Facebook & Instagram Ad Strategy You’ll Need For Beginners

Facebook & Instagram Beginners Advertising Tips

• Successful advertising campaigns can significantly impact the profitability of an e-commerce business, so it’s crucial to master the art of running efficient ad campaigns to maximize your margins.
• Lowering your ad costs can help you retain more of your profits, making it essential to understand how to optimize your ad strategies effectively.

“The better that you get at advertising and running your social media campaigns, the more money you’re actually going to put in your pockets.”

Results from Facebook and Instagram Ad Campaigns

• With Facebook and Instagram being powerful advertising platforms, achieving low costs per result, such as purchases, is possible, allowing for highly efficient campaigns with significant returns.
• Despite varying metrics like cost per impression or link clicks, the ultimate focus should be on achieving a positive return on investment from your ad spend.

“All these social media platforms collect less data, therefore they really can’t put that perfect profile that they used to be able to do and know exactly what to show people for advertisements and interests.” –

Broad Targeting in Ad Campaigns in 2024

• Due to evolving privacy regulations limiting data collection, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are steering advertisers towards broader targeting strategies, concentrating on training their algorithms through extensive ad spending.
• Going broad in your targeting approach can help in reaching a wider audience and potentially uncovering new customer segments while adapting to the changing landscape of online advertising.

“Pretty much every social media platform is like no interest targeting they’re even taking away a lot of interest on Facebook so you literally can’t Target what you used to be able to.”

Understanding the Analogy of Budget Size and Markets

• The analogy of budget size and markets compares the audience size to a lake and the ad spend to a fishing net, illustrating that a larger lake (market) requires a bigger net (budget) to catch more fish (customers).
• Facebook initially casts a broad net to find the right subset of people in a large audience, gradually refining targeting based on user interactions.

Larger budget means a larger net to catch purchases quickly and aids Facebook in determining which markets and demographics to target.

Importance of Patience in Pixel Seasoning

• Building a successful online business requires patience as the process of “seasoning” the pixel to gather data and optimize targeting takes time and involves trial and error.
• It’s crucial not to expect immediate results but to persist as the process is valuable for long-term success.

Pixel seasoning and data collection take time and persistence but are essential for a successful online business.

Setting Up a Facebook Ad Campaign Step by Step

• To begin setting up a Facebook ad campaign, navigate to the Ads Manager and click on “Create” to start a new campaign.
• Choose the campaign objective based on your goal, such as awareness, traffic, leads, or sales, to direct Facebook on the ad’s optimization focus.
• Naming your campaign descriptively and organizing it based on variables or testing parameters is recommended for clear tracking and analysis.
• Depending on the budget and control preference, select between Advantage Plus shopping and manual sales campaign options, with the latter providing more control over the campaign setup.

“Choose sales if you’re running an online business for sales and be organized in naming your campaign for clarity in tracking and comparison.”

Detailed Explanation of Auction Buying Type and Campaign Objectives

• Opting for auction as the buying type in Facebook ad campaigns involves a bidding system where ad creatives bid against others, emphasizing the importance of quality rankings to lower costs.
• Selecting the right campaign objective aligns Facebook’s targeting to focus on generating specific outcomes like awareness, traffic, leads, or sales based on your business goals.
• The campaign objective choice dictates the audience Facebook will target and the optimization focus of the ad delivery.

“Auction buying involves a bidding system, while campaign objectives define Facebook’s target audience and ad optimization strategy.”

Campaign Level Overview

• At the campaign level in Facebook and Instagram ads, you set the campaign name, specify any special ad categories if applicable (like credit, employment, or housing), and define the buy type as auction. You can also link a catalog to sync with your Shopify or Facebook store for product categorization. However, for beginners testing a single product, using a catalog might not be necessary.
• “I really like to do it manually my AB testing because remember like I said in the beginning we’re going to be testing one variable at a time and I want to have full control of that.”

“I’d rather know that data that way I can fully put the puzzle together of this copy worked, this angle worked, this creative worked.”

