How to Run Facebook Ads: A Beginner's Guide

Facebook Ads let you put your business in front of highly specific audiences: local homeowners, people interested in your services, those who have already visited your website. Done right, they are one of the most cost-effective forms of advertising available to small businesses.

Here is a beginner's guide to running Facebook Ads without wasting your budget.

Understanding the campaign structure

A Facebook campaign has three levels. The campaign sets the objective — what you want to achieve: traffic, leads, purchases or awareness. The ad set defines the audience and budget. The ad is the creative — the image or video and copy people actually see.

Getting the objective right is the most important choice. Choosing "Reach" when you want leads, for example, will spread your budget across many people with no interest in converting.

Targeting your ideal customer

Facebook's targeting options are extensive: location, age, interests, behaviours, life events, and job titles. For a local business, targeting by postcode and radius alongside interests relevant to your service is usually the best starting point.

Once you have results, Custom Audiences (people who have visited your website or given you their email) and Lookalike Audiences (similar people to your best customers) tend to be the most efficient targeting options of all.

Budget, creative, and measuring results

Start with a modest daily budget and test two different ad versions against each other — different headline, different image, same audience. Run them for at least seven to ten days before drawing conclusions. The metric that matters depends on your goal: cost per click for traffic, cost per lead for enquiries, return on ad spend for sales.

We set up, manage and optimise Facebook Ads campaigns for Norfolk businesses, so your budget works as hard as possible from day one.