How to Create a Successful Facebook Advertising Campaign

1. What does advertising on Facebook bring?
2. How do you start with Facebook Ads?
3. The meaning behind the full-funnel strategy (an example)
4. The funnel summarized briefly
5. Further Facebook Guidelines
6. What Facebook Ads format is suitable for what?
7. What role does the algorithm play in Facebook Ads and why is the learning phase so important?
8. How long should you run a Facebook campaign?
9. How do successful Facebook ads differ from unsuccessful ones?
10. How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook?
11. How big should the target group be in a Facebook campaign?
12. Which tools are best suited for social media campaigns?
13. Conclusion on creating Facebook Ads 

Facebook ads are also a powerful tool in 2022 to achieve your business goals - whether it's brand awareness, lead generation or product sales. Facebook alone is used monthly by 2.93 billion people actively and thus has the largest user base of all social media platforms. Facebook also has the highest data quality, the best ad manager and the most advanced algorithm.

But the competition on Facebook is high. Therefore, it's important that you understand the topic of ads on Facebook correctly. Because only if you approach Facebook advertising efficiently, will it be worth it for you. And that's exactly what this Facebook Ads guide is about. We explain step-by-step, how best to create a Facebook campaign, what it brings you and what you absolutely have to pay attention to.

At OMR Reviews you will also find other exciting articles about Social Media Advertising in general. But also, how to create a Social Media Campaign and what a successful Social Media Concept looks like. These articles help you to understand why this area is so important and how you can transfer the topic to your Facebook advertising campaigns.

What does advertising on Facebook bring?

Facebook ads are ideal for quickly and easily winning new customers or making your brand more famous. Even if many believe that Facebook is dead, if you look at the growing user numbers and activities, you will quickly realize that this is not the case. Your target group is most likely on Facebook. With the right Facebook Ads strategy, you can reach them, because on Facebook you can narrow down your target groups very precisely (or have them automatically narrowed down) and thus have superb targeting.

It's true that users on Facebook are getting older. Your advantage is that older people have higher purchasing power. Combined with the relatively easy handling of the Facebook ads manager, placing Facebook Ads is very attractive. Why? Because you can place ads on Facebook and Instagram at the same time with one tool. By the way: Instagram can still reach young users very well. 

In short: With Facebook Ads (or good social media advertising in general) and the right strategy, you effectively reach your target group and can quickly achieve your business goals. That's why it's worthwhile for you to read this guide to Facebook advertising.

How do you start with Facebook Ads?

Facebook Ads for beginners starts with understanding the classic funnel. This is also called a full funnel or often a 3-phase funnel. It's essential that you understand how this funnel works. It forms the foundation for many successful advertising strategies.

The 3 phases of this funnel are:

• Phase 1: Awareness (Awareness)
• Phase 2: Consideration (Consideration)
• Phase 3: Conversion (Sale/Lead)

Visualization of a classic full-funnel for Facebook Ads.

The meaning behind the full-funnel strategy (an example)

The goal when creating Facebook Ads is that you achieve your business goals. However, it's difficult to sell a new product that no one knows. Therefore, ideally, you start with an awareness phase to make your product more famous. You can do this, for example, with a well-designed video that you play to your defined target group with Facebook ads. 

In the next phase, you create a target group of those who watched your video e.g. up to 75% and thus showed an initial interest. Your target group is now much smaller than before and it's very likely that these users have an interest in your product. But, even they are not necessarily ready to buy - especially for new products or brands. Instead, you should give your new target group more information, by directing them, for example, through Facebook ads to a landing page.

In the last phase, you create a target group of those who visited your landing page. Again, your target group has now become significantly smaller. But these could have a serious buying interest. Now it's time for you to place ads that aim for your target group to buy your product.

The funnel summarized briefly

The goal of the funnel is for you to pre-qualify your target group and reduce it to the users where the probability is greatest that they will buy your product.

This is however very simplified and can be in reality, depending on the campaign and customers, then be more complex. However, you should now understand why a funnel makes sense. The funnel serves you primarily so that you are able to optimally narrow down your target group in several phases of their customer journey - so as to properly target your Facebook Ads.

