Facebooks advertising tool has become the preferred platform for many e-commerce business owners and marketers who want an affordable way to advertise their business online—especially those who are just starting out or have limited budgets to work with.

Despite the fact that it requires little previous experience, Facebook ads can bring significant success when executed well.

However, competition has also grown on the platform, thus leading to higher costs-per-click which could result in decreased profitability over time. Nevertheless, there are still strategies businesses can use effectively to gain a competitive advantage with Facebook ads.

Our 2023 complete guide covers everything from understanding why so many businesses choose Facebook as their preferred advertising tool through creating ads that drive maximum sales in order to deliver great ROI.

By following our step by step guide, you will be able to create powerful ad campaigns using this popular and effective social media platform.

Facebook advertising: How to do it in 6 steps

Set up your Meta Business Suite

As promising as Facebook advertising can be, many individuals are disheartened with its complex setup process.

Before throwing in the towel like many have done before, know that potential setbacks—such as incorrect account setups or being lost amidst countless ad options—are absolutely avoidable.

To begin, you first need to set up your Meta Business Suite account, which is what gives you access to necessary tools like Facebook Ad Accounts and Business Pages.

You can initiate setting up an account via business.facebook.com. Details like your email address and new or existing Facebook page information are required.

Once this done, proceed to create or add an existing advertising accounts. You can do so by hovering to the lefthand side bar where you will be able to see the hamburger menu, then go ahead and click all tools and look for the ads manager.

That's where you can either create a new ad account or sync your existing one to the new business manager page.

If you have not set up your ads manager before, follow the step-by-step instructions accompany each stage, then add in your relevant information like credit card details and facebook business page.

Create a new Meta pixel

For those just starting out with advertising on Facebook, one of the greatest challenges is gauging whether their efforts yield desirable results.

Boosting posts or creating campaigns via Ads Manager may seem sufficient at first glance; however, in order to gain insight into whether an ad led to sales on one's site requires you to install the Meta pixel.

The pixel serves as the link between your Facebook's ad data and the activities on your website as a result of a click from your Facebook campaign. The pixel is only accessible once you have set up your Facebook business manager and ads manager account.

It's best to create and sync your pixel to your website before starting any ad campaign; with this, you can keep track of visitor activity stemming from clicks made from your Facebook campaign.

This allows you to understand better how your ad campaigns are performing with regards to the conversions on your website.

Installing your Meta pixel on Cococart

To set up your Meta pixel on Cococart, simply copy your 16-digit pixel ID from your Meta Business Suite account and paste it into the Meta pixel ID field located under Settings > General > Instagram, Meta & GTM in the Cococart Dashboard.

You can learn more about it in our 4-step tutorial here.

Create a marketing funnel plan

The AIDA model is one of the highly popular models utilized by marketers for structuring their marketing campaigns.

This model provides a step-wise approach by defining four stages: Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action, where each subsequent stage leads towards the final goal: Conversion.

When developing campaigns on Facebook Ads platform, it's crucial to leverage this framework to drive optimal success.

Using AIDA model for Facebook Ads

Wondering how this model comes into play when planning out your Facebook ads? Here's a cheatsheet:

• Attention. The first stage entails capturing user attention through ads that are specifically designed to grab their interest within seconds. Whether that's through image-based ads or carousel formats, focus on delivering impactful design elements to attract your users instantly.
• Interest. Next comes creating interest by highlighting unique features or services your brand offers. This is where Facebook's targeting abilities come in, so experiment with these tools to see how they work.
• Desire. Then comes generating desire, which is achieved by communicating the unique value propositions of your product or brand. Social proof like testimonials or product reviews, and even discounts can be useful tools here.
• Action. Finally, ensuring proper Call-to-action (CTA) such as "Shop Now" or "Sign Up" allows you to lead your customers into making informed decisions that drive conversions in the most seamless way possible.

To streamline the process of crafting effective marketing campaigns, consider utilizing the AIDA model before executing on any marketing plan.

To build a funnel on Facebook, start by targeting potential customers via objectives like awareness or video views. You can also go the extra mile to launch re-marketing ads focused on those who did not make any purchases. This is possible with Facebook tools like Lookalike Audiences or behaviour-based audiences.

It's usually best practice to increase spending allocation as required when scaling up campaigns at different points in the funnel process. This will enable you to effectively engage with various customer groups more precisely.

By applying the AIDA model to Facebook ads, you can create an engaging ad experience that takes users on a journey from awareness of the product or service to purchase. This then leads to increased engagement, higher conversion rates, and ultimately, better campaign results.

