The material was created by UP in 2022 on the basis of the seminar ‘Facebook and Insta advertising: Create measurable results’ by educator David Lorentzen / Social Media Ads Specialist.
The seminar was held on 1 March 2022 in collaboration with Applaus and Danish Theatre at Vartov in Copenhagen.
By using the Facebook Ads Manager, you can reach out to multiple target audiences, define where your content ends up, and get more out of your advertising money. This page will give you a brief introduction on how to get started using the Facebook Ads Manager.
Advertising strategy on Facebook
When you advertise on Facebook, it is advantageous to work with your advertising based on the following four points - which you keep repeating:
- Define your target audience. ALWAYS start with the target audience BEFORE you create your content.
- Create your content.
- Look at the engagement.
- Consider WHAT you want your target audience to do (share, click, read, watch, buy, etc.)?
- When working with advertising, you're not only looking at KPIs for your engagement, but also how your different types of ads perform in your different audiences. This is where you will discover the gold!
- Analyse and use data: Use data from your previous content to target new ads and content.
Your ad strategy on Facebook consists of 4 workstreams:
Branding the organisation. Contacting new ‘customers’ or ‘users’. These are the people who do NOT know about you and have not interacted with you. When defining your branding audience, you use Facebook's knowledge of e.g.: gender, age, interests, geographical location, etc. Feel free to create different branding audiences that represent people for those you want to reach.
These people/audiences should have content specifically targeted to them.
Communicate to your core audience. Your core audience on Facebook is those who already know you. Those who have interacted with you before via Facebook, Instagram, your website, etc.
Note: These are not the people who you think are in your target audience. They are those who have shown interest and interacted with your content on your digital platforms.
With the core audience, it's all about keeping the pot boiling. This audience will naturally change all the time.
Users who have interacted with your channels within the last 30 days can be seen as warm leads, while those who have interacted with your channels over 30 days ago are cold leads.
Warm leads are those potential leads who are more likely to buy your company's products or services.
Cold leads are the potential leads that are less likely to buy your company's products or services.
Automation
Automation is all about moving your users from A to B.
For example, from Facebook to your website or from Instagram to your webshop. Find the overall user journeys - where you want your users to go.
Then create an advert with targeted content and let it run for several months - or during the periods when it's relevant.
Suggestion: For example, take those who have interacted with you in the last 30 days on Facebook and the last 30 days on Instagram. Subtract those who have been on your website. That way, you'll reach new potential customers. Create several of these automated adverts that run for 10 days at a time with great content.
Large campaigns. Large campaigns consist of all three of the above workspaces and run for limited periods. Here you use ALL the data you have.
CAMPAIGN EXAMPLES
1: Campaign for branding audience (those who don't know you).
Message: Check out our new website. We make the greatest performances!
2: Campaign for core audience (those who know you)
Message: Soon we're premiering a great new performance. Book your tickets today.
3: Automated adverts
Create different audiences in Facebook Ads Manager
Take the time to create branding audiences, core audiences and user-defined audiences in Ad Manager. It takes some time, but it's time well spent. Once they are ready, you can quickly create your advertisements.
IMPORTANT: make sure your ad account is linked to the Business manager page. Otherwise it will be linked to your own personal profile - and ALL the data you have accumulated here + saved audiences will follow you if you leave the organisation. Se Facebooks guide her + (in danish)
Create branding audience and core audience
Who do you want to know about your brand? There are different things that attract people depending on gender, interests, location, etc. Your branding target audience is basically everyone in Denmark. You then delimit it using Facebook's data.
It's important that you have a good knowledge of who your potential target audience is. This will enable you to better define it using Facebook's data. Once you've created your branding audience, remember to ‘subtract your core audience’. Otherwise, you risk only reaching those who already know you.
You create branding audiences in Facebook Ads Manager here:
Facebook/ads/manage - Audiences - Create a Custom Audience - Saved Audience (a saved targeting)
Comments on Facebook's targeting:
- Categories: Be aware that the more people you add into a category - the larger your group will be. Every time you change categories, you narrow your audience.
