Using Facebook Ads can be a little tricky and it’s a great way to lose money if you don’t know what you are doing.

A great Facebook Ad needs to be done with a strong intent. That intent should be to get people into a funnel where you can both educate and sell to the visitor.

Spending money on Facebook ads is probably something we have all done because Facebook (Bless Them) are always asking us to promote our post and tell us how many people we will reach and the cost seems quite small. I have fell into the trap more than once. Hands up anyone else ?

The truth is to be successful at Facebook Ads we need to know what we are doing. Just promoting a post may drive a small amount of traffic to our website but if it’s to a post that just educates then you have spent money on traffic without actually having an ability to earn from your investment.

Not Good

So How Do We Create Facebook Ads

Back to basics here as I am going to walk you through the process of creating successful ads.

First of all we need to reverse engineer the process. What is your aim with the Facebook ad? Do you want to get people on your email list? Do you want people to buy a product or service ? Do you want to get people into your sales funnel e.g sign up for a free webinar that will eventually sell your or someone else’s products ?

Whatever it is, it needs to actually have the potential for you to sell something to people who click on your ad. The ads will work better if there is a freebie available first. You will get more clicks. There is no point in having an ad that leads people to just read a post. It may be helpful to them but what are you potentially get out of it?

You can link the ad to a blog post as long as it gives the reader the next step in your funnel. If that’s just to sign up to your email list and get your fabulous freebie, fine. If they are on your email list then you can start to build a relationship with them. Obviously for this you need a great autoresponder. If you don’t already have one read my post on the best autoresponders here.

How To Create Your Facebook Ads step by step.

First of all your business should have a page linked to your personal account which is best registered as a business page as this gives you so much more than the ability to boost a post you think is good. You will be able to gain insights and track its success. If your page is not already registered as a business I suggest you go and do this first.

Once you have set it up as a business it will ask you to manage the page in business manager. Going to this is simply a click on the prompt when you go to your Facebook page n.b This cannot be done on the app.

Bonus of Being a Business Page

In one word. INSIGHTS. Now I have not yet discovered everything Facebook has to offer here yet but the coolest thing is that you can seriously target a specific audience. Get simple metrics which help you to find and target your audience with your ads. And you can save these audiences for future use. RESULT: Targeted audience and cheaper ads.

Here’s how I targeted mine.

From my google analytics, I know that my readers tend to be over the age of 35 and mostly women. So I set the parameters for the age and chose only women. I then called this group 35+ women and saved it so I can re use it again. If I have a different intent with an ad I may create a different set of rules for my ad to be targeted at. Remember the more targeted you can be the better. You can pin it down to people living in a certain area. Great if you are advertising a local event or promoting a product specific to an area, like football shirts.

Creating Your Ad.

On the left hand side you will see a prompt to promote. Click on this and it will give you five options of what you want to achieve.

• Boost Post

• Promote Your Page

• Get More Messages

• Get More Website Visitors

• Get More Customer Contacts

In this article we will be choosing get more Website visitors but as we have discussed, we want website visitors to land on a page that gives us an opportunity to sell. When you first click on the option the Ad will always be made for you as a basic way to arrive at your homepage. Facebook has your website, your tag line, any image you have associated with your site, your location and insights into your demographic reach. Mine looks like this:

However this will only have the effect of getting more traffic to our site and is not really giving our audience any call to action or reason to click.

So First you need to change the URL to where you want your audience to end up. The great bit about this is that Facebook will pull up the information from that page for you.

Now you want to create a keyword Rich title and a call to action below the post. Something that clearly tells the reader what they are getting and why they want it and finally how to get it.

Then you want to put in the image you want. Facebook doesn’t like too much text in your image and will censor it if it has more than 15% writing. Yes I know how do you work that out? Just a tag line or none at all is my best advice. I didn’t know this and one of my posts I boosted was penalised heavily and I spent money on nothing. We live and learn.

I am now more than happy to use the image of the orange Gerbera that is my brand and associated with my site.

If you didn’t set a target audience from insights, Now is the time to do this. As you refine your audience Facebook will let you know how many people it will likely reach. You can also choose what call to action you want included in the add.

Now it’s time to set your budget. Personally I would set it for a total budget, rather than daily especially if you are new to this type of advertising. I would also let it run only over a few days too. You can set the times you want it to go out. Think about your target audience, when are they likely to be online?

Below is what they suggested…. ha ha! Don’t do this.

I would also have a reasonably low budget for the first time you run it. See what your results are first and then adjust if you are not getting the traffic and results you want.

As you get more advanced you can actually do split tests. Having two ads running at the same time and seeing which resonates with your audience more.

I know I’ve shown you how to create an ad using my own sample here but I want to share with you an ad that caught my eye and worked really well. When I say worked really well, I don’t know what their actual results were but they definitely got my email address.

Notice that the image is just eye catching, no text. The message is very clear beneath the image.

They also put more text above if you wanted to read more. I suggest doing this to get better results. Not everyone will click to learn more without more information.

The great part of this ad is it’s link was to a sign up page and once you had signed up for their freebie it went to a page for me to register for a webinar. Yes I watched it and the sales pitch was at the end.

Now this is obviously using leadpages of some sort and you may not have those yet but your link must go to a post on your website that encourages someone to sign up for or buy something or else your wasting money. You need a return on your investment.

Facebook Ads Do’s

Make your audience as targeted as possible

Always post to a landing page or blogpost or even a post within Facebook.

Use an Image that defines your message or brand

Facebook Ad Don’ts

Make your audience too broad ( it will cost you too much )

Post straight to an affiliate link ( Facebook will not allow the ad )

Have more than 15% of text in your image ( Facebook will not allow the ad to run )

So now it’s time for you to go make some Facebook Ads that you know will work and give you a return on your investment.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask by leaving a comment below or you can find me at www.facebook.com/withgraceandgratitudeuk

With Grace and Gratitude

Karen