Facebook Ads Manager Beginner’s Guide

Preface

We have written the post, “Facebook Ads Manager Beginner’s Guide” to help entrepreneurs, business owners, DIY online marketers, and beginner Facebook Marketers. The article is written to help you understand the basics of the Facebook Ads Manager tool and how to get started using this tool and setting it up. We will introduce and briefly explain some basic Ads Manager concepts that you need to know.

This article was written by Jabez Roberts and first posted on March 2, 2020. The most recent update was made on March 2, 2020.

Introduction

It is no secret that with the evolution of technologies such as smartphones, personal computers, and tablets, users are spending more time in the digital world than ever before. Whether it is on streaming services such as Hulu, Netflix, and Disney+, searching for information on Google, Pinterest, or YouTube, or even hanging out with friends on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, users are spending more of their time with digital media.

According to a report from Digital Information World, people are spending more than 2 hours and 20 minutes per day on Social media. Facebook alone accounts for an average of 58 minutes per day according to a report by Similar Web.

This is all good news for business owners, entrepreneurs, and online marketers. With this information, we now know where to spend our advertising dollars and where to focus our effort on marketing.

Facebook offers massive potential for any business of any size to not only establish a profitable online presence but to grow and reach a wider audience.

Having an optimized Facebook business page is the first step towards success. An optimized Facebook business page is absolutely necessary before we can consider using Facebook’s Ads Manager to start marketing to new clients, customers, or prospects.

Using Facebook ads to get clients without optimizing our Facebook page would be like inviting our friends over to a housewarming when we have just started putting the walls up for our house: it’s too early and an absolute disaster.

So, before we get started on setting up our Facebook Ads Manager Account we must first ensure that our Facebook Page is optimized for our business.

How To Optimize Your Facebook Page

To optimize your Facebook page you can check out our guide, 14 Powerful Ways To Optimize Your Facebook Business Page 2020 for a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to create, setup, and optimize your Facebook business page for any type of business of any size. Alternatively, our team at CyberDream Developers can get the job done for you. You only need to send us a message to get started.

Now that our pages are all optimized we are ready to start spending a bit of cash to get a stronger online presence. To get started we will need a Facebook Ads Manager account.

The picture below shows our optimized Facebook Page.

But What Is Facebook Ads Manager And Why Is It Important?

“Ads Manager is a Facebook tool that lets you create and manage your Facebook ads. You can view, make changes and see results for all your Facebook campaigns, ad sets, and ads.” – Facebook

To get started with Ads manager go here.

How To Setup Facebook Ads Manager

Setting up your Facebook Ads Manager account is very easy. In fact, it is automatically created when you create a Facebook Business Page. If you have been following along with our guide you should already have set up and optimized your Facebook Business Page.

Now you only need to learn how to access your Ads Manager account. To get access to your Ads Manager account:

1. Go to your Facebook Ads Manager by clicking here
2. Enter your Facebook account’s username and password
3. Select “Login“
4. That’s it! You’re In!

Next, you need to confirm your Ad account information such as your currency and timezone. To do this:

1. Go to the “Settings Menu“
2. Select “Ad Accounts” in the left corner
3. Confirm that the information listed is accurate. Update the information if necessary.
4. Navigate to “Payment Settings“
5. Enter your payment information
6. Select “Save“
7. You’re all set!

You can now get started with Facebook Ads Manager. For more detailed steps you can visit this guide by Facebook. You can follow this guide we created for you to learn more about Ads Manager, Business Manager, and Facebook Marketing tools.

Uses & Advantages Of Ads Manager

Facebook’s ads manager is important for a few reasons. Some of the uses of ads manager include:

1. Creating Ad campaigns. By creating Ad campaigns for your business with Ads Manager you are able to set up different Facebook marketing campaigns to generate leads, sales, and traffic to your website for your business. You are given the freedom to choose who sees your ads and where they are shown.
2. Manage Ads –  Managing ads with Facebook’s Ads Manager allows you to edit current ads for better performance, adjust your marketing budget, or even clone and edit your ads to find the most profitable variation in a process called split testing.
3. Monitor Ad performance – Monitor ad performance includes checking the performance of your ads, view conversion rates, Cost Per Click (CPC) and other Key Performance Indicators (KPIs),. You can view your latest results, gather reports and even pause, cancel, or delete ads.

