Social media is an easy way to interact with your audience and to grow your following but sometimes it can seem like a tedious process.

If you want to take control and try to speed up the rate at which you obtain leads or make sales, try using Facebook Ads to increase your reach.

Facebook Ads are created in the Ad Manager and you’ll need to know the demographics of your target market as well as how much you want to spend and how long you want the ad to run.

But first, Facebook wants you to identify your ad objective and you have about 12 options to choose from.

Next is setting up the ad.

Choose the Facebook Page you want to promote and then choose the demographics. If you look at the gauge in the right margin, you’ll see a Potential Reach number that probably is in the millions.

Who wouldn’t want millions of new leads, right? Don’t be fooled. Of those millions of names, how many would actually be QUALIFIED leads?

Do you think you’ll make many sales from a million names if they can’t afford your products? Knowing your target market demographics will whittle down the potential numbers but they will more accurately match your market’s qualifying traits.

How to Target Fans of OTHER Facebook Pages

Yes, this is really a thing! And no, you’re not stealing audience members from other brands; you’re merely introducing yourself to those followers in hopes of winning them over to your brand.

After you enter your own demographic information, click on the Interests field and start to enter the name of the Facebook Page you want to target. If the page has enough fans, it will likely show up in the dropdown box as a match. If a match doesn’t come up as you type in a page name, it’s not available to be targeted.

When it comes to setting your budget, you can start as low as $1 per day, but as with most things, you really get what you pay for. A smaller budget will reach fewer people, and running an ad for fewer days can also reach fewer people.

Figure out how much you can realistically budget on this campaign then decide how many days you want the ad to run.

Tips to Designing Effective Facebook Ads

You may know that Facebook has a laundry list rules about anything and everything on their platform and how you should design an ad is no exception.

Your Facebook Ads should have an image, and you are limited to how much text you have as an overlay. Facebook’s magic number is less than twenty percent text on your actual graphic, so follow those guidelines, so your ad performs better.

This twenty percent rule does NOT include the body copy of your ad (which appears above your graphic) only the text on the actual image. Exceptions to the twenty percent rule are book or magazine covers, album covers, etc. which have text printed on them. You may need to request a manual review if this is the case.

Also, be sure you have the rights to use an image! Your best bet is always to use your own photo or purchase a stock image. Grabbing images from Google Images is not legal in most cases and very well could be copyright infringement.

Facebook Ad campaign

If you’re looking to collect new leads or sell your newest product, running a Facebook Ad campaign can be a worthwhile investment.

Once you’re clear on who your market is, you simply follow the steps as Facebook has laid out. Once your ad is running, you will want to log in to your Ad Manager to analyze the performance results. Use both the data Facebook gives you and how many actual leads and sales your ad has brought in.

Using all of this data, you can decide on your return on your ad investment is worth and how to better improve your ads over time.

If you need help with this let me know.