Facebook Ad Campaign Guide for Small Businesses

With this Facebook Ad campaign guide, small businesses can boost their brand awareness and reach their target audience even on a small budget.

What Is a Facebook Ad Campaign?

Facebook is the world’s biggest social media network, with around 2.89 billion active users in the second quarter of 2021. During the same period, roughly 10 million active advertisers were using this platform to promote their products and services. 

Thanks to its broad reach, Facebook Ads is one of the most commonly used paid advertising platforms. Furthermore, it uses solid analytics and tracking that allows advertisers to reach their target audience and boost their brand awareness and sales. 

Facebook also allows a high level of customization to ensure that your ads only target qualified leads. The platform considers the users’ online activities and behavior (likes and comments) and demographics and your data–such as your marketing goals, characteristics of your target market, and preferred ad format–to develop a solid ad campaign.

How to Start Your Facebook Ad Campaign

If you don’t have a Facebook business page, you’ll need to set it up first to create your own ad campaign through Facebook Ads Manager.

Identify your objective

Log into your Facebook Ads Manager and click the “Campaigns,” then the “Create” tab. There, you can choose from 11 marketing goals that are explained below: 

• Reach. Show your ad to as many users in your target audience as possible.  

• Brand awareness. Show your business to new customers. 

• Engagement. This is ideal if you aim to increase the attendance at your event, broaden your audience/followers, and encourage consumers to claim your special offers. 

• Traffic. Drive traffic to your website, Facebook Messenger conversation, app, etc. 

• Video views. Increase the number of people who watch your video content. 

• App installs. Increase the number of users who install your app. 

• Messages. Encourage users to contact your company via Facebook Messenger. 

• Lead generation. Attract new leads into your sales funnel. 

• Catalog sales. Integrate your Facebook Ads into your product catalog for a frictionless shopping experience. 

• Store traffic. This goal is ideal for brands with a brick-and-mortar location. 

• Conversions. Encourage users to take a specific action on Facebook Messenger, with your app, or on your website–e.g., buy a product or follow your brand.

Name your Facebook Ad

Click “employment, politics, election, housing, social issues, etc.” if your ad falls into these “Special Categories.”

If you want to perform A/B testing on this social media ad, click “Get Started” in the “A/B Test” section. And finally, you may want to turn on the budget optimization, especially if you’re using multiple ad sets.

Create a budget and schedule

Set your budget for your Facebook Ad campaign; you can either choose a lifetime or daily budget. Afterward, schedule it by specifying the start and end dates. 

It is highly recommended to choose a lifetime budget because it allows you to run your ads on a schedule, meaning you can turn it on and off depending on your audience’s timezone. 

It might be a good idea to run your ads on a weekday between 1 pm and 4 pm, which is the peak time for Facebook usage, and/or pause your ads at night if they involve filling out a form and other things that require extra effort from the users.

Target your audience

Facebook categorizes audiences into three types: Facebook Saved Audiences, Facebook Custom Audiences, and Facebook Lookalike Audiences. 

• Facebook Saved Audiences. You can create, save, and re-use them in later campaigns. This option is ideal if you know your target market well after collecting sufficient data about them. 

• Facebook Custom Audiences. It delivers a high conversion rate because it allows you to upload a list of emails or phone numbers of your target customers.

• Facebook Lookalike Audiences. Once you have created your Custom Audiences, you can target users similar to them based on their demographics, likes, and other online behavior/activities. 

Also, keep in mind to retarget people who didn’t complete a purchase and those who visited your website or blog.

Choose your ad placements

If you’re new to paid social media ads, your best bet is to choose the “Automatic Placement” that will place your ads across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Audience Network. But once you gain more experience, it’s ideal to manually choose your specific locations, which will depend on your campaign goal. 

Below is the list of ad placements: 

• Platform. Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and/or Audience Network

• Device type. Desktop, mobile, or both. 

• Specific mobile devices and OS. Android, iOS, etc. 

• Placements. Stories, Feeds, video in-stream, in-article, apps, websites, search, and messages.  

Set your brand safety

You need to exclude inappropriate content that might appear together with your ad–for example, sensitive issues and sketchy websites and other sources. 

Afterward, add an optional bid control and optimize your ad bidding type and bidding strategy. However, you may opt for the default options if you’re new to Facebook Ads. 

But if you are a seasoned advertiser, it is better to customize the options to ensure that your budget strategy is in line with your campaign objectives. 

Finally, you can click Next.

Create and publish your ad

Choose your ad format (e.g., video, image, carousel, collection ads, etc.) and add your text and media elements. 

Before publishing your ad, use the preview tool on the right side of the page to ensure that your ad is visually appealing and easy to understand. And finally, you can click the Publish button if you’re satisfied with everything. 

If you like this article, you may also want to read our post, “Facebook Ad Campaign: A Step-by-Step Guide.” You can also contact us at 916-303-4080 or schedule an appointment with LOJO Marketing’s chief inbound marketing expert Stephen.