A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Ad Campaigns

Suppose you have just set up a print-on-demand online store. You can wait for the customers to come on their own, but unfortunately, online competition is fierce. This is why most POD or drop shipping companies opt for online advertising such as Facebook Ad Campaigns.

But how can you decide which platform is the best to promote your products or services?

Facebook is definitely an excellent choice. The platform needs no introduction. With more than 1.9 billion daily users and a sophisticated ad system, Facebook is the most popular online advertising channel.

According to recent research, Facebook Ads are used by 1.5 million businesses worldwide, a 122% increase from the previous year.

In this article, we will analyze why Facebook Ad Campaigns are the best way to promote your business and what types of ads and campaigns you can create.

By the end, you will know everything about how to easily create successful Facebook ads.

Why use Facebook for advertising?

There are many reasons why Facebook is the perfect platform for advertising your brand. Facebook’s ad system is beginner-friendly and completely flexible when it comes to targeting specific audiences.

For this reason, Facebook is the perfect choice for startups. Let us analyze the three reasons why you should use Facebook ads:

1. Beginner-friendly: The platform makes it very easy for new businesses to set up new ad campaigns. It does not matter if you do not have any experience with advertising. All you have to do is follow the step-by-step guide below, and you can create successful ads for your business.
2. Flexible: Facebook ads offer you ultimate flexibility. By this, we mean that Facebook allows you to micro-target your audiences. When you create a Facebook ad, you can target your audience based on demographics, interests, or even behaviors. Facebook ads also allow you to retarget users who have already visited your website. This is a very effective tactic when it comes to generating revenue.
3. Affordable: Unlike other advertising strategies, Facebook ads are very affordable. The platform allows you to set your budget and create an efficient ad campaign at a low cost.

Breakdown of Facebook Ad Types

For your Facebook ads to be successful, you need to choose the best types for your business’s niche. Since Facebook allows you to create 7 different ad types, this can quickly become overwhelming.

To avoid that, let us take a look at each ad type individually and figure out what’s the best way to go in each case:

Image

As a classic Facebook ad type, images are a powerful advertising tool. Creating an image ad is very simple. That does not mean image ads are not effective. In fact, images are one of the most direct and successful ways to promote your products or brand in general.

For example, if you own a print-on-demand store and want to quickly promote a t-shirt design, there’s no faster way to do it.

Video

Video ads are another effective ad type. Creating a video ad for your brand on Facebook isn’t as hard as it may sound. If you want to tell your brand’s story or highlight a product series, there’s nothing better than video ads.

Facebook allows you to showcase your video ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network. When creating a promotional video, be sure to include CTAs (calls-to-action) and branding elements (your logo, brand colors, etc.).

Slideshow

Creating a slideshow is pretty simple, as all you need to do is add a collection of images, videos, and text. Then, you can turn all the elements you added into a short video.

Slideshows are a smart solution if you want to attract attention in a simple way. They do not require any video editing knowledge and you can even add music to them via the Ads Manager.

Stories

Since most Facebook users visit the platform through their mobile devices, creating stories is a smart way to go. People tend to interact more via Stories on Facebook and Instagram. For this reason, Stories are a powerful marketing tool for your business.

You can either create a Story with some text in front of a still image or even create a video Story. With a free editor like Canva, you can quickly create stunning Facebook Story ads.

Instant Experience.

Instant Experience ads are amazing full-screen ads designed to load quickly in the Facebook feed.

Most of them are about sharing an experience with your audience. All you need to do is add a personalized video or still image and some text to frame the experience.

Carousel

Carousel ads are very popular on Facebook. A carousel is an ad with up to 10 images and videos. This is a very effective ad type for print-on-demand stores because you can easily add links to each product.

Users can easily navigate through your carousel ads by scrolling left or right through the images or videos. You can use carousels to showcase different products or different angles/features of the same product.

Collection

As the name suggests, collection ads are the best way to promote product collections. Let us say you have just created a line of t-shirt designs and you want to promote them through Facebook and Instagram.

In this case, a collection is by far the best solution. On Facebook, you can present your new series with a nice image or video (mockups are very efficient for this). Under this main image, you can showcase all the products of your collection.

How to Advertise on Facebook in 5 Easy Steps

Creating Facebook ad campaigns is not hard. All you need to do is follow the steps below:

1. Set up your Facebook Business Manager

To create a Facebook Business Manager account, all you have to do is visit business.facebook.com and click “Create Account.” Facebook will walk you through the account creation steps and you’ll be good to go in minutes.

Once you are signed in, you are ready to create your first advertising account. Go to Company Settings, click More Tools, and select Ad Account Settings. Once you have created your Ad account, you are all set. Your advertising hub is ready and you can move on to the next step.

2. Install the Facebook Pixel

Think of Facebook Pixel as the analytics feature for Facebook ad campaigns. Even if you do not need it to create and serve ads, you need it to see how effective your ads are. If you have a print-on-demand story, installing Facebook Pixel is not hard:

1. Open your Facebook Business Manager
2. Copy the 16-character Pixel code
3. If you are a Shopify user: Go to your Shopify hub. Under Online Store, you will see preferences. Just open the tab and paste the pixel ID.

3. Create your Audiences

Now that you have successfully created a Facebook Business Manager account and integrated Facebook Pixel with Shopify, you are ready to create your first ad.

Targeting the right people is key to the success of your ads. Facebook allows you to create lists of people for each of your ads. In Facebook Business Manager, go to target audiences and click Custom Audiences.

There you can select your target location, gender, language, age, and more.

4. Create a Facebook Ads Campaign & Ad Set

After you have created your target audience, you are ready to start building your Facebook Ads campaign. The process is pretty simple:

1. Select the Campaigns tab
2. Choose your marketing objective (reach, traffic, engagement, etc.)
3. Name your campaign
4. Set your budget and schedule
5. Choose the target audience you created
6. Choose where you want your ads to run (Facebook, Instagram, etc.)
7. Create your ad

5. Optimize, Test, Refine Your Results:

Your first ad campaign is up and running. However, that does not mean your work here is done. You should review your Facebook ads frequently. Try not to be hasty to make changes. Generally, your Facebook ad campaigns will take some time to be optimized by the algorithm.

You can use the Facebook Pixel to check the performance of your ads. By using the pixel, you can see how well your ads are performing, how many new visitors your website has received because of the ads, etc.

After a certain period of time, you can check which ad campaigns were successful and which ones did not do so well. You can also try to optimize your custom audiences. Try to create new audiences until you find the one that works best for your products.

Wrap Up

It becomes clear that Facebook is a very efficient advertising platform. Facebook ads are very flexible and do not require advanced marketing knowledge.

For this reason, the platform is a smart advertising solution for PoD or dropshipping startups. Take some time to learn how Facebook Business Manager works and the results will be worth it.