This week’s Online Meetup & Business Networking Group topic takes questions from attendees as to which aspects of Facebook advertising they want insights.

So key topics we covered in this How to Facebook Advertising & Marketing Webinar include:

1. Boosting a post vs creating and ad of the same post, which is preferable?
2. How do you create a target audience?
3. How much money should you spend on Facebook advertising?

In addition to addressing each of these questions about creating a Facebook advertising campaign or developing a Facebook marketing strategy, I outlined what I call “The Foundational Basics” of any online marketing initiative.

Included here, in the written portion of this blog, are additional points you need to keep in mind when jumping into any type of online paid advertising campaign, whether it’s on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linked, Pinterest or Google Adsense.

Here’s a general template to follow in creating a Facebook Advertising Strategy:

SEO keyword market research: Make sure you understand your audience online. A significant percentage of all buying decisions start with search of some sort or another. Make sure you understand the keyword phrases and topics that are of interest to your market. Make sure you understand the potential size and financial viability of your market. Any lead magnet or lead generation offer should have some market analysis & research that supports your effort. It’s a significant amount of work to build a Facebook advertising campaign for which there may be no market! Do your homework 1st! (I can help with your content marketing efforts, starting here.)

Branding or Personal Branding: Operating a business without having gone through the highly conscious, intentional process of creating a brand for your company or a personal brand, if you are the “face of” your company, can be the reason for a struggling business and floundering Facebook marketing initiatives.

Branding…it’s WAY more than just a logo and NOT “just a thing!”. More here.

Facebook Advertising Tips: Basic Blueprint for Advertising Success (assuming a Lead Generation objective)

This is the background work and setup that is required before you start running your ad campaign.

1. Determine what your lead magnet or opt-in offer is going to be. (Make sure you have solid market analysis to support this! See keyword research video above)
2. Create the deliverable (the lead magnet) whatever form it may take (i.e. pdf, video course, ebook, webinar, etc….)
3. Place Facebook tracking pixels (tracking code) on your website. (There are plenty of resources and videos to show you how to do this or have your web master do it for you.)
4. For more advanced users, place Facebook tracking event codes on each landing page for which you are running ads and traffic conversions.
5. Create a lead capture/landing page where you will drive your Facebook ad clicks. (if you can create an A/B split test of this page it is HIGHLY advisable!)
6. Create a Thank You/Success page where people will be re-directed after they have submitted their email to you. (This is where the Facebook Event code for a Lead would be placed, which tells Facebook your objective to generate leads has been completed)
7. Create an email automation-lead nurture campaign (6-10 emails depending upon your audience and objective)

Creating Your Facebook Ad Campaign Basics:

1. Create a few target audiences for your ad. I recommend that you test a few audiences.
2. Develop the creative part of the ad: Select a few images to test (up to 6), write the copy for the ad*.
3. Set up your ad in your Facebook Business Manager Account, make sure you have set up a form of payment as well.
4. Set your objective to “Lead Generation”
5. Launch your ad.
6. Monitor results of your ad. You need to be patient though as Facebook’s algorithm needs time to gather information about your ad’s responsiveness to your target audience. (I recommend 7-10 days before making any changes!) Don’t be alarmed if your cost per lead is high at the beginning. It takes time to optimize your cost per lead. It’s different for everyone depending on the market you are in and the competitiveness of your market.
7. Monitor every step of your sales funnel….how is your landing page converting? Could you do better here? (This is where A/B split tests REALLY make sense!) How is your email automation series doing? Whats the open rate and click through rate of each email? Can you make improvements here by testing new subject lines and testing different calls to action?

*Make sure that whatever ad creative converts best, has a landing page that looks just like it! This is important! People are struggling with Facebook ads at this stage alone because the ad is different than the landing page!!! There needs to be congruency along each step of the funnel. This pertains to your email automation series as well.

Bottom line? There are many steps to creating a successful Facebook ad campaign! You need to make sure you have your “Foundational Basics” in place before diving in!

You could easily blow $1,000’s of dollars in ad spend and get no results. How about take those 1st $1,000 dollars and spend it intelligently on market research, branding and consultation services to make sure all of your Facebook ads and your business have a much higher likelihood of succeeding?!

Interested in building  your “Foundational Basics” 1st? It starts here.

Let’s build an intelligent Facebook advertising strategy together.