Advantage Campaign Budget vs. Ad Budget Optimization

• Advantage campaign budget distributes a set amount across ad sets and creatives based on Facebook’s algorithm, which might not be ideal for beginners who prefer control over individual variables.
• “You can put in really successful campaigns that you’ve ran in the past all together and then let Facebook decide where to spend the money that does perform very well.”

“But as a beginner, we don’t really want to do this in the beginning. We want to have full control of the ad set budget.”

Ad Set Level: Demographic Targeting & Audience Size

• At the ad set level, demographic details such as age, location, and market size estimation can be adjusted to target specific audience segments. Ad sets allow testing variations like targeting different countries to determine the best-performing angle for marketing.
• “The first step is really testing out your marketing angles in my opinion so that’s what we’re going to do today we’re going to create multiple ad creatives underneath one ad set with the same targeting.”

“That’s really the first step as a beginner to run a campaign, you really want to see which creative and which angle is performing the best.”

Setting Up Facebook & Instagram Ads Strategy

• When setting up the ad strategy, it’s common for beginners to struggle with defining specific cost targets like the cost per purchase, as outcomes can vary widely.
• Options such as the attribution setting for tracking clicks on Facebook can be adjusted, but leaving certain fields blank, like a cost per purchase target, can be more practical for beginners.
• The importance of controlling elements like Dynamic Creative oneself is emphasized, as automated optimization may not align with the advertiser’s unique business vision or branding strategy.

“It’s good in theory, but the problem with that is they don’t know your business like you do, they don’t have the same vision as you, they don’t have the same market research that you’ve done.”

Setting Up Automatic Placements

• Begin by selecting automatic placements when starting out with Facebook ads to allow the platform to decide where to display your ad based on performance.
• Automatic placements help in optimizing ad costs and reaching a wider audience.

“You just want to leave abroad and let Facebook decide and let the pixel learn itself that’s what’s been working for me.”

Advantage Plus Placements vs. Manual Placements

• Advantage Plus placements are recommended as they efficiently determine the best format for your ad. Manual placements allow personal selection of platforms like Facebook or Instagram.
• While Advantage Plus placements are convenient, manual placements provide control over where ads appear.

“I do prefer Advantage Plus placements because they kind of know what format to put your video in and all that stuff right, but what manual placements are are you can choose…”

Importance of Testing Different Placements

• It’s beneficial to experiment with various placement options like Instagram stories, feeds, or Facebook to find the best-performing platforms for your ads.
• Certain campaigns might yield higher conversion rates on specific placements, so testing is crucial for optimization.

“If you’ve seen in the past that people convert so much higher on Instagram stories than any other placement that can be worth testing in the future.”

Leveraging Carousel Ads for Enhanced Engagement

• Carousels, featuring two or more scrollable images or videos, facilitate better interaction with the ad as users can swipe through multiple components.
• Carousels tend to outperform single static image or video ads by allowing users to engage more with the content.

“I think that they do so well because it allows the customer whoever’s seen the ad to keep interacting with it and scrolling past…”

Setting up Ad Creative Details

• Ad placements on Facebook and Instagram show up on the right side, including a headline and description underneath, allowing for detailed product information to be highlighted effectively.
• Choosing the right call-to-action is crucial, with options like “Shop Now,” “Get Offer,” or “Subscribe,” but “Shop Now” is often the most effective, especially for e-commerce and Drop Shipping.
• Utilizing info labels allows businesses to showcase key information such as follower count or free shipping details, adding value to the ad.
• Directing traffic to a specific product landing page instead of the homepage reduces friction for potential customers, enhancing their shopping experience.

“The description for this placement is going to show up underneath it so you can give more details about your product, really drive home that marketing angle.”

Conclusion

• Ensure your Facebook and Instagram ad setup is complete for optimal results.
• Implement the strategies learned and look forward to the next session.

“I hope you guys have a great rest of your day and I’ll see you guys next time.”