Start a new Facebook campaign

To begin your first campaign, you can head to the Ads section in your Meta Business Suite account and go ahead and click on the "Create" button.

There, a prompt will pop up for you choose which campaign objective you would like to run.

There are six main campaign objectives within Facebook ads. Here's how to understand the difference between each objectives and how to select the right objective for your current business goals:

Awareness

Awareness objectives are designed to spark customer interest centered around your goods or services available.

Below are some essential campaigns catered towards such Awareness objectives.

• Reach: Reaches out and grabs attention from individuals within said targeted demographics by circulating creative or ad content.
• Brand Awareness: In order to expand recognition of your brand along with its offerings among potential customer base.
• Video Views: Encourages engagement through increased viewership across all promotional video ads.
• Store Locator: Advertise specific physical location(s) of your business targeting potential customers in and around particular areas based on geographic proximity.

Traffic

Traffic is all about funneling audience to a website or specific landing page. Simply put, it's all about sending more quality prospects to landing pages or websites, so visitors can learn more about your business and offerings.

The following are found under the Traffic objective:

• Link Clicks: Creating engaging CTAs that persuade visitors not just to visit your site but click their way through apps or Facebook events.
• Landing Page Views: Building dynamic visuals and providing useful info to drive audiences to view content on your landing page.
• Messenger, Instagram, & Whatsapp: Send people to Messenger, Instagram or WhatsApp. Tapping into highly interactive messaging services like WhatsApp or Instagram can offer a low barrier of entry way for potential customers to reach out for more clarity and detailed information.
• Calls: This encourages users who get that far along in the funnel feel heard, valued, and inspired enough to pick up the phone and get in touch personally.

Engagement

The primary goal of engagement campaigns is to facilitate increased audience interaction with your brand. This goal is accomplished by enticing individuals to interact with the content through likes, comments and shares, boosting your engagement rates in the long run.

Under the Engagement objective, there are several approaches:

• Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp: Urge people to initiate a conversation and connect with you.
• Video views: Target individuals who are inclined towards watching your video ads.
• Post engagement: Get individuals involved in actively engaging with your posts.
• Conversions: A host of options including website visits or take actions like adding items on wishlist or even reaching out for contact.

Leads

For businesses big and small, generating leads is a crucial component in ensuring revenue growth.

Acquiring new customers who express a genuine interest in what you offer requires a personalized approach towards collecting customer data and reaching out via targeted campaigns.

The primary aim of every lead generation campaign should be directing potential clients from consideration towards purchase.

The following are found under the Lead Generation objective:

• Instant Forms: Provide people with potential value who willingly provide their contact information upon submitting an online form.
• Messenger: Increase communication levels with prospective clients by nabbing their attention using messenger services like Facebook Messenger.
• Conversions: Make conversion easier for website visitors by providing user-friendly forms or registrations to gather personal data quickly. This is great for building your email list.
• Calls: Get people who may be interested in your business to call you.Getting people who might be interested in your products/services to call your business.

App Promotion

The App Promotion campaign objective involves getting your audience to download and use your mobile app. A major focus here is creating an excellent user experience that influences increased downloads and usage with higher activation levels coupled with progressive user retention rates.

The key aim of App Promotion is to raise your app's visibility, but also prompts users to explore the unique features of your mobile application.

The following are found under the App Promotion objective:

• App events: This is geared towards prompting end-users to buy items on your app or engage with similar targeted actions.
• App installs: This focuses on empowering users to install your application onto their devices seamlessly.

Sales

Sales objectives are a crucial part of any business as they involve generating revenue. The ultimate aim is to have a measurable impact on sales, both online and offline

The following are found under the Sales objective:

• Conversions: This involves encouraging people to take action on your website or app such as adding an item to their basket making a purchase or starting a subscription.
• Catalog sales: Get people to buy products or services from your product catalog.
• Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp: Encourage ideal customers to initiate purchases through these platforms.
• Calls: You may want people who may be interested in your business to reach out and call you.

Facebook ads are charged on the basis of impression: the number of people who see your ad. So selecting the optimal objective for your ads is key to achieving maximum ROI for your business.

Any campaign-level objectives you select will allow Facebook's optimization to gear your towards the selected objectives. If your objectives aren't clearly aligned, you may not be able to maximize your ROI with Facebook ads.

Targeting Facebook audiences

To create a successful Facebook campaign, getting your targeting right is paramount to your business success.

As the Meta platforms boasts billions of users globally, it becomes crucial to zero-in on those individuals who are most likely interested in your offering with the help of the audiences feature offered by the platform.