Further Facebook Guidelines

If you want to dive deeper into the topic of Facebook and Instagram Advertising, feel free to check out the Facebook & Instagram Advertising – Professional Guide.

What Facebook Ads format is suitable for what?

An important element in designing Facebook ads is the selection of the right format. This depends on your campaign goal, placements, as well as the funnel phase. We'll show you the most important formats. Detailed and current information on the formats can be found in the Guide to Facebook Ads by Meta (Facebook Business).

Video Ads

Video ads are particularly suitable in the awareness phase because they don't cost much more than image ads and at the same time work better - since videos are perceived as more interesting by users. For video ads, you need to make sure that they have to work with and without sound - subtitles are required. For mobile feeds, a ratio of 9:16 is recommended, for desktop a ratio of 1:1.

Image Ads

Normal images are best suited in the conversion phase. Your target group should now have a serious buying interest. You can also run video ads, but these are comparatively expensive in the conversion phase and don't offer enough added value for that. Image ads should always be 1:1, as this works optimally on smartphones and desktop. Only for awareness you can use a ratio of 4:5.

Instant Experiences

An instant experience is the best alternative to a landing page. It's created natively in Meta's ads manager and can contain a lot of information and elements - like a landing page. Such an experience is characterized by the fact that it loads very quickly and offers many possibilities, while users continue to stay on the platform. Outbound clicks within the instant experience are of course possible and make sense in certain places. Use cases for an instant experience are explanation-needy and high-priced products with many features (cars, travels etc.).

Carousel Ads

Carousel ads are ads with several images or videos. Use them to tell a story, show several products at once, or for a funny effect, by letting the creatives complement each other and can be put together like a puzzle (e.g. Picture A can seamlessly attach to Picture B or similar).

Lead Ads

With Lead Ads you can integrate forms into your ads without having to direct your target group to an external target group. This is particularly useful for surveys or in B2B and offers users the advantage that they don't have to leave the platform. This makes life easier for your target group and significantly increases the leads.

Dynamic Product Ads (Catalog Sales)

With Dynamic Product Ads you can connect your inventory management system or product catalog to Facebook. After you have made some settings to the design of the ads, you can get started. Set the target groups and the system creates automated ads for you. Using Dynamic Product Ads, for example, shopping cart abandoners can be targeted again with exactly the products that were in their shopping cart. Also, buyers can be persuaded to make another purchase with additional products, for example. With Dynamic Product Ads, you have maximum advertising effectiveness with little effort.

How can you create a Facebook ad? 

Before you start with the step-by-step guide for Facebook Ads, you need an Facebook Business Manager account. Then, you'll need to add your company name and create an Ad account.

In the next step, you should integrate the Facebook Pixel onto your website. The Facebook Pixel measures the behavior of Facebook users on your website across devices and sends this information back to Facebook. This way you can measure who has bought from you and optimize your ad campaign based on real data.

Facebook Ads are divided into three levels:

• Campaign (contains all ad groups)
• Ad group (contains all ads)
• Ad

Step 1 – Create Campaign

In the first step, you create a campaign.

Step 2 – Define Campaign Goal

In the second step, you have to choose the campaign goal.

Now you have to give your campaign a meaningful name. We also recommend that you activate the Advantage campaign budget and set your lifetime budget at campaign level. This way the algorithm can better manage your budget. Alternatively, you can also manage the budget at ad group level.

Finalization Facebook Campaign

And with that you have created your Facebook campaign. Now follows the creation of ad groups.

Step 3 – Create Ad Group

In the third step, it's the turn of the ad groups. These include:

• Traffic
• Dynamic ad design
• Your target group
• Placement of your ads (feed, stories, reels, in-stream etc.)
• The schedule (and possibly the budget)

First of all, you give the ad group a name and set some basic settings, such as the timetable and when the ad group should run.

