Facebook is useful for interacting with your audience and finding new user segments. As you advertise, you can filter your audience to offer them relevant content.
Find Your Audience
You have two main audience strategies: boosting your community (when you already have a fan Page) and finding new user segments (to increase your base).
Boost Your Community
The audience definition tool allows you to target people who are part of your community and who already know you. For example, it’s helpful if you want to highlight a post, an event you are organizing, or a promotional offer.
To boost your community, you must already have at least one Facebook Page, app, or event. It's a good thing you created one!
Let’s take a look at how you set up your audience in the ad set:
On your ad set configuration window, scroll down the page and explore the Connections section. Then, click Add a connection type and select the option you want.
To select only people who like your Page, choose the option People who like or are currently subscribed to your Page.
Find New User Segments
You've been using the power of Facebook to target your persona. Now it's time to use your own powers!
Places
Select a country (just one) and mention it in the name of your campaign. This will help you organize your campaigns properly so you can compare the conversion rate later.
Age
Select the age range of your audience.
Advanced Targeting
You can target your audience using their demographics (education, job, household, income, etc.), interests (cooking, sports, technology, etc.), and behavior (mobile browsing, Facebook Page admin, a Gmail account, etc.).
You can combine demographics, interests, and behaviors. You can also add free criteria via the search bar available just below. The number of people covered then appears on the right to help you in your targeting.
Finally, look at the Audience Definition section on the right-hand side of your screen to get an idea of your audience targeting. If the gauge is in the green, it's fine! Avoid selecting too large or too small an audience. You can change some settings to get you into the green.
Choose the Placement
As we saw in the first part of this course, ads can be delivered on several networks and locations such as Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, other sites and applications. There’s a wide range of possibilities!
Let's review the various placements available for most of the objectives.
Mobile Feed
Your ad will be visible on the Feeds of users browsing on their smartphones.
Your ad will be visible on users’ Instagram Feed or stories. If your ads use engaging visuals that tell your story, Instagram can be a great choice, as this network unites people all over the world around beautiful images and videos.
The Audience Network
Facebook will distribute your ad to their partner network (i.e., outside of Facebook). Your ad will automatically be transformed into a native banner that Facebook partners will publish. This allows you to reach more people in a more diverse network.
Desktop Feed
Your ad will appear in your user's Feed (PC or Mac) and is very useful if you have beautiful visuals, a video to promote, or a call-to-action button (learn more, buy, etc.).
The Right-Hand Column on a Desktop
Your ad will appear in the right-hand column.
Let's take a look at how to set up these different distribution placements:
Set Your Budget and Schedule
Here you will define the budget you want to allocate to your campaign and the distribution schedule.
Before diving deeper into each field you'll see, let's talk a bit about Facebook's algorithm.
The Auction System
Facebook uses a bidding system, which means that your campaign is in direct competition with other campaigns that target the same audience.
To put it simply, let's say you set your bid at $2 per click. Every time a user clicks on your ad, you'll pay $2 to Facebook. Easy! Except that you are competing with other advertisers who may have set a higher bid, say $3. In that case, the competitor's ad will be displayed and not yours.
One of the first things that surprised me when I started my campaigns was that I was having trouble spending all my budget. Most of the time, Facebook just didn’t display my ads. No matter how much I increased my budget, nothing helped.
Then I thought about it, did some research, and found out about the other parameters that factor into Facebook’s algorithm. There are over 140 of them! Don't worry, we don't need to go through them all here. Instead, we’ll focus on two key aspects: the engagement rate ranking and ad quality, which are calculated by Facebook's algorithm.
When you launch a campaign, you can set a maximum price for your bid or let Facebook manage this setting. For example, say that the bid is within the average recommended by Facebook and that it allows you to display your ad in most cases. Facebook will then start running your ad and see how your audience reacts.
If your ad generates a lot of likes, comments, shares, and reactions, Facebook will consider it relevant and give it a good relevance score. It will then display it more and more and make it win the bids.
On the other hand, if your post does not generate overwhelming enthusiasm, Facebook will likely broadcast your ad less and less.
Let's go back to the budget setup page:
Define the Budget
The budget is the maximum amount you want to spend. For example, if you choose a daily budget, the amount you enter is the maximum you will spend per day. If you choose a budget over the duration of the campaign, the amount entered is the maximum you will spend until the end date of your campaign.
Example: If you enter $10 for a two-day campaign, you will spend a maximum of $5 per day. This amount will be spread over all the ads you run.
You may be wondering, “How does Facebook charge for advertising?”
If it’s your first ad, you won't have a choice. You will be billed on the Facebook cost per thousand (or cost per mille, CPM) basis.
Cost per thousand (CPM)
You pay a certain amount of money for 1,000 impressions (displays). This solution is best when you want to do branding, promote your brand, or work on your reputation.
Once you've spent at least $10 on Facebook advertising, you can choose to pay for actions other than impressions. Depending on your campaign objective, Facebook will unlock other options to allow you to pay per click (CPC) or per video view.
Cost per Click (CPC)
You pay every time a user clicks on your ad, which is very useful if you want to increase site traffic! But I advise you to avoid this particular option if your goal is to generate conversions, as Facebook will look for an audience that generally clicks on ads but not necessarily the one that will achieve your goal.
CPC is worth it if the target audience is small (e.g., less than 80,000 people).
Make the Final Adjustments
To determine your campaign budget, look at the number of people you will reach with the yellow gauge on the right side of your screen.
Let's Recap!
Configuring the ad set is one of the most important steps in launching your ad campaign. You need to establish the following:
The targeting your audience, using advanced targeting options and the combination of demographic, behavioral, and interest data.
The networks and placements for your ads.
The budget and billing basis for your advertising package.
You are now ready to create your very first ad, so off to the next chapter!
