How to run effective Facebook ads yourself , reach the right target customers and create valuable conversions? This is probably the question of many Digital Marketers and business owners when promoting products and services. Don’t worry, check out the steps to run Facebook ads below!

What is Facebook Ads ?

Facebook Ads are  display ads on Facebook . These ads allow you to reach more than 2 billion people who use Facebook every month. You don’t need to be an expert to advertise on Facebook. Create and run campaigns with simple self-service tools, then track performance with easy-to-read reports. (Source: Facebook )

3 popular types of Facebook Ads

Here are 3 popular Facebook ad formats:

Basic advertising

Basic Facebook ads are ads that typically appear in two main locations on the user interface:

• On the right corner of the computer interface: This type of ad is compact in size, including a title (up to 25 characters), description (up to 90 characters) and image (100×72 pixels).
• “More” section on mobile interface: Similar to desktop ads, basic mobile ads are also small in size and include similar elements: headline, description, and image.

Advantage:

• Simple, easy to create.
• Cost savings.
• Suitable for many advertising purposes, highly effective.

Sponsored

Similar to basic ads, this ad format can appear simultaneously in the right corner or on the News Feed of Facebook users. If appearing on the News Feed, sponsored ads will have the text “Sponsored” under the Fanpage name.

Advantage:

• Reach potential customers effectively.
• Increase brand awareness.
• Attract customers to visit website, fanpage.

Suggested Post

This type of ad only appears on users’ News Feeds, and is recommended by Facebook through Fanpages you have liked or videos you have viewed on that Fanpage through Facebook Watch and Reels. This ad appears with the words “Suggested for you” or “Suggested” under the business Fanpage name.

Advantage:

• Increase natural interaction.
• Create a good impression of the brand.
• Attract potential customers with similar interests.

8 Popular Facebook Advertising Forms

Facebook offers you a wide range of advertising options. With this variety, you can choose the one that best suits your needs, budget, and target audience behavior.

• Facebook Leads Ads: Allows users to sign up to receive information directly through the ad without being redirected to another website.
• Carousel Ads: Display an overview of products with images, product names, and prices, helping online shop owners provide users with the most comprehensive overview of the product.
• Boosted Page Posts: Helps advertisers set up timing, increase display performance, and increase reach to target customer groups for a selected post.
• Dynamic Product Ads: Recommend products based on Facebook users’ interests and search data to boost order placement rates.
• Feature Videos (featured video ads): Introduce the shop owner’s products/services through high-quality videos, thereby quickly increasing brand awareness.
• Event Responsive (event advertising): Facebook supports shop/business owners to create free events to advertise products/services, affirming brand position on the platform.
• Domain Ads (Facebook Click to Web ads): These ads link directly to the website you want to direct customers to.
• Page Likes Ads: Facebook suggests invitations to like the Fanpage of a business or individual, helping to increase brand awareness and interaction.

Prepare before running Facebook Ads

Before successfully setting up a Facebook advertising campaign, you should consider the following 3 factors:

• Ads account:  allows you to create targeted ads that use demographics, interests, and behaviors to reach your ideal target audience. You can also set budgets to manage spending and track the performance of your ads, including conversions and remarketing efforts.
• Fanpage: Fanpage is the “stage” for you to introduce products, services and reach potential customers. Make sure your Fanpage is full of information, attractive and makes a good impression on viewers before starting an advertising campaign.
• Payment method: To pay for advertising costs, you need to prepare a debit card or credit card (Debit, Mastercard, …). You can also use PayPal to pay safely and conveniently.

Instructions on how to advertise effectively on Facebook 

After entering Facebook Ads Manager , please follow these steps.

Create an advertising campaign

Click on the “Promote Post” button on the post you want to promote. Alternatively, you can also visit the Facebook for Business page and click “Create Ad”.

