
one with fewer ads of fairly larger sizes. Currently, there are six advertisements
per page, but this new update would decrease that to two, giving advertisers
more of a share of their users’ browsers.

Choosing a Facebook Ad Type
Now that we’ve got the finer details out of the way, let’s get to the heart of this
post and talk about all of the different types of posts that are available to you as
an advertiser. Below is a brief description of each type, as well as some
suggestions from Facebook.
Page Post Engagement
This type of ad can boost a status, photo, video, website link or offer that you’ve
already posted to a much larger audience to increase engagement (likes, shares
and comments). These are the best types of ads to drive engagement on your
posts. Check out this example that Facebook uses.

Recommended Creative:
90 text characters
Image ratio: 1:1
Image size: 1,200 x 1,200 pixels

Page Likes
Getting “Likes” on your Facebook Page can be a great thing for a few reasons.
One, you establish a strong credibility on the social site, so when someone
researching your company finds your page they see that you have a good amount
of happy customers. The second great thing is that as soon as someone follows
you, your company posts will sometimes show up in their News Feed free of
charge.

You can create these ads with either the Facebook Ads creator or Power Editor.
As the ad shows up in your audience’s right-hand sidebar or News Feed, it will
also show all of the likes that your page has already earned, as well as any friends
of that user who likes your Page.
90 characters
Image ratio: 2.7:1
Image specs: 1,200 x 444 pixels
Clicks to Website
These are similar to page post engagement ads, but their main focus is to drive
traffic to your website. These ads also have the functionality to click through right
to your website and have an optional “call to action” button.

These ads do a great job of driving traffic to brands’ websites, primarily because
the ad format has more copy to work with, and the image you choose will click

right through to your website.
Title: 500 characters (anything over is truncated)
Linked title: 1 to 2 lines
Domain link: 1 line
Description: 2-3 lines
Image aspect ratio: 1.91:1
Image specs in ad: 470 x 246 pixels
Website Conversions
In order to take full advantage of these particular ads, you need to add the
Facebook Conversion Pixel (can be created in Power Editor) on your website.
Once it’s there, you can tell Facebook what specifically you want to optimize your
ads for, whether it be checkouts, leads or registrations. Imagine Sprout for
instance: if a Facebook user were to make it all the way to our “Start a Free Trial”
page and not convert, we could serve them an ad like this.

Text: 90 characters
Link title: 25 characters
Image ratio: 1.91:1

Image specs: 1,200 x 627 pixels
App Installs/App Engagement
If you have a desktop or mobile application associated with your product you can
then attach it to your company Page. Then you can create ads that encourage
users to download your app.

These types of ads are perfect for companies like Sprout Social, where most of
the value lies with people using apps.
90 characters
Title: 1 line
App name: 1 line
Call to actions include: Install Now, Shop Now, Play Game, Use App, etc
App star rating is pulled in from native platform
No more than 20% text
Event Responses
If your company or business has an event that they’d like to promote, this is one
of, if not the best, ways to go about it. Write an enticing invitation, and then

promote it out to audience segments you think may find it interesting.

Title: 25 characters, maximum
Recommended text: 90 characters
Event details are pulled from the event
Image specs in ad: 100 x 72 pixels
Offer Claims
Who doesn’t like free stuff? If you’ve created an offer on Facebook, you can
continue to promote that out to other Facebook users. This could be useful for
finding new customers and driving them back to your site.

Text: 90 characters
Offer title: 25 characters
Terms and conditions: Up to 900 characters
Image specs in ad: Up to 470 x 246 pixels
Get out There and Engage

A few parting words for those who have found value in this post. This post is to
help brands and companies establish themselves on Facebook and to take
advantage of the paid advertising aspect of it: but that’s not the only side of
Facebook.
Once you have driven all of these fans to your page, it’s equally as important to
continue to engage with them. While it may be nice to gain some quick sales with
a few advertisements, many sales cycles require more relationship building. If
you need help continuing to grow the organic side of social media, check out all
of our free resources we’ve put together on just that, or even check out how you
can manage your social media with Sprout.
FREE GUIDE
The Community Manager’s Field
Guide
Essential Tools to Becoming a Better Community Manager
youremail@company.com DOWNLOAD

UP NEXT
Here's How Brands Are Using
Facebook for Social
Recruiting

MICHAEL PATTERSON
Michael began his career at Sprout Social as an intern, but
has since transitioned to the role of Digital Marketing
Specialist. When he isn't researching new ways to drive
online traffic, he can usually be found exploring Chicago's
unique neighborhoods and breweries.