- Demographics: Demographics aren't that useful anymore, as many Facebook users don't fill them out due to GDPR.
- Life events: E.g. birthdays - married - etc. Can be used as targeting in your advert, but they can't stand alone.
- Interests: When using interests - do NOT select interests via Facebook's drop-down menu.
Write in the field instead.
For example, by typing ‘Louisiana Museum and Modern Art’ you can choose to target your advert to people who interact with Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's Facebook page. This way you can ‘steal’ other people/organisations' users. If you think they might also be interested in your organisation/company of course.
You create core audiences in Facebook Ads Manager here:
- Facebook/ads/manage
- Audiences - Create Audience - Custom Audience
- Select the FB page of everyone who has interacted with your page (FB interaction)
Interacted in the last 30 days. - Select fb page to everyone who follows your page (FB Fans / followers)
- Select instagram page to everyone who has interacted with your page (IG interaction)
- Interacted in the last 30 days.
Everyone who has visited your website in the last 30 days should also be in your core FB audience. It is important that you select: People who have visited the specific web pages.
NB. Remember to set up FB pixels on your website.
Include these audiences in your core audience and exclude them from your branding audience.
Custom audiences.
This is the data that you have generated yourself through your Facebook ads.
You can choose to include it or exclude it.
Create ads via Facebook Ads Manager
Once you have defined and created your core and branding audiences, you are ready to create the ads in Facebook Ads Manager.
This is done through the following 3 levels in Facebook Ads Manager:
Create Campaign: You always start by creating a campaign. This is where you define the objective of your advert. Consider what you want to achieve with your advert and what you want people to do. For example, generating traffic from Facebook to your website.
Create Ad Set: This is where you define how much money you want to spend on the advert and for how long it will be displayed. This is also where you define the target audience for the advert and its placement. That is, who should see it and where they should see it
Create Ad Level: It is not until the end of the ad level that you create the actual content for your advert. Here you can choose to use a previous post as content - or you can choose to enter/upload new content.
TIP #1: Create several different variations of your advert. For example, if you are unsure of which performance image to choose to promote your performance. Create two similar campaigns and ad sets - but with different images on the advert level. Keep an eye on which variation of the advert performs best. The advert that performs best is the one you should put the most advertising money into, so it can reach even further.
TIP #2: A classic mistake is to choose the same advert targeting every time. Remember to switch between e.g. traffic, interaction and video views when creating new ads at campaign level. This ensures that you reach users other than those who typically follow you and engage with your content.
TIP #3: Another classic mistake is to let your content dictate which target you choose. If you make an advert with a video, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to choose video views as your target. It could also be that the video is well suited for generating traffic to your website or ticketing portal. Create multiple campaigns with the same video - but with different targets.
Your alarm bells should go off if you use the same target, such as traffic to your website, in all your campaigns over a month.
Did the advert do well?
When has an advert performed well? It's difficult to set a benchmark for an industry or for your organisation. There are many factors that affect how your advert performs: the content you create; the engagement of your target audience; the context of your advert; current events and more.
Instead of looking to others, look at the content you create and how it performs over time.
Be aware that it only makes sense to look at your ads strategically when you have been running up to several different adverts for both your branding audience and your core audiences.
When you use the same target audiences with different ad content, over time you will see what works and what doesn't.
If you want to learn more about Facebook advertising and the many possibilities the Facebook Ads Manager offers, we recommend taking a course in Facebook advertising. Here you will have the opportunity to go into detail with the elements reviewed on this page and be introduced to the latest features and tools in Facebook Ads Manager.
The material has been prepared by UP on the basis of the seminar ‘Facebook and Insta advertising: Create measurable results’ by educator David Lorentzen / Social Media Ads Specialist.
The seminar was held on 1 March 2022 in collaboration with Applaus and Danish Theatre at Vartov in Copenhagen.