Facebook Ad Objectives vs Facebook Ad Formats

Before we get started on the different Facebook ad objectives and how best to use them it is important to get one major misunderstanding out of the way.

We often misunderstand and misuse the terms of Facebook Ad Objective and Facebook Ad Format. As these are important terminologies when setting up and analyzing Facebook ads we will define them below.

What Is Facebook Ad Format?

A Facebook Ad format is how your ad appears to your viewers. This can be as a video, picture, slideshow, dynamic ad – products from your eCommerce store used as an ad, etc.

What Is Facebook Ad Objective?

A Facebook Ad Objective is the unique end result that you desire for your ad campaign to deliver to your business.

There are 11 different ad objectives on Facebook and they are all important and useful for solving different goals your business might have. The 11 Facebook Ad objectives are grouped together in 3 key categories:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Conversions

Awareness Ads

The Brand Awareness objective is for advertisers who want to show ads to people who are more likely to recall them – Facebook

Awareness ads are best used to build brand recognition.

Facebook shows ads created in the Awareness category to individuals who are more likely to remember your brand after 2 days. That means that using awareness ads is the best way to get more customers who see your ad about your newly opened ice cream shop to know and remember your new ice cream shop that has opened nearby when they need ice cream because of your ad.

In its simplest form, this is what brand awareness is all about.

Now consider the effects of showing these ads consistently for 8 to 12 months to a market size of 100,000 within a 25-mile radius of your new ice cream shop. The long-term results can be exponential!

Additionally, awareness ads will, depending on your ad, how well it is constructed, and what message it was created to communicate to your customers, help more users and potential customers to be able to recognize your brand from your logo, remember your services, client reviews, etc.

If used correctly, awareness ads can prove to be a vital contributor to your company’s long-term success.

Awareness ads allow you to communicate your brand, products and services, methodologies, processes, and Unique Value Proposition (UVP) to as many people as possible as often as possible.

 Facebook allows you to do awareness marketing a lot cheaper than on competing platforms such as Google and LinkedIn.

It is reported that prospects need to see your brand an average of 7 times before they decide to do business with you. That is because they need time to ‘warm-up’ to your brand, build trust, confidence, and a genuine relationship with you where they are confident and comfortable enough with you to hand over their hard-earned cash.

And who can blame them?

How many times have we heard of online scams and expensive products and services that promised a gold mine but never even returned a bag of coal? Your prospects have heard of them too and some of them have been even burned a few times by them.

It is your responsibility as an entrepreneur, business owner, and online marketer to address your prospect’s fears and concerns in a positive way so they can be comfortable doing business with you.

Therefore, you can consider these ads to be similar to when you first meet a person you would like to date. You begin by introducing yourself, talking for a brief moment about your best qualities and then you exchange phone numbers so you can keep in contact over the coming months. Hopefully, you are able to move on to the next phase of the relationship you are trying to start.

There are two types of Facebook Awareness Ads. They are:

1. Brand Awareness
2. Reach

Tips For Using Awareness Ads

Awareness ads are best used for long-term results that won’t be realized before 8 or 9 months after first advertising. A healthy 20% to 30% of your monthly advertising revenue should be allocated to awareness ads. Of course, this depends on your budget, marketing objective, marketing process, and business model among other factors.

Awareness ads are best used in conjunction with the video ad type as videos tend to have higher levels of engagement (more on this term below). Additionally, you can give more information when using video in a more engaging and interactive way than you can with photos or slideshows.

Picture ads don’t work as well because sometimes you want to avoid using too much text in the copy and headline of your awareness ads and Facebook prefers picture ads with little to no text in them.

Consideration Ads

Consideration ads are used to help your customers decide to use your business as the solution to their problem.

Consideration ads are useful in the second stage of your three-step sales funnel. The first step was the awareness stage where you helped your prospective customers understand their problem and that your business exists with a solution to the problem they are facing

The goal of the Awareness Stage was never to turn your prospects into customers. It was merely an introduction of your business to your prospect for them to become aware of your existence and its best qualities.

This is like the first to third dates with your person of interest from our previous analogy of the process of starting a relationship. First, you introduce yourself and try to learn more about each other. Second, in the consideration stage, you position yourself as the best option.

