Facebook and Instagram aren’t only social media websites where we get to share photos of our meals and updates on our dog’s antics (although those posts do rock). These immensely popular social networks are frequented by millions of people every day just waiting to be informed about our products and services. Besides being able to showcase goods and services through posts, Facebook and Instagram offer advertising platforms that can help us target audiences where we can provide value to them. Let’s look at how this is done.

A great way to start out on social media to quickly build a reach is by using paid ads.

How to Run Paid Facebook Ads

Start your paid Facebook ads journey by determining what your goals are. The more time spent planning the experience you want the ad viewer to have, the more effective your ad campaign will be.

Next, head on over to the Facebook ads manager. This is the place where you will set everything up. When clicking on the button in the top-right corner, you will be taken to a page that will ask you to set your marketing objective. This should be aligned with what you decided in your goal-setting stage.

After that, the Facebook ads manager will ask you to define your audience and budget. Setting your Facebook ads targeting is perhaps the most important thing you will do in the whole process. Consider what geographic and demographic attributes your potential customer has and select what interests you plan on choosing for your Facebook ads targeting. Does your ideal customer have a specific interest that is closely related to what you offer? Be thorough in determining your audience’s psychographics.

Finally, you will be asked to set your budget, create your ad, and get the ball rolling. In the ad design stage, you will want to use an eye-catching image and copy that attracts your ideal customer while including a potent call-to-action so that people will be moved to click through to your landing page.

Understanding Facebook Ads Preferences

Platform users have the ability to update and review their ad settings so that they can influence what kinds of information the platform uses to serve them advertisements through their Facebook ads preferences. Keep this in mind when creating your ads and try to design ads that are as close to organic content as possible. This way, users will be happy to see your ads rather than consider them a nuisance. Also, they will be more likely to be viewed by more people in your target audience.

Social media users much prefer ads that are giving rather than asking. See what you can give your audience versus what you can get.

Boosting Results With Retargeting

Facebook gives you the ability to run retargeting on its ads. If you’ve visited a website because you were interested in a product and wondered how that advertiser was able to find you in other corners of the internet, you’ve received the first-hand experience of retargeting. By placing a Facebook pixel on your landing page, you install a cookie on your visitor’s web browser. This cookie is a bit of code that tells their browser that you were interested enough to click on their website.

Retargeting allows you to show your ads later to someone that has visited your site. It’s an effective way to remind them of your brand if they are still looking for your product after they leave.

That’s how an advertiser can ‘follow’ a user around the web. In 2019 it has been reported that users that are retargeted in this way are approximately 70 percent more likely to convert at a later time on your website. That’s not a statistic to scoff at.

How to Run Paid Instagram Ads

Instagram has many similarities with that of its big brother as it was bought out by Facebook in 2013. As a matter of fact, in order to run Instagram ads, you will need to connect your Instagram account to a Facebook business profile. Though paid Instagram ads look a little different than those on Facebook, the process is almost exactly the same step-by-step.

Try running a campaign today and remember to always split-test your ads. That is, run two different ads and keep the one that performs better while discarding the weaker ad. Facebook and Instagram ads are not only very targeted but can also provide you with immediate traffic. The more time you spend experimenting on these platforms, the better you will become at creating effective, captivating, and profitable ads.