Going beyond the boost button: How to create a successful Facebook Ad

Facebook ads are amazing for helping you to tap into a wider audience, so they’re something you should definitely be utilising in your business!

After all, there are 2.95 billion monthly Facebook users and over 2 billion monthly Instagram users. That’s a HUGE pool of people for your business to have access to! 

Because the truth is, unless you go viral with your organic content (which is pretty rare), you’re slightly constrained with how many people you can reach, but that’s not the case with Facebook Ads.  

By utilising Facebook ads in your business, you’re quite literally paying to tap into a wider audience that you can hand-pick through targeting. . So not only are you tapping into a wider audience but one that is filled with your ideal target audience!

However, it’s really important to remember that creating Facebook ads is different from just pressing the ‘boost’ button on a post. 

There’s a lot more to it than that (although it’d be nice if it were that simple!). 

Although in this blog I’ll be walking you through how to set up a successful Facebook ad, there is absolutely nothing wrong with just using the boost button to start off with, especially if you want to get a feel for what Facebook ads could look like for your business. Just remember that due to the infrastructure of Facebook, there is a lot more you can do with Facebook ads than you can by simply pressing the boost button. 

So if you do need to go beyond the boost- here’s how to do it well!

(P.S. Before I tell you how to create successful Facebook ads, remember to make sure that you have your pixel set up. I’ll be sharing a blog on exactly how to do this soon so keep your eyes peeled!)

Step 1: Choose the right campaign objective 

Facebook changes their campaign objectives all the time (which is a little annoying) but as I’m writing this, the current objectives you can select are awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, app promotion and sales. 

If you’re ever unsure of what each of these means, all you need to do is hover over each option within the Facebook dashboard and the description will tell you what each objective is best for! 

For example, the traffic objective is good for link clicks, landing page views and messager/WhatsApp- so if you want to send someone to a specific web page because you have a new offer you want to drive traffic to or some content on your website you’re trying to push, this would be the best fit!  

But I always recommend looking through Facebook and seeing what they suggest! Setting the right campaign objective is imperative for a successful campaign!

Step 2: Plan how you’re going to set up your Ad Sets

Your overall Facebook ad campaign will be made up of Ad Sets and in each Ad Set, you’ll have a set of individual ads.

Naturally, there are so many ways that you can set up and structure each Ad Set, but this will ultimately come down to what will work best for you, your budget, your audience and your strategy. 

Most people will  break their Ad Sets down by different audiences or products. 

But if you’re new to Facebook ads my advice would be to start by working with an audience split and then building off those results. 

Step 3: Establish your budget

A lot of people will advise having a budget of around £10 per ad set but you can still have success on a smaller budget, it might just take additional time to get the results you want and you might need to run a longer testing period. 

So work out what is best for you and have patience if you have a lower budget as the results should still come if you have everything set up right…it just might take a bit longer, although it is important to say, Facebook/ Meta Ads offer no guarantees. 

Step 4: Select your audience 

It’s always a good idea to do some research or have a rough idea of who you want to target before setting up your ads so you can target the right audience- this is crucial to the success of your ads!

When you go to create an ad, you’ll find different types of audiences you can set up such as interest audiences, custom audiences and look-a-like audiences. 

To keep things simple, we’re going to focus on interest audiences as this is probably the best place to start if you’re new to Facebook ads. 

Start by choosing the location of where you want your ad to be shown and the age range and gender you want to target. 

Then you get into the more detailed targeting which is where you can start targeting by specific interests and behaviours. To do this you want to type in keywords you associate with your audience and brand and select the interests you feel are relevant!

As you do this, make sure to look at the estimated results that Facebook provides. Your results will be labelled as specific, fairly broad or broad.

To start with, you want to be fairly broad or broad because at this point it’s going to be at the top of your Facebook funnel and the goal is to capture as many people as you can so you can later filter it down based on your results. 

Step 5: Choose your placements

You now need to select where you want your ads to appear. This could be on Facebook, Instagram or on the audience network (this is the network within Meta). 

If you choose for your ad placement to be on Instagram, you can also specify whether you want it to be an Instagram reel, story, or feed post.

Step 6: Consider your creatives carefully 

Now you need to design your creatives for your ad and this part is really important as your creatives are going to be grabbing your audience's attention!

You want to remember to consider your chosen placements when you design so they look more seamless when they’re displayed!

You’ll also be able to choose between a single image, video or carousel- so make sure you choose carefully and with your audience in mind! 

Make sure to include a headline in your creative to ensure you increase your chances of your audience paying attention when they see it pop up! My biggest piece of advice when it comes to creating attention-grabbing headlines is to keep them short and snappy and directly address a pain point or highlight the transformation your clients will experience when working with you/buying your product!

Step 7: Add a clear CTA

One of the most important things to remember when setting up  a Facebook Ad is to have a very clear CTA so that your audience knows exactly what action to take after engaging with your ad.

Ultimately, your CTA will depend on what type of advert you set up in the beginning. Facebook will give you a dropdown menu of what actions you can apply as a button such as ‘‘shop now’ ‘buy now’ ‘listen now’ or ‘sign up’.  Make sure you pick one that is most relevant to your ad. 

Step 8: Hit publish 

After you hit publish, your advert will be reviewed by Facebook before being posted. So before you submit it for review, make sure you’re aware of the Facebook policies that detail the rules and guidelines for ads.

You don’t want all of your hard work to waste because you’ve gone against guidelines!

And there you have it, your ad is up and running!

If you want to make sure you’re really doing the most to ensure your ad is successful, head over to my other blog where I share some of my top tips for elevating your Facebook Ads.