Your Facebook Advertising Cheat Sheet

Why advertise on Facebook? Well, your mom uses it. In fact, 2 billion people use Facebook every month, and it’s one of the biggest sources for day-to-day information and media consumption in the world. Nbd.

Setting up

1. Open a business account with Facebook

You’ll need a business name and blurb, a call to action (what you want people to do when they visit your page), and a few photos. You can also convert a non-business page into a business page.

2. Connect to your Shopify account

Go to your Shopify Admin and add Facebook as a new Sales Channel. They’ll need some time to approve your store. You can allow people to check out directly within Facebook using the Shop feature, or direct them to your Shopify store.

3. Set up Pixel

Pixel is a piece of code that lets you track information about how people are using your site, and then target those people later with Facebook ads.

Opening a business page with Facebook is free, but ads cost depending on how many people see them, how prominently they’re placed and how long they run.

Tip: Take a look at Facebook’s advertising policies to make sure you’re following the rules

Create an ad

Start by opening the Facebook Ads Manager connected with your account, and using their tools to create a new ad.

Types of Ads

There are so many kinds of ads you can put on Facebook, and it can be hard to choose one before you know what works for your business.

Tip: You can see examples of ads from any industry right here.

Here are a few important types of ads.

Domain ads click through to your website landing page and advertise your brand generally

Offer ads give the viewer a specific discount code with an expiry that they can use on your online store. These are generally good for people who are already familiar with your brand and need an extra push.

Carousel ads show a couple of photos or designs with specific products on them. Facebook automatically detects which are the most popular ones (the most clicked-on) and puts those images first.

Lead ads help you get a greater number of people to sign up for your mailing list by asking viewers to put their credentials in without leaving Facebook. You can put a special offer that includes a signup button, and your viewer could put their email address in, plus you’ll get a bit more demographic info from Facebook.

Video ads are becoming a more and more popular way to consume media. You can get loads of other information, too, like how long people are watching your video (and retargeting those that seem most interested).

Dynamic product ads are those that use data from website tracking (remember the bit about the pixel?) to retarget people. That means someone who’s already been on your website will be shown a very specific ad based on their past behaviour (viewed product, abandoned cart, etc).

Tip: Create a mockup of an ad and see how it would look in different formats using Facebook’s tool here.

Building audiences

This is really where the magic happens. The whole point of advertising on Facebook is that it has so many users and those users have so much information about what they like. With Facebook advertising, you shouldn’t be shooting in the dark and hoping you’re reaching people who might have a vague interest in your product. You should instead be building targeted audiences that have a high probability of being interested in your product.

When you set up a Facebook ad, you can have it sent to a specific custom audience that you create, based on interests, behaviour and demographics. Even better, once you set up a custom audience that you know works well, Facebook can create a Lookalike audience that has similar traits.

Start with the Audience Insights tool

This tool can help you learn about what people like, how they spend their time, and what they spend their money on. The audience insights tool is good to play around with when you’re starting any marketing strategy.

Broad vs Narrow

Should you look at everyone who likes ice cream, or only people who have attended a Ben and Jerry’s Free Cone Day? It’s not always easy to know, and how narrow you go is often really determined by what your advertising budget is. Once you start building an audience, you should aim to have about 10,000 - 100,000 depending on your budget and how much A/B testing you’re doing.

Interests-based targeting

You can target based on the things that people like, such as page or businesses they’ve “liked”, events they attended, etc. This is a good way to start - by looking for either your competitors or complementary brands that go well with yours.

Behaviour-based targeting

This kind of information can be extremely valuable to you, and includes things like “people who have made a purchase through Facebook in the past 3 months” or “people who are the administrator of a Facebook page”. You can narrow based on the apps that people use, whether or not they’re traveling or thinking of traveling, certain life events, level of education and what kind of computer they have. These kinds of details can get you to learn more about the type of people you want to target. Learn more about behaviour targeting here.

Demographic and location-based targeting

You can also filter by location, gender (there are 50 categories of gender), ethnicity affiliation, languages and age range. Be sure that if you’re making special offers like free shipping that you aren’t targeting to people outside your shipping zone.

P.S. Want to know what kinds of things Facebook can target? It gets pretty deep. Know anyone who is a friend of someone newly-engaged, likes organic food, has gone to a music festival in the last six months and has a tattoo? Facebook knows thousands. Check out this master list.

Some advanced stuff

Retargeting is an important concept that focuses on the idea that it is way cheaper to get previous customers than new ones, and that loyal customers spend more than first-timers. Facebook has some useful tools for retargeting that work if you’ve connected your Shopify store, such as being able to identify people who have abandoned carts or spent a while browsing particular collections. Two important steps for getting your retargeting game strong is setting up the Pixel and using Dynamic Product Ads, which automatically changes the photo, carousel, or video you’re promoting depending on what they are most likely to be interested in.

Conversational commerce

Conversational commerce refers to using social media platforms, like Facebook Messenger, to talk directly to potential customers and help them find what they are interested in. It takes some extra time and manpower, but is an extremely effective part of a Facebook marketing strategy.

Paying for ads based on objectives

Different ads have different objectives, and Facebook lets you pay based on what you hope to do. Once you set an “objective” for your ad, you’ll set a budget, and Facebook will advertise until it’s hit that budget.

Here are the kinds of objectives you can have

Clicks to Website - Pay each time someone clicks your ad and visits your website.

Website Conversions - Pay for each conversion on your website. This is tracked using the Facebook Pixel

Page Post Engagement - Pay for how many times your post is liked, commented or shared

Page Likes - Pay for additional Likes your page has from ads.

App Installs - Pay for each time your mobile app is installed based on your ad

App Engagement - Pay when users interact with a specific part of your app.

Offer Claims - Pay to promote a discount or deal for your store.

Local Awareness - Pay to show your ad to users near you.

Event Responses - Pay based on how many new event responses you get

Video Views - Pay based on how many people viewed your video ad

Dynamic Product Ads - Pay to promote relevant products to users that have already browsed your ecommerce website.

What’s next?

Want to keep reading? Take a look at this manual from Facebook and Shopify about using the two services together. We’re happy to answer any questions you have about getting the most out of Facebook ads, and can help you get started with custom marketing advice. Talk to Elkfox today.