In today's competitive digital landscape, social media advertising has become a powerful tool for businesses looking to connect with their audience. Meta offers an easy-to-use advertising platform that can help businesses of all sizes create highly targeted campaigns to reach potential customers on Facebook and Instagram.
Imagine you’re launching a new product and want people talking all over the Internet. What’s your first move? You’d likely create a social media ad campaign that speaks directly to your target audience and grabs their attention.
A well-planned Meta campaign can significantly boost your brand's visibility, drive traffic, and increase conversions, providing valuable insights into your audience's behavior and preferences along the way. Whether you’re promoting a product, event, or service, Meta Ads allow you to deliver messages to the right people at the right time.
What is a Meta ad?
Facebook ads are advertisements that run on Facebook, while Meta ads are advertisements that run on all platforms owned by Meta, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network. These ads are designed to help businesses reach targeted audiences by using the behavior, interests, demographics, and platform.
With Meta ads, you can create campaigns that aim to build brand awareness, traffic, website visits, and audience engagement, generate leads, and some actions like app installs and purchases.
What are the benefits of advertising on Meta?
Enhanced Engagement: Meta platforms are designed for interaction. You can encourage users to like, comment, share, and click through to your website, boosting engagement and brand awareness.
Retargeting: You can target users who have already visited your website or interacted with your ads, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
Brand Awareness: Meta advertising can help you build brand recognition and establish your business as a trusted authority in your industry.
Creative Flexibility: Whether you want a simple image or a captivating video, Meta has the tools to help you create ads that grab attention.
Budget-Friendly: You can set a budget that works for you and control your spending.
Key points for creating successful Meta ads
Understand your product: Have a deep understanding of what you're offering, including its features, benefits, and how it solves problems.
Identify Your Target Audience: Understand your target audience's age, gender, location, income, and other relevant demographics.
Planning Your Content: Select a suitable ad format based on your product and goals.
Create Your Ad Copy: Write a catchy ad copy that connects with your audience's needs and use a strong call to action to encourage engagement.
Understanding Meta Ads: Campaign, Ad Set, and Ad
The meta ads manager provides user-friendly dashboards designed to give an overview of the status of your active campaigns, ad sets, and ads.
1. Campaign: This is the first part of your campaign structure. You can choose what you want from your ad: Awareness, Traffic generation, Sales, App promotions, leads, or engagement.
2. Ad Set: The ad set is where you decide on the performance, budget, audience, demographics, interest, and placement. You can have multiple ad sets per campaign and different budgets for each.
3. Ad: This is the final step for your ad creation. You can create multiple ads per ad set. This represents the creative content where you upload the images, video, and text for ad copy. This is what your audience will see.
Step 1: How to create a Meta ad?
If you have a business Facebook page, you can directly access your ads manager or business manager to create an ad.
Step 2: Create a new ad campaign
Click the green Create Ad button to get started with your first ad. After clicking it will redirect to the page where you have options to choose a buying type ie Auction or Reservation. Auction is the default type for all ads.
Auction: It is the process that Meta uses to determine which ads to show to users at any given time. It offers more choice and flexibility. Ads can be placed across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Meta Audience Network.
Reservation: This feature allows you to plan and purchase your campaigns in advance. Ads can only be placed on Facebook and Instagram.
The key difference is that an Auction ad allows for various campaign objectives, while a Reservation only has two: awareness and engagement.
Step 3: Set ad objective
Start your campaign by choosing an objective that is best for your business goals. Ad objectives are 5 types Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App promotion, and sales.
Awareness: This ad will be shown to people who are most likely to remember them. It is good for reach, and brand awareness.
Traffic: This ad will send people to a destination, such as to your website, app, Instagram profile, or Facebook event. It is good for link clicks, landing page views, Instagram profile visits, messenger, and calls.
Engagement: This ad will get you more messages, and purchases through messaging, video views, post engagement, Page likes, or event responses. It is good for Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Leads: This ad is designed to collect leads for your business or brand. It is good for instant forms, messenger, and Instagram.
App promotion: This ad helps to find new people to install your app.
Sales: It focuses on driving conversions by promoting products from a catalog to users. Find people who are likely to buy your product or service.
Once you have selected the campaign objective, you must choose between an advanced campaign setup or a Manual campaign. You can do this manually.
Step 4: Create a new campaign
After selecting your campaign setup, you will be asked to name your campaign and when you are naming your campaign, Choose a short and recognizable name that relates the campaign objective, and the campaign creation date.
Declare your Ad Category:
Advertising regulations vary by different region, especially for categories such as credit, employment, housing, and politics. If your ad fits into one of these categories, it’s important to declare it to ensure compliance with Facebook’s policies and regional advertising standards.
Advantage Campaign Budget:
This feature is available only when you select the Auction buying option. It allows Meta to automatically find the best available opportunities for results across your ad set.
If you’re managing multiple ad sets, you can choose Advantage Campaign Budget.
Choose A/B test :
A/B test compares two versions of an ad to see which one works better. You change elements, like the image, text, or audience, and the test duration to find out what your audience wants. If you would like to create an A/B test, you can enable the process.