Mar 10, 2015
Newest | Oldest | Top Comments
Jwalant Bhandari
Sign in or Post as Guest 31 people listening
Hi,
Any one know how to create scrolling post on facebook
24 COM M ENTS
+ Follow Share Post comment as...

Feb 9, 2015MerWol
LIKE REPLY
Mar 10, 2015MPatterson22
@Jwalant Bhandari You can do that in Power Editor!
LIKE REPLY
Excellent article. Will definitely look to use Facebook to advertise my company.
1 LIKE REPLY

Jan 8, 2015
Jan 6, 2015
Kelly Rose Keltner
mkendzi
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the article. I just want to clarify something with you as I believe Facebook
changed this policy in early 2014: "The second great thing is that as soon as someone
follows you, your company posts will sometimes show up in their News Feed free of
charge..." I think your Facebook page fans now have to click the "Get Notifications"
option in order to see your page posts in their newsfeed? Do you know if this is true?
Thanks!
Kelly
Social Media Manager
LIKE REPLY
Hi I'm wondering about creating posts with the intent to "Boost" ... what size do you
recommend making the graphic?
LIKE REPLY
Jan 6, 2015MPatterson22
@mkendzi It really just depends on the kind of post that you want to create.
Whether it's an image or link post, just try to follow the guidelines that
someone mentioned below: https://www.facebook.com/business/ads-
guide/post-engagement?tab0=Photo
LIKE REPLY

Nov 18, 2014
Nov 12, 2014
Robert
JaymeSchwartz
Michael:
You said 627 pixels, but it is 628.
Secondly, the recommended image ratio in News Feed: 4:3. Not 1:1 as you wrote
above. So instead of your 1200 X 1200, would that not be 1200 X 900 ??
Just check the FB guide at
https://www.facebook.com/business/ads-guide/post-engagement
LIKE REPLY
Jan 16, 2015MPatterson22
@Robert It looks like it has been updated since I wrote it, thanks for the
heads up!
LIKE REPLY
Jan 16, 2015Kelly Rose Keltner
@MPatterson22 thanks for confirming! I'm still confused as some
Pages that you Like you automatically get updates, others, like
the one I manage, you have to select the Get Notified option. Let
me know if you know how this works! ~Kelly
LIKE REPLY
Hi Michael - I'm only seeing an option on FB for a "clicks to website" that has a 25
character header limit and a 90 character limit for the link copy. Where is the 500
character limit option??

Oct 29, 2014LeahCassidy
LIKE REPLY
Nov 17, 2014MPatterson22
@JaymeSchwartz Hi Jayme - are you using the Facebook Ads Creation
tool instead of Power Editor? The former does have more limits than the
second.
LIKE REPLY
Hi Michael,
many thanks for the information - I am very new to this. I was wondering how you
create an ad like the attached example where it has qualities of both page (i.e. Like
Page) and site promotion (i.e Shop Now)?? I can't figure it out! Is it something that can
only be created in Power Editor?
Many thanks
Leah

LIKE REPLY
Oct 29, 2014MPatterson22
@LeahCassidy Hi Leah,
Actually Facebook will automatically add that "Like Page" button to your
advertisement. If you're not seeing it and wondering why, it's most likely due
to the fact that you already like the page. Try un-liking the page and taking a

look at your ad in the newsfeed and seeing if it's there.
LIKE REPLY
@LeahCassidy Also, the advertisement must be connected to
the page of the company in question. The ads creator will give you
the option to choose one if your objective is clicks-to-site.
LIKE REPLY
Oct 30, 2014
Oct 30, 2014
LeahCassidy
LeahCassidy
@MPatterson22 thanks so much Michael! Something
so simple that I was spending quite a bit of time
researching on!
Leah
LIKE REPLY
@MPatterson22 Thanks so much Michael! Something
so simple that I was spending quite a bit of time
researching on!
Leah
LIKE REPLY