Traffic

Step 4 – Create Ad Group

In the fourth step, it's about the target group. A target group can be formed in several ways. You can filter by interests and behavior with Facebook data and manually build target groups from it. But if you want to design Facebook Ads properly, you should definitely test Custom Audience.

Custom Audiences can either be created from the data of the Facebook Pixel, through interactions of users, through the Facebook app SDK – or by uploading a .csv file (e.g. from your CRM).

Or you use Lookalike Audiences. This is a function in which you find Facebook users who are very similar to your Custom Audience. Lookalikes are however only sensible if the Source Audience (i.e. your custom audience) is of high quality and works well.

Create ad groups

Step 5 – Determine Placement

In the fifth step, it's about where you want to have your Facebook Ads placed. You can let the algorithm decide this automatically (recommended especially at the beginning) or you can set it manually.

Manual Placement

Facebook Marketplace

Step 6 – Design Ads

In the sixth step, it's about the ads and how you create them. These steps are very well marked in Facebook Ad Manager, so we'll save ourselves screenshots here.

Common Ad Formats are:

• Image Ads
• Video Ads
• Lead Ads
• Carousel Ads
• Instant Experiences
• Dynamic Product Ads

Step 7 – Analysis and Optimization of Your Campaign

In the seventh and last step, you need to keep an eye on your campaign, analyze it and optimize it based on data and always possibly adjust it. Look at what works and what doesn't. Also understand the why behind it.

With your newly gained understanding, you adapt your campaign and can start the next campaign directly with more experience. Only those who optimize regularly will be able to run successful advertising campaigns on Facebook. But: Do not make any changes that are not supported by data. If you make too many or too frequent changes to the campaign, you reset the learning phase of the algorithm each time - it's extremely important to complete this.

In another article on OMR Reviews, you will find helpful information on the topic of monitoring and a listing with helpful Social Media Monitoring tools that make your work easier.

What role does the algorithm play in Facebook Ads and why is the learning phase so important?

Understanding the algorithm is important if you want to create Facebook Ads.

Roughly speaking, the Facebook algorithm tries to optimize your campaigns so that you can achieve your desired results as cost-effectively as possible. At the same time, it tries to show only relevant ads to the users on Facebook and Instagram.

For this to work smoothly, the algorithm needs a certain time for every new Facebook campaign, which is called the learning phase. On average, this takes 1-2 weeks - depending on how fast the algorithm achieves the necessary 50 campaign results (e.g. 50 conversions, 50 leads, 50 page views etc.). The results must be achieved in a time window of 7 days in order for the algorithm to learn effectively. In this phase, a lot is tested and your costs can be significantly higher or lower than expected.

If you want to successfully advertise on Facebook, you must not disrupt this learning phase under any circumstances. This will otherwise be reset and take longer. You can disrupt the learning phase by for example changing the creative or the text or adjusting the target group. Significant changes after the learning phase can lead to the learning process starting again.

This graphic shows how the algorithm tries to find the cheapest CPA for you. If you make optimizations during the learning phase, the learning phase will be reset and thus take longer. And this will cost you more budget in the end.

How long should you run a Facebook campaign?

Facebook Ads campaigns should run for at least 2, preferably even 4 weeks, so that the algorithm gets the chance to leave the learning phase and function effectively. But it also greatly depends on your goals. If you're running a conversion campaign with a lot of budget, a few weeks are enough. However, if you're running a full-funnel campaign, you should plan around 6 weeks so that users remember your brand and have time to deal with your offer, consider it and finally buy it.

How do successful Facebook ads differ from unsuccessful ones?

Creating ads on Facebook is easy. Successful ads on Facebook are a bit more difficult. There are a few common reasons why a Facebook Ad doesn't work.

Reasons why your Facebook ads might not perform well could be:

• You've chosen the wrong campaign goal
• Your creative doesn't appeal to your target group
• Your creative doesn't match the advertised product
• Your ad looks unprofessional overall
• Your landing page is too slow (penalized by Meta)
• You didn't leave the learning phase alone and did too much “optimizing”

Nevertheless, it always has to be checked in the individual case why your Facebook ads are not running well. And remember: During the learning phase, the results and costs can be worse than expected.