Why A/B Test :
A/B testing helps you to find out what works best for your ads. By trying different options, you can learn about your audience's preferences. This makes your ads more effective.
How to conduct A/B Test:
Set your goal: Decide what you want to achieve
Choose what to test: one element to change, like creative, audience, and placement.
Create two versions: Make Version A and Version B of your ad.
Run the test: Run both ads under the same conditions and time duration.
Step 5: Create your Ad set :
Set your performance goal :
The performance goal you choose is key to your ad strategy and how Meta measures its success. It guides your campaign strategy and helps in delivery.
Maximise reach of ads: This will help to show your ads to as many people as possible.
Maximize the number of impressions: This will help to show your ads to people as many times as possible.
Maximise ad recall lift: This will help to show your ads to people who are likely to remember seeing them.
Ex: For a salon looking to attract new clients, it's best to maximize reach. For a baby powder brand, maximizing impressions can help boost sales and brand awareness. Knowing your campaign goals will help you choose the right performance goal.
Set a campaign budget:
When setting an ad budget, it’s important to remember that this represents the maximum amount you want to spend. You can choose to allocate your budget either on a daily basis or as a total for the entire campaign duration. You can also schedule the date and time for your campaign.
Daily Budget: A daily budget sets a limit on what you spend each day on your ads. This allows you to make adjustments based on daily results. Once your budget is reached, the ads stop running for the day. It's ideal for short campaigns.
Lifetime Budget: A lifetime budget is the maximum you'll spend the entire time you run your ad campaign. It allows you to spend money based on ad performance while staying within your total budget. Once your budget is reached, the campaign ends. It is ideal for long-term projects.
Customize your Audience :
You can use an existing audience or you can create a new one according to your preference like preferred locations, language, and age groups.
Also, you can provide more specific suggestions like Age, Gender, and Interests for creating an audience setup. Meta will target those audiences first before expanding the search to generate the best results for your ad.
Choose an ad placement :
Ad placement determines where your ads are shown to your target audience. Meta will generally recommend you choose Advantage+ Placements. It will run on multiple placements. You can choose manual placement to select the platforms where you want your ads to appear, including Instagram, Facebook, Audience Network, and Messenger.
Facebook: Millennials and Gen X mainly use Facebook to stay connected and join groups.
Instagram: Gen Z primarily uses Instagram for sharing photos and videos.
Messenger: Millennials and Gen X prefer Messenger for chatting and contacting businesses.
Audience Network: Millennials and Gen Z engage with ads through the Audience Network across various apps and websites.
There are several options across the Meta suite of social platforms:
Feeds: Get high visibility for your business with ads in feeds.
Stories and Reels: Tell a rich, visual story with immersive, full-screen vertical ads
In-stream: Quickly capture people's attention while they're watching videos.
Reels overlay: Reach people with sticker or banner ads as they watch short-form content.
Search results: Get visibility for your business as people search.
Messages: Send offers or updates to people already connected to your business.
Apps and sites: Expand your reach with ads in external apps and websites.
Step 6: Create your Ad:
Choose your social accounts:
You can select the Meta social media profiles on which you want your ads to run.
Choose your ad format:
There are 3 types of ad setup available: create an Ad, Use existing posts, and use creative hub mockup. After making your selection, decide whether your ad will showcase a single image or video, a Carousel, or a collection.
Create Ad:
If you choose this option, you can select from three ad formats.
Image Ads: You can upload a single image for your ad creative.
Video Ads: You can upload a single video for your ad creative.
Carousel Ads: You can upload two or more images or videos, allowing users to swipe through multiple visuals.
Use Existing Post: If you prefer to use an existing post, simply select the option and choose the post you want to promote.
Use Creative Hub Mockup: This option allows you to create and test ad mockups before finalizing your ads.
Select Ad creative:
After choosing to create an ad, you will need to upload your ad creative, which includes images or videos, depending on the format you selected. In this area, you can also customize the ad copy and creative for each of the Meta platforms. You'll also find the option to add music for formats that support it. You can also input your ad copy with catchy headlines and descriptions which are important for your Meta ads because they grab attention and make people want to learn more about your product or service. Good headlines and descriptions can boost your ad's performance. In the last, add a strong call to action.
If you want to see what types of ad tests and headlines are effective nowadays, you can check the Ad Library for inspiration and insights.
Select destination:
When setting up your ad, you need to choose a destination for your audience's interactions like Instant experience, Website, Call, or messaging apps. The instant experience is all about fast loading, mobile optimize experience. In messaging apps, you can directly send people to your inbox like Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, or WhatsApp. The conversation will be tracked on the website as well as offline events.
Publish your Ad:
Once you have finalized, you can preview your ad to see how it will appear to your audience. This is an important step to ensure that all the details are correct, including the creative, primary text, headline, description, and destination.
After reviewing the ad preview and confirming that everything is good, you can proceed to publish your ad. Simply click on the Publish button to launch your campaign.
After submitting your ad, Facebook will review it to ensure it meets their specifications. Typically, this review process takes up to 24 hours. Once approved, you'll receive a confirmation email notifying you that your ad is live.