There are several features that are available in Meta that would help you to find new audience or target existing customers. These various tools available under different categories like retargeting and prospecting which makes campaign targeting more efficient.

Prospecting New Audience

In order to elevate your business' reach using Facebook ads, it's important to hone in on potential segments that have yet to discover your products or services online.

Rather than focusing solely on converting past customers, prospecting often refers to reaching out to entirely new audience who have yet to know what you brand offer. This potentially expand your potential customers to a wider set of audience.

Facebook has provided two handy tools to assist businesses in finding potential new customers.

1. Lookalike audiences

Lookalike audiences, allows Facebook to use a previously collected list of customers or leads to generate a new user or cold audience filled with individuals who share similar characteristics with your existing customer base.

This tool can be utilized with any custom audience and comes in a variety of sizes ranging from 1% to 10% of the population within a particular country.

A 1% lookalike audience will contain people who closely resemble your audience source making it an excellent choice for kick starting prospecting campaigns.

As you bulk up your targeting and increase your lifetime budget or daily budget, moving on to 3%, 5% and eventually 10% lookalike audiences whilst maintaining close ties to a user profile that is similar to that of your actual customer.

2. Interests, behaviors, and demographics

The second tool offered by Facebook is more specifically targeted towards businesses without an existing pool of clients or website visitors that can be used for creating lookalike audiences.

Instead, you can use the interests, behaviors, and demographic data provided by Facebook when creating advertisements aimed at prospective audiences. Demographics encompass basic data such as gender, age group and location along with other useful information available on user profiles, like if they are new moms or recent college graduates.

Interests refer to pages and content that users have engaged within the past (like yoga) while behaviors refer more explicitly to various actions taken by users on Facebook (like celebrating their birthday).

In order to reach various targeted segments successfully within interests, behaviors, and demographics, numerous audience tests would be recommended.

Since these groups conveniently comprise hundreds of thousands or even millions of individuals, it would be best to test each one separately until you gain a satisfactory ROI.

Additional testing into secondary layer targeting experiments can help expand your opportunities for new prospective customers and get better insights about your audience network.

Retargeting warm audience

Retargeted ads serve as an ideal way for businesses to convert potential customers who show initial interest in their products or services e.g. visiting websites frequently or adding items to cart but do not make purchases right away.

This feature enables businesses to capture such prospects' attention by pitching offers directly towards them again after visiting your page using the “retargeting” option on Facebook, which is one of its most effective forms of re-marketing.

With the custom audiences feature, businesses can easily create highly-targeted retargeting campaigns by the use of data obtained via their business pages and Meta pixel.

Custom audiences can be created from various sources such as a customer list, website traffic or catalog events.

Create your creatives and schedule your campaign

Once you have a clear understanding of your goals and target audience, it's time to create new creatives.

You can use Facebook's Ad Manager to create video ads, images of your product catalog, or carousel ads that showcase your products or services.

Be sure to use eye-catching visuals, compelling copy, and a strong call-to-action.

You can easily refer to Meta ad specs from here. Meta also provides good resources for you to find inspiration for your creatives.

A cool tip you could use is the Meta ads library, here you can input a particular brand or keyword to see what sort of ads are other brands running on Meta platforms.

Monitor and optimize your Facebook campaigns

Effective Facebook campaigns require more than just initial set-up—frequent monitoring and optimization are needed if you're hoping carve out success on this popular platform.

It's always best practice to check in each day or more often as your spending rate increases, but do have patience, especially towards the early days of your campaign.

It takes time for Facebook algorithms to learn which ad variations are producing results, so avoid making sweeping adjustments after only few days, especially when there aren't any purchases coming in.

A better approach is to conduct multiple tests. You'd do best to test on multiple variations in headlines, images, caption text, using the metrics provided from Meta as a measure of success.

The goal should be searching for which options produce better ads performance by steadily refining campaigns bit-by-bit rather than relying solely on single creative set-ups from the get-go.

All in all, with the right resources and strategies, it's possible to make Facebook Ads work for your small business in 2023. As you continue perfecting your approach—from properly crafting your target audience to producing stunning ad creatives—you can maximize the potential of this powerful platform.

Get started easily with Coco+

If you're unsure about how to expand your business, consider exploring additional options like Coco+. With the support of world class performance marketers, Coco+ will help you create and deploy your ads across multiple platforms.

We know how much running ads can feel like an uphill battle. So let Coco+ be your secret weapon. Now, you don’t have to imagine what it’d be like to launch ad campaigns in just a few clicks—with Coco+, it’s possible.

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