How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook?

This depends on several factors and cannot be said generally. Some of these factors are:

• Your industry
• The month
• Target group and target group size
• Campaign goal
• Competition
• Current brand awareness
• Inhouse, freelancer or agency

For example, if you're running Facebook Ads in December for an e-commerce start-up, it will cost you significantly more due to the Christmas business than in June. If, however, you're selling swimwear, you will have higher advertising costs in summer.

To provide some concrete figures: If you're running a classic 3-phase funnel strategy, i.e. awareness, consideration and conversion, then you should have a budget of at least 50,000 euros. Why? In order for an awareness phase to make sense at all, your Facebook campaign must run for a while, about 4 weeks, and be shown to many users - so that they also remember your brand or your product. That just requires a certain budget, otherwise you're just burning your money senselessly.

If you're promoting a known product, such as a smartphone, then 2 weeks of awareness phase is enough. But if you want to promote a completely new product with Facebook Ads, then you should plan for the awareness phase 4-6 weeks, so that later sale makes sense.

Based on our experience, Facebook and Instagram ads have an average CPM between 3.00 € and 25.00 € - depending on the campaign goal. Optimizing for awareness typically gets you a cheaper CPM. With lower-funnel goals, like leads, it's on average more expensive to reach users (CPM).

Basically, the more active your competition is, the more expensive it is for you to advertise on Facebook.

How big should the target group be in a Facebook campaign?

With Facebook Ads campaigns, your budget is crucial. Because the more budget you have, the larger your target group can be. A higher budget leads to the algorithm being able to collect more data, learn better and optimize more efficiently for you. But, if your target group is too large, then the scatter loss is also higher.

If your target group is too small, the Facebook algorithm can learn slower or only to a limited extent and therefore not work efficiently enough. The scatter loss, on the other hand, is lower. So it's important that you hit the sweet spot. You should only make target group restrictions if it makes sense. If you're selling make-up for women, for example, it makes sense that your target group consists only of women. If in doubt, leave the target group larger and trust the algorithm.

And even if you have worked out personas, you should rather choose broad target groups and trust the algorithm. The millions of data that Facebook has about its own users are much more precise than personas that you have created based on a few participants.

As a rough rule of thumb, we recommend:

• A lot of budget? Broad target group (restrictions optional)
• Little budget? Specific target group with sensible restrictions

Facebook Target Group Estimate

Fortunately, you can see in the Facebook Business Manager whether your target group tends to be too broad or too specific. Here, your own experience values are of course also advantageous.

Our tip: If there's enough budget, start with a large target group and then further qualify in several steps. A classic 3-phase funnel (Awareness, Consideration, Conversion) is suitable for this.

Which tools are best suited for social media campaigns?

To make your life easier when managing Facebook marketing campaigns, there are some helpful tools. Take a look at these Social Media Suites to evaluate which ones you need.

We've put together a small preselection of the most popular tools for you:

• Hootsuite
• Canva Pro
• Later
• Sprinklr
• Facelift
• Emplifi
• Falcon.io
• brandwatch

At OMR Reviews, you'll find user reviews based on which you can select a suitable Social Media Suites for you and your requirements.

Conclusion on creating Facebook Ads 

Advertising on Facebook is also a powerful marketing tool in 2022, for among other purposes increasing your brand or product awareness, generating leads, gaining new customers, or strengthening relationships with existing customers. Even if your competition is high and more and more companies are discovering Facebook paid marketing for themselves, it's a worthwhile step to learn Facebook Advertising and use it for yourself.

We could now tell you in detail about Custom Audiences, Lookalikes and Retargeting. Or give a comprehensive insight into the incredibly good reporting of Facebook. But that would go beyond the scope. This Facebook Ads guide is mainly about the basics: Setting up and running Facebook Ads successfully.

Always remember: Your campaign is only successful if you achieve your business goals. You only achieve this if you reach your target group. Always focus on these two things - not on recognition from the scene or awards. We wish you great success with your Facebook Ad campaigns.