Oct 27, 2014
Oct 16, 2014
chetztogom
Anthony17
LIKE REPLY
Awesome article! Just what I need to start my first FB ads. Thanks Michael!
Chetz Togom
LIKE REPLY
Good post . .
Just for share, I've a good source too for these guide.
How to Create and Manage Simple Cheap Facebook Ads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7SC9HsI_DY

Sep 29, 2014andra33
How to Create and Manage Simple Cheap Facebook Ads
LIKE REPLY
Excellent post! When paying for ads, is it better to promote your FB page or your
website on Facebook?
LIKE REPLY
@andra33 I think it really depends what your campaign is looking to
accomplish, and what you're selling. If it's a longer sales cycle, I think
promoting your FB page and growing a relationship with the user is better.

Sep 11, 2014MMora88
For something with a shorter sales cycle, like an eCommerce site, I think it's
best to drive them to your site and hopefully make that quick sale. Then you
can also always hit them with retargeting.
LIKE REPLY
good article michael!! more useful than facebook helper.
i'm looking for the way to track an ads conversion (for a simple form in the tab page or
desktop app for example), using the ad type: app engagement (since i can't use the
type click to website with facebook url).
do you know something about it?
it's needed to call particular actions/events?
LIKE REPLY
Sep 15, 2014MPatterson22
Hi @MMora88,
Unfortunately that's not something that I've heard as being used (though I
think it's a great idea). I will say that I don't think it's possible as of yet.
Since the conversions are triggered by a pixel on the page you want to track,
and you don't have access to place a pixel on a site that isn't yours (like a
Facebook page tab), I wouldn't think it as available. I will keep my eyes open
and let you know if I find any new evidence stating otherwise!
LIKE REPLY

Aug 18, 2014Rick Noel of eBiz ROI, Inc. - Experienced Digital
Excellent post Michael. Some great advice to help the many businesses who have a
Facebook business page and could seriously benefit from Facebook advertising.
Sometimes its just about knowing where to start.
The stats that I am familiar with are something like 30 million business pages on
Facebook with somewhere between 1-2 million currently advertising. That represents a
lot of opportunity, both for businesses and Facebook.
Some business owners dismiss Facebook and their advertising due to hard feelings of
loosing organic reach of late, but we feel that is a bit like throwing out the baby with the
bath water. Nicely done!
2 LIKE REPLY
Aug 18, 2014MPatterson22
@Rick Noel of eBiz ROI, Inc. - Experienced Digital
Thanks for your comment Rick!
Those stats really point out how much opportunity there is for advertisers to
get in there before their competition. As more companies start to grasp the
potential of Facebook as a paid advertising channel, the cost to reach a
certain audience will only increase with competition.
I can understand the frustration for these companies that are losing a bulk of
their organic reach, but I totally agree with you about not dismissing the
platform. It's comparable to ceasing to advertise on Google because you
don't like a certain update: most companies can't afford to stop driving those
visits.

LIKE REPLY
FEATURES
Engagement
Monitoring
Social CRM
Publishing
Analytics
Team Collaboration
HelpDesk
Mobile
SOLUTIONS
Customer Service
Social Management
Social Marketing
Agencies
ABOUT
Pricing
Customers
Company
Careers
Privacy
Legal
Brand Assets
SUPPORT
Email Us
System Status
DOWNLOAD
iPhone/iPad
Android
INSIGHTS
Articles
Resources
Press
Contact Insights
SHARE
TWEET

TwitterTwitter Certified Product
Sprout is a Twitter certified partner for
Engagement and Analytics.
FacebookPreferred Marketing Developer
Sprout is a Facebook Preferred Marketing
Developer for Management & Insights.
Google+Google+ Pages API Partner
Sprout is a Google+ Pages certified third-
party management tool.
Sprout Social131 S. Dearborn St., Ste. 1000 Chicago, IL 60603 1.866.878.3231
SHARE
SHARE
PLUS 1
SECURE, RELIABLE and TRUSTED

A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Advertising

More Related Content

What's hot

Similar to A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Advertising

A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Advertising