Select a campaign objective 

You should choose a campaign goal that matches the goals your business is aiming for. Here are the specific steps to set Facebook campaign goals:

• Step 1: Determine your goals in advance when running ads.
• Step 2: Go to “Select campaign goals” and choose appropriate goals such as: awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, app advertising, sales.
• Step 3: Click “Continue”, then Facebook will help you choose the optimal advertising format and the exact bid price.

Set up account information and target audience

• Step 1: Fill in information to verify your account such as currency, country, region, etc.
• Step 2: Fill in information about the target audience such as: age, location (place of residence), gender, language, etc.

Selecting the target audience will have four options:

• Advantage+ Audience: Based on people who have liked your Fanpage and automatically adjusts the outreach time.
• Targeting: Set your own audience for your Facebook ads to reach.
• People who like your Page: Ads will target customers who have liked your Fanpage.
• People who like your Page and people like them: Ads target both your Page likes and non-likes who share similar behaviors.

For each description of your target audience, Facebook will provide an estimate of the number of potential customers your advertising strategy can attract via a chart displayed on the right side of the page.

Set your budget and ad run dates

If your choice is “Daily Budget” then you will have 2 corresponding options, which are:

• Run ad groups continuously starting today.
• Set start and end dates.

If your choice is “Budget Package”, you are required to set the start and end dates for the campaign. After completing the ad schedule setup, click the “Continue” button to go to the next steps. In the “Budget” section, you will have 2 options:

• Daily budget: This is the average amount you will pay for an ad group. Facebook will dynamically distribute ads according to the spending level you set. Each day’s spending level will be different, maybe today it is 80,000 VND but the next day it is 120,000 VND.
• Lifetime budget: This is the amount you’ll pay for the entire duration of your ad. A lump sum budget works similarly. The difference is that instead of choosing a daily spend, you’ll calculate a spend for your entire ad campaign.

Determine ad placement

Typically, ads will appear in the news feed, right column of Facebook, Instagram, Instant Articles, Audience Network or below Videos. Depending on the purpose of the campaign, you can choose the appropriate appearance location. For example:

• If you want to increase brand awareness, you should let your ads appear on both Facebook and Instagram.
• If you want to increase views or app installs, set up ads to appear on Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network,…

For placing ads on Facebook, you will have 2 options: “Advantage+ Ad Placement” and “Manual Ad Placement”. Specifically:

• Advantage+ Ad Placement (Automatic Ad Placement): Helps your ad to be placed in the most optimal and suitable position.
• Manual Placements: Lets you customize “Device Type” (All Devices, Mobile Only, or Desktop Only) and “Platform” (Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, or Messenger).

Please check the category on the right to choose the advertising position you want, you can also uncheck if you find that position is not suitable. Facebook advertising forms will have a demo section displayed for users to preview.

Select payment method

Some payment methods Facebook supports in Vietnam are as follows:

• Credit or debit card: VISA, Mastercard, Debit.
• Momo e-wallet.
• VNPAY.

Facebook Ad Preview

Select “Preview Ad” to see how your ad will appear. Once you have created your campaign, all you have to do is wait for Facebook to review it. After a short time, your ad will be automatically delivered.

After completing the step of setting up ads on FB, you can collect quality leads. Besides, you should build an effective content strategy for your fanpage, apply the process of Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, B2B Marketing through the information of the collected leads.

Track and measure performance

To run an effective Facebook Ads campaign, you need to track and measure it regularly. You should take advantage of the dashboard of data related to your ad campaigns in your manager. You can measure the variation of costs and performance between each campaign or ad group. Moreover, you can also track results for all audiences or just specific audiences.

Turn Facebook ads on, off, or delete them

If during the process of running Facebook ads, you feel that the effectiveness is not as expected, you can delete or turn off the ad. Here is how to turn off the ad:

• Step 1: Access the “Ads Manager” section.
• Step 2: Click on “Campaign”, go to “Ads” or “Ad Groups”.
• Step 3: Continue to click on the ad activity status switch button to turn them off.

To delete a Facebook ad, you will do the following:

• Step 1: Access the “Ads Manager” section.
• Step 2: Click Campaign, go to Ads or Ad Groups.
• Step 3: Select the ad you want to delete. Click the Delete icon to delete the ad.

