I wanted to make an Ad for my consulting business and while researching, I found a report that said 80% of internet users also use Facebook while 93% of digital marketers use Facebook.
Those are mind-blowing numbers and I decided to write this article to cover all the interesting facts that I found.
Key Takeaways
- Start with small daily budgets to see what works then increase the budget in time
- Creative and relatable Ads work better – visual and textual elements
- Make Facebook Ads Work for Your Small Business in Kenya
- Monitor and manage retargeting for better outcomes
- Facebook ads should be in an ad set
- Ad sets should be in a campaign
What is a Facebook Ad?
A Facebook Ad is the creative bit of a Facebook campaign structure
It does not matter if you are selling spare parts in Grogon or tomatoes in Meru, the ads are a must at one point or another, especially for those seeking long-term sustainable growth.
In this article is a crash course on how to do above-average Facebook adverts.
First off is the anatomy of the Facebook ad framework.
The Structure of the Facebook ad framework
| Business Manager | Where you manage an agency’s or marketing organization’s advertising accounts (a dashboard where you do Facebook ads for different businesses that could be owned by you or other people) |
| Ad Manager | Gives a bird’s-view of your ad accounts and lets you manage each one of them |
| Ad Account | Where you manage ads for your multiple businesses or clients (each business or client has one ad account) |
| Ad Campaign | Manages the type of ad you are running (like an ad to generate traffic, to get likes, to get engagement, etc.) |
| Ad Set | The audience being targeted |
| Ad | The visual and textual representation of the ad |
Your business can have multiple ad accounts, campaigns, ad sets, and ads running concurrently.
This is how ad agencies are able to have several ads running for multiple clients without mixing them up.
Creating ads
Use business.facebook.com to set up a business manager account.
Use your personal Facebook account to log in (creating a new one just for ads can get you banned for duplicate accounts). Fill in your business details including your website (if you don’t have a website put in a link to your Facebook profile).
In the Business Manager dashboard, configure business settings by adding profiles of people who might help run ads (employees) and add a Facebook page.
Also, add an ad account as necessary. There are in-built guides for filling in all the information.
Go to the ad manager tab and from there you get access to manage ad campaigns, ad sets, and ads. Set up the payment settings first and then you will be ready to create ads.
Ad campaign
This helps you decide what you want to achieve via the advert you are running.
There are many options including traffic generation, engagements – likes, shares, comments, app installations by new users, views of videos, sales lead generations, etc.
An important anecdote under the ad campaign which you need to research further is Facebook Pixel. It helps with monitoring and retargeting.
Name the campaign and set the budget to anything less than Kshs. 500 a day at first. You can later increase the budget if the ad is achieving its goal well.
If you are setting this for the first time, you will be redirected to set up an ad account and then you can move on to ad sets.
Ad sets
Think critically about the people you want to reach and what their characteristics look like. Ad sets can be competitive because several companies are trying to reach the same people. Think smart to save money.
So, for example, instead of targeting car accessories to everyone in Nairobi with a car, direct the ad to people who live in particular areas where you definitely know they must have a car.
Research further on how to play around with audience demographics for the best results. The simple tips are to think who may buy your product and why.
Also, focus on very specific niches with less than three similar interests.
Avoid very broad ads that have no specific audience because you will not learn who is the best target market for your next ad. On ad placement, stick with the new feed – remove all the rest.
The Ad Itself
Name the advert and follow the guides to create an ad.
You can turn your Facebook posts into ads but for generating good sales, use video ads for products. (Videos easily and quickly showcase the product).
A lot of people do not put in the work in creating the actual ad and this leads to a waste of money and negative attitudes toward Facebook ads.
It is recommended to use tools such as Adobe Premiere, InVideo, and the rest to make a good and short clip.
Or pay someone to do it for you – trust me, it goes a long way in generating sales. If you decide to use a still image, make a striking and attention-seeking image.
Like those thumbnails, you see on YouTube. Whatever you do, make it striking.
There is a rule of the thumb in making the ad. It needs to have an attention-grabber, a what, a why, and a call to action. For example, if selling sneakers, the ad copy (text) could be as below;
| Attention grabber | Feet on Fleek! |
| The What | Our sneakers look good like that. |
| The Why | Because we understand that style is everything |
| The Call to action | Introducing the new street collection…..look good every day |
So, it will read;
Feet on Fleek!
Our sneakers look good like that because we understand that style is everything
Introducing the new street collection…..look good every day
(a striking picture or video of the shoe)
That’s enough to get the ad going. Remember you are working with an almost 2 seconds window of getting the attention of someone scrolling through Facebook.
There is a lot more that goes into the theatrics of an online ad but attention-grabbing is at the center of it all. Sometimes you can use a sense of urgency to get customers such as with “limited time offers” and “while stock lasts” slogans.
Use the headline to also grab attention and the description to offer a little more information. For instance, our advert above could have a heading of “Join the sneaker fam” and a description of “Free deliveries within Nairobi”.
Run the advert for at least 3 days before optimizing it or deleting it if it isn’t working. This is the same reason why at the start the ad should have a budget of less than Kshs. 500.
Use the Ad account dashboard to monitor the metrics of the ad and note down the details that are working e.g. who are clicking the most, which age is interested etc. This information is important in optimizing the ad as you scale up.
Also, make a habit of looking at what other businesses like yours are doing in terms of adverts and using that as a template for your own business. Chances are that if they have been running an ad for more than a week then it is working and would work for you too,
Ad budget
You need money to make money. This golden rule applies to Facebook marketing as well. Facebook charges you for CPC and CPM because these will help you get more money. The Cost per Click (CPC) global average is $ 0.50 and the Cost per thousand (CPM) global average is $5.20
A lot of small-scale investors fail to realize that it is the extra sacrifice of ad spending that could differentiate your business from a thousand others like it on Facebook.
Imagine how many Facebook pages are selling sneakers in Kenya. How many of these will create a simple ad with a still image? A lot of them!
And how many will take Kshs. 20,000 and spend it on a better video advert that will run countrywide? Probably very few.
This Kshs. 20,000 is what enables you to hire a professional graphic designer for a good image or video and pay for an ad to run on Facebook for a few weeks. Then how many sneaker pages will do this better advert every few weeks?
Now think of how many more sales the page that runs better adverts will get from their spending.
Caveat
Despite the blueprint above, a lot of ad-related information is circumstantial and that is why people hire professional digital marketers.
A poorly implemented ad will cost you money and fail to achieve its goal.
Since most small businesses do not have advertising budgets to start with, it is advisable to research successful pages that run a business similar to yours and find which strategy they are using for adverts.
Learn a few skills and tools to get you started on creating your own ads and maybe somewhere down the line you will make enough returns to do better adverts.
Either way, do not ignore the power of Facebook adverts.