Consideration ads do not only help to position yourself as the best solution to your customers’ problem but also offers an easy way to transition to the final stage of the process – conversion.

Consideration ads use various different media to send a powerful message about how you can help your prospects, why your service is better, what results they can expect compared to what you have got for others like them with similar problems and more.

They are different from awareness ads by being able to prompt the user to take some action after they’ve seen your ad. This can be as simple as filling out a form, sending you a message, or simply clicking a button to ‘Learn More’ about your product, service, feature, promotion, their problem, etc.

Types Of Facebook Consideration Ads

There are 6 types of Facebook consideration ads. They are:

1. Traffic
2. Engagement
3. App Installs
4. Video Views
5. Lead Generation
6. Messages

We recommend spending 25% to 45% of your ad budget on consideration ads. Sometimes, some conversion can take place when using these ads. This is not set in stone and depends on your budget, marketing objective, marketing process, business model, and ad quality among other factors.

Conversion Ads

Conversion ads represent the final stage in our Facebook prospect’s buyer journey in our simple 3-step sales funnel.

We first made them aware of our existence by introducing ourselves to them over a few months, we then made ourselves known to be an excellent solution to their problem by highlighting our strong areas, reviews, product quality, etc.

We may have even asked for them to join our email list by filling out a form thus allowing us to communicate with them on a weekly basis using our email list.

Now that they are familiar with us, our products and services, and are ‘hot enough’ to make a decision about solving their problem, it is time for us to go in for the kill. That is, to make the sale, to invite them to our store or online store, and to convert them into paying customers.

In our relationship-seeking analogy used above this is the stage where we take a knee, open a small black box on a romantic, moonlit beach in Southern Italy, and pop the question.

Conversion ads are just that. Ads that turn your prospects into customers. They are powerful ads that affect sales and profits the fastest.

We recommend spending the bulk of your advertising dollar, no less than 40%, on conversion ads.

Be sure not to fall into the mistake of going directly for the sale, or marriage in our relationship analogy, when most of your prospects don’t even know who you are. Use a bit of tact and planning in your marketing campaigns to get the best results from your advertising dollar.

If this sounds too difficult or beyond your scope then get in touch with our marketing team by Contacting Us and we will take over your marketing campaigns to help you achieve your marketing and business goals.

Types Of Facebook Conversion Ads

There are three types of Facebook conversion ads. They are:

1. Conversions
2. Catalog Sales
3. Store Traffic

Types Of Facebook Ad Objectives And How To Use Them

Brand Awareness

These are ads that are best for Facebook users who would be interested in your product or service. They may or may not already know about your brand but would benefit positively from your products or services. Brand awareness ads are at the top of your funnel and are used to raise awareness of a certain problem your prospect might have and position your brand as the best solution to that problem.

Reach Ads

Reach ads are a subcategory of Awareness ads. Reach ads focus on showing your ads to as many people as possible. These unique views help to rapidly increase the number of people who have seen your ads or are familiar with your brand.

Traffic Ads

Traffic ads are simply that – an ad focused on increasing traffic to your website, blog, online store, landing page or other off-site sources from Facebook. These types of ads are popular because of their versatility and adaptability to different problems, scenarios, and needs.

Engagement ads

Engagement ads are primarily focused on building interaction between your target audience and your brand. Facebook, through an optimized Facebook business page, gives your brand an online presence to interact with your prospects. Interaction from engagement ads normally takes the form of page likes, post likes, post shares, and comments.

1. Page likes – Improving your Facebook page following is important for numerous reasons. It can also make it easier for you to market by having a warm audience that is already familiar with your brand and service. This is an audience that already knows and trusts you and is ready to use your brand. It also offers massive potential for reaching new customers by using a lookalike audience.
2. Post engagement: Post engagement takes the form of a like, share, or comment on a post of your choice. This is useful in your marketing journey as you are now directly engaging with your prospects. These types of ads show people how many people have interacted with your post and can act as a form of Social Proof. This can reveal invaluable information that can help in product development, service improvement, public brand perception, and even to gauge and improve customer satisfaction. These ads can also be used to get attention to sales, specials, promotions, new products, services, newly opened locations, and even to share genuine conversation starters with your prospects.
3. Event Responses: This is one that is helpful for brick and mortar stores looking to increase foot-traffic to their location. It works especially well for upcoming events and promotions for which you might want to raise awareness and store visits. Event response ads are not only great for in-store events as they can also help to promote a special sale for your online store. In-store events also have the added advantage of pushing ads to users within a set mile-radius or distance from the physical location of your store. This keeps your ad relevant and to people who are within reach.

