Advertising on Facebook

Facebook Advertising Overview

In her video “Advertising on Facebook”, Megan Adams (2019) explains how to utilize Facebook advertising. She states that the audience is already engaged, therefore making it easier to connect to the target audience. With every advertising campaign comes a different objective. Adams (2019) breaks down these objectives into 3 main categories: awareness (generate interest in product), consideration (think about product) and conversion (purchase product).

The author believes there are many ways to target the right audience. This includes targeting based on:

Location – cities, countries, neighborhoods
Demographics – age, gender, education
Interests – hobbies, pages liked
Behaviors – purchase habits, device used, recent life events

How Facebook Ads Work

There are 3 main components to Facebook: personal profiles, Facebook pages and advertising accounts. All advertising efforts come from the advertising accounts. Adams (2019) describes that Facebook organizes ads into 3 separate levels:

Campaign – what is the objective?
Ad sets – who is being targeted?
Ads – how many ads?

Choosing an ad campaign objective is an important part of the advertising process. To do so, simply go to the add create tool and choose a fitting objective. Adams (2019) advises to bookmark the tab, as the tool is used often. Ad sets define what audience is being targeted while the ads tier focuses on how many ads are made and the differences between them.

How to Create Facebook Ads

Once the objective is selected, it is time to identify the appropriate audience. Using the ad create tool, Adams (2019) describes how to utilize specific settings such as location, age, gender, behaviours, ad placement and interests to target the correct niche audience. Every setting changed affects the audience size and reach which is displayed by a fuel gage. She advises to view the fuel gage after every change, to see what its impact is.

It is difficult to decide how much money should go into the advertising budget. For this reason, Adams (2019) advises new advertisers to:

Start small
Analyze results
Make changes based on results

When choosing an ad creative, the advertiser must use an appropriate format as well as image to fill their ads’ potential. The text needs to be exactly like a normal post, with a clear call to action. Once the advertisement is created, Adams (2019) suggests viewing the ad preview. This will show exactly how the ad will be displayed on each device.

View Your Advertising Data

The Facebook ads dashboard helps advertisers keep tabs on their advertisements by producing data for each ad. Adams (2019) recommends checking each ad report daily in order to fulfil each ad’s potential by making the appropriate changes.

Facebook offers an in depth look at finances using a billing summary found in the Account Overview. This is a useful feature for several reasons:

See amount spent
See advertisement spend broken up for objective
See all transactions
See exactly what has been billed

Implement Best Practices

Adams (2019) offers tips to creating a powerful advertisement that connects to the audience. A clear call to action is important as this gets the viewer involved in the product. Choosing an effective image that resonates with the audience is crucial. As Adams says, “Don’t underestimate the power and importance of the right image.”

My Conclusion

Adams (2019) successfully introduces Facebook advertising in her video. She notes important concepts and sets up the viewer for success in advertising through Facebook. A marketing team could easily transform Adams’ (2019) ideas into their own business plan by:

Creating a campaign objective. This will give their campaign direction and purpose.
Target the right audience. This will produce the best results for the campaign.
Analyze Data. This will suggest which ads need changing and which are working well.

Using these 3 ideas taken from the lecture, a business can set themselves up for success.

Your Ideas

What did you learn from Megan Adams video? Did I leave any topics/ideas out? Please feel free to add to the conversation.