Experience in running Facebook ads without being blocked

Below, Tsunami Innovation will share with you experiences in running cheap Facebook ads yourself that still bring high efficiency.

• Facebook’s advertising policy will limit the distribution of images with text exceeding 20% ​​with extremely high bids. So you don’t need to make the content too cumbersome, and design eye-catching images for viewers.
• Set a daily budget to increase advertising effectiveness. At the same time, choose the golden time frame, suitable for the behavior of target customers to reach effectively.
• During the Ads running process, targeting the audience too specifically will narrow the audience size, and the cost will also increase very high. Tsunami Innovation recommends that you keep the audience size at around 500 thousand or more.
• Facebook charges for each impression based on “relevance,” and the more relevant your ad is to the user, the cheaper it will be. So you can A/B test different ad formats to see which one is performing better.
• According to Tsunami Innovation experience, choosing video or photo format will help you save more advertising money than Lead Ads format.
• Avoid words like: 100% commitment, dietary supplements, words related to human body parts, loans, currency, racial and gender discrimination words (weight loss, weight gain, skin whitening, …), sensitive words like loan, health department, …
• All the major brands in the world are registered with Facebook. So unless you are an official distributor of the brand, you can advertise, otherwise you cannot run ads for these products.

Mistakes to avoid when running Facebook ads

Lack of Call To Action (CTA)

Some advertising content only focuses on products or services without a call to action. In fact, CTA is an important part of the content campaign, it creates curiosity for your customers. You should guide and navigate the article so that your content not only brings value but also creates interest for readers. Thereby, adding unique Call To Action sentences will bring high efficiency to the advertising campaign.

Choosing the wrong form of advertising for your business goals

Choosing the wrong Facebook advertising format compared to your business goals will cost you a lot of money and effort without achieving the goals you set out before. Therefore, you need to determine the advertising format that is suitable for your goals. Facebook has advertising formats corresponding to each stage of user behavior. There are 3 main advertising groups:

Awareness – Brand awareness stage

Recommended advertising formats for this stage include:

• Brand Awareness – Brand Awareness.
• Reach – Number of reach.

Consideration – Consideration stage

Recommended advertising formats for this stage include:

• Traffic – Traffic.
• Engagement – ​​Interaction.
• App Install – Number of app installs.
• Video view – Video views.
• Lead Generation – Potential customer file.
• Messenger – Messages.

Conversion – Conversion generation stage

Recommended advertising formats for this stage include:

• Conversion – Conversion on Website/Landing Page.
• Catalog Sales – Sales by product category.
• Store Traffic – Visits to online stores.

For each form of advertising, Facebook supports you with specific instructions. Please carefully study the goals to apply the appropriate form for your advertising strategy.

Content quality is not up to par

If the content is not invested, even if you use a lot of budget, your advertisement will not be as effective as expected. The most attractive type of advertisement is content about promotions, discounts or attractive gifts. When readers feel the many benefits, they will be curious and click to see, at least it will help the brand increase recognition as well as click rate.

No Testing

For Facebook advertising campaigns, you will not know how effective they are or what shortcomings need to be fixed if you do not test them. To test effective Facebook advertising, set up 2 ad formats and change only one element. Then compare the results of the 2 test formats through the following elements: Call to action, article content, images, ad placement, target audience, strategic goals.

Choosing the wrong target audience 

Choosing the wrong target customers, no matter how carefully you plan your Facebook advertising campaign , will not achieve the desired results. Therefore, you should first identify the right customer file and their insights to create an effective strategy. Facebook is the largest user-reaching marketing platform today.

However, there are some advertising techniques that we need to pay attention to in order to create an effective advertising campaign. Here are detailed instructions on how to run Facebook ads .

Hopefully, this article will help readers gain more useful tips and experience in running Facebook ads to achieve the best results. Good luck! You can contact Tsunami Innovation immediately for advice on effective and cost-optimized Facebook advertising campaigns!