How to Build a Great Foundation for Your Facebook Advertising Campaign

An effective digital marketing campaign requires utilizing multiple advertising platforms, including Facebook. That said, Facebook marketing can take time to master. Fortunately, we're here to provide you with a great foundation to build upon. 

Let's take a look at what you can do to build an excellent foundation in Facebook advertising.

How Does Facebook Advertising Work?

First and foremost, it's important that you understand just how big of a player Facebook is in today's digital marketing environment. Not only is Facebook a major social media network, but the company also has incredible pull for retail providers and small business owners. If you get your advertising campaign right on Facebook, you have the potential for incredible profit.  

There are a few key elements involved in creating the foundation for an effective Facebook advertising campaign. Let's take a look.

Targeting and Budget

When you're setting up an ad, you'll need some baseline strategies to work with. You can eventually build on these as you analyze your results. In order to do that, you'll first need to think about targeting and budget for your ad campaign.

When you're setting up a budget, you'll need to factor in how much revenue you project you'll make with your ad campaign. At this point in your campaign-building process, you need to consider:

• Your current audience
• Your current revenue
• The value of your product/service

Without considering this information, you may not have an accurate budget estimate for your ad campaign. Unfortunately, this could lead to some serious financial trouble if you overshoot your budget by a lot. So before you write down a number and dedicate resources to your ad campaign, make sure you have a budget that's as accurate as possible.

You'll also need to determine your target audience. While your current audience is important, you need to decide who your intended audience is in order for Facebook to accurately display the ads you create. In order to do this, you'll need to input the age, locations, and interests of the people you intend to reach with your ad. This process is known as targeting, and it will help you make sure your ads reach the right people. You'll also be able to use this data to inform ad scheduling, which allows you to decide when your ads will be visible. If you know your target audience typically uses Facebook more often in the evenings, then you can run your ads appropriately to reach them.

Bidding Strategies

As we touched on earlier, there's no denying that Facebook is a major player in the digital marketing sphere. As such, there are a lot of businesses trying to advertise on this platform. Unfortunately, that can make it difficult for every business owner to get their time in the spotlight. 

This is exactly where bidding comes into play. Through bidding, you can tell Facebook how much you're willing to spend in order to generate a sustainable return on your investment. There are two types of bidding: manual and automatic. Which is best for you? Let's take a look.

Automatic Bidding - If money's no object, automatic bidding is what you want to ensure a successful ad campaign. When you elect to use automatic bidding, you're telling Facebook to spend whatever is necessary to get your ads running during times when they're most likely to convert. This is also a low-maintenance option for business owners who might not have much time on their hands.

Manual Bidding - If you have a stricter budget to work with, then manual bidding might be the best option to consider. With manual bidding, you'll be able to let Facebook know that you have a cap on your ad spending from day to day. While this may seem like the most cost-effective option, it's important to note that bidding on Facebook is a "pay to play" game. In short, manual bidding might not give you the best return on investment unless you're operating in a niche where there's not much competition.

The bidding strategy you choose ultimately depends on how much time you're willing to spend on your ad campaign and how big your budget is. If you have no time and a big budget, then automatic bidding is an excellent option. If you're operating with a more frugal budget and you want hands-on control over your ads, then manual bidding will likely be better for you in the long run.

Ad Placement

When it comes to building a solid foundation for your ad campaign, ad placement is everything. Like bidding, this is an area where you'll need to decide how much control you want to give Facebook. 

While most people prefer to let Facebook's algorithm decide where ads will be placed, it's possible that you'll want to tailor this to your preference. As smart as Facebook's algorithm may seem, you know your business better than anyone. When you decide to place your own ads, you'll be greeted with a long checklist. Here, you'll be able to select or deselect a number of options as to where your ads will appear.

While it may seem overwhelming, there's one ad placement choice that's crucial to your campaign's success. This choice is whether to display your ads on desktops, mobile devices, or both. No matter your business model, you should always choose both for the most effective ad coverage.

In Conclusion

There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to Facebook advertising campaigns, but your foundation is as simple as the building blocks we discussed here. Once you know how to build a great foundation for your ad campaign, you'll have a much better shot at Facebook advertising success.