App Installs

These are powerful ads that are a developer’s dream come through. These ads offer a suite of services that will help you as you develop new apps for mobile and tablet devices. They allow direct downloads of your app to the user’s mobile or tablet device. These ads encourage users to install your app by allowing you to show a captivating clip of your app in action. Additionally, it also tracks the number of clicks, downloads & installs, registrations, and logins for your app download. However, they are only allowed for mobile and tablet devices.

Video Views

Video View Ads are among the most powerful consideration ads you can use. Traditional tv ads have generated billions, maybe even trillions, of dollars for companies and these were all video ads. Video Ads can be used to not only position yourself as a solution to your problem-rocked prospects but also show your product in use, display product quality, raise awareness, build trust, and even add scarcity to your products or service. Tracking video views allows you to learn how much of your video has been watched. This is an indicator of interested users of your advertised product or service.

Lead Generation

Lead generation ads are some of the most popular ads for business owners and entrepreneurs. A lead is where a user agrees to be contacted by you at a future date by giving you their contact information such as name, email address, phone number or a combination of these. This is best done when offering something of value in return that solves the users’ problems and builds trust such as:

• A discount code 
• Free eBook
• Free consultation
• Free infographic or report
• Free audit, assessment, etc

Lead ads allow you to gather a user’s information directly from your Facebook ads with an integrated form that you can customize and integrate with your CRM software. This gives a better conversion rate than if they were directed to another page.

Messages

An optimized Facebook page makes use of Facebook messages to interact with your page visitors. Facebook message ads are used primarily for users to communicate with your business by sending you a direct message via Instagram, Facebook or WhatsApp. This can be a powerful feature for a service business that involves a lot of face-to-face interaction in their day-to-day operations. In fact, I would recommend using message ads as part of your remarketing campaign to encourage your customers to interact with you and share their experience with using your business. Customers love to be heard and have their feedback valued. This is one sure-fire way to give a valued voice to your customers.

Conversions

A conversion is when a user or visitor to your website, landing page, or even blog takes some action such as reading a blog post, opting-in to an email list, making a purchase, etc.

Conversion ads are powerful and are used for bottom-of-the-funnel action to traffic who are warmest, i.e most ready to make a purchase, book a call, or some other predetermined form of conversion, and ready to do business with you. For this reason, they can be costly and sometimes unsuccessful if you rush into the sale with users who are cold or unfamiliar with your brand, products or service, or reputation. This is the equivalent of walking into a bar and asking the first woman or man you see to marry you and spend the rest of their lives with you. 

Conversion Ads are best tracked using a Facebook pixel. Read our comprehensive guide to setting up, using, and mastering Facebook pixels here.

Catalog Sales

 Catalog Sales are dynamic ads that allow you to sell your eCommerce products directly on Facebook. Your ad format will be your eCommerce product complete with its price, name, short description, and any other information you choose to display. These products are also added to your Facebook page and can be a major boost to sales.

Store Traffic

These ads are used to drive more traffic to your brick and mortar location. These ads are created and shown to users that are located within a certain distance to your store. They are effective for restaurants, new openings, service businesses, in-store sales, and promotions, etc.

Conclusion – Facebook Ads Manager Beginner’s Guide

Setting up and using Facebook Ads manager is the first step to getting started with Facebook Ads and Facebook Business Manager in general. We recommend that you move on to our next article in our series for helping you get started and set up with Facebook Ads.

Our Facebook ads manager beginner’s guide was meant to be a simple overview and introduction to getting started with Facebook Ads.

If you would like our team to manage your Facebook Marketing strategies and campaigns for the best results to you then get our Facebook Marketing Services by visiting our Facebook Marketing page or by sending us a message. We are also available for other Digital Marketing services such as Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Content Marketing, etc.

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