How to Advertise small Business on Facebook for Beginners by Ecwid

Facebook is the world's largest social networking site, with almost 2.9 billion monthly active users. It's only natural that entrepreneurs worldwide are wondering how to advertise a business on Facebook.

However, beginner sellers often get overwhelmed when figuring out a new advertising platform. We get it: social media ads can be complicated. That's why there are almost infinite tips on social media marketing, and the Facebook Help Center has thousands of pages for people to navigate. Understandably, it can be intimidating.

Don't worry, we are going to help you through the process of advertising on social media. In this post, we will explain how to advertise products on Facebook and set up your first ad campaign.

How to sell onlineTips from e-commerce experts for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.SubscribeI consent to receive Ecwid Newsletter. I can unsubscribe anytime.Why Advertise on Facebook?

The great thing about Facebook advertising is that when you run an ad, it can not only appear on Facebook, but also on Instagram, Audience Network, and Facebook Messenger. With a single campaign, you can reach people on all their favorite platforms.

Facebook is an effective method to promote a small business for many reasons:

• It's budget-friendly. Facebook prioritizes ads that perform well and shows them more frequently for cheaper.
• It's beginner-friendly. Even if you've never set up an ad campaign before, you can launch yours in a couple of steps.
• It's effective. Flexible targeting settings allow you to reach potential customers easily.
• It doesn't take much time. Creating an ad campaign on Facebook will usually take less than 15 minutes.
• It fits different marketing goals. Whether you want to attract new customers or give a special offer to loyal ones, Facebook helps you do it all.
• It can be automated. You don't have to closely monitor your campaign because most of the work is done automatically.

Okay, now let's see how all these things work.

Ways to Advertise on Facebook

There are two main ways you can promote your business on Facebook:

Boost Your Posts on Facebook

When you post organic (aka not paid) posts on your Facebook business page, you can see a blue Boost Post button at the bottom of some of your posts:

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The Boost Post button allows you to quickly create a Facebook ad from one of your existing posts. This ad can appear in different places on Facebook, and you can show it to the people you choose.

Boosting a post is a quick way to share your business with people who might be interested. Promoting your page with boosted posts helps to grow your followers and increase engagement, such as getting more likes or comments.

While boosting posts can drive engagement and grow your page, running ads on Facebook helps you attract potential customers and encourage people to shop in your online store.

There are different Facebook ad formats you can use:

• Photo ad. It is a simple format that works better with engaging photos and copy.
• Video ad. It allows you to show off your product or brand using a video. The format comes in a range of lengths and styles.
• Ads in Stories. As you could probably guess, this format is used to run ads in Facebook and Instagram stories.
• Messenger ads. Use it to promote your business on Facebook Messenger. You can add interactive elements to it.
• Carousel ads. This format allows you to display up to ten images or videos in a single ad, each with its own link. Great for spotlighting different products.
• Slideshow ads. These are video-like ads made of motion, sound, and text. They allow you to advertise across various devices and connection speeds.
• Collection ads. They display a primary video or image with three smaller images below in a grid-like layout. A great option that allows customers to browse what you offer.     

Should You Boost Posts or Run Ads?

Not sure how you should promote your business on Facebook? Should you use boosted posts or ads? First, you need to figure out what you want to achieve.

If you want to increase audience engagement on your Facebook business page or improve your brand awareness, consider boosting your posts. It is a great way to gain visibility and grow your audience.

If you have specific business goals in mind, such as getting more website visitors and purchases in your store, it's better to go with ads.

Ads are also the best choice if you want to create more advanced ad types and campaigns. For example, there are various creative and formatting options available in Ads Manager that aren't available when boosting a post from your page.

Facebook ads can also provide you with more advanced tools for audience targeting.

When you boost a post, you can choose to place it on Instagram in addition to Facebook news feed. But with Facebook ads, you can choose placements in Facebook newsfeed, Messenger ads, Instagram stories, instant articles, and Audience Network.

Deciding whether to boost a post or run an ad really depends on your goals, but it is an important decision nonetheless.

It's hard to report the average cost to advertise on Facebook because you have to decide how much you want to spend on your ads. In fact, you can set a limit for each campaign.

Facebook uses an ads auction system. It means that you inform the platform how much you're willing to pay to have your ad shown to your target audience. Then the platform gets you as many results as possible for that amount. To make sure you don't spend more on ads than you planned, you can set up a campaign spending limit and an account spending limit. A campaign spending limit is a limit on the overall amount your ad campaign can spend. An account spending limit is a lifetime limit on the amount your Facebook ad account can spend across all the ad campaigns you're running from the time the limit is set.

There are a few things you should consider before putting up your first advertising campaign

After you choose your objective, you'll see a page where you can edit the campaign name and declare if your ad is related to special ad categories (credit, employment, housing, social issues, elections, or politics.) As long as you're making an ad for an online store, you don't need to declare those categories.

You can also check campaign details and set a campaign spending limit on that page (this is optional): 

There is also an option to create an A/B test for your ad. This test allows you to try different images, text, and audiences to see which combinations perform best. It's a helpful tool but unnecessary, especially if this is your first ad.

Turn on the Campaign Budget Optimization if you want to set up a daily budget for your ads:

Step 2: Create Your Ad Set

Now it's time to create your ad set. On the next page, enter a name for your ad set and choose the Facebook page you want to promote from the dropdown menu:

You can turn on the Dynamic creative setting (this is optional). You'll be asked to provide creative elements, such as images and headlines, and Facebook will automatically mix and match them to generate combinations optimized for your audience. 

Step 3: Set Your Budget and Schedule

Find the Budget & schedule section on the page to define your daily or lifetime budget. The daily budget is the average amount you are willing to spend on a specific ad set per day. The lifetime budget is how much you're willing to spend over the entire run-time of your campaign or ad set.

In this section, you can also set up the time period during which you want your ads to run. This way, you don't keep ads going for longer than they are relevant.

Step 4: Choose Your Audience

Find the Audience section to define who you want to see your ads.

Choose the demographics, interests, and behaviors that best represent your target audience by combining what you know about them. This can include age, location, languages, interests.

In this example, we created an audience of English-speaking young people living in the US who are interested in fashion:

Click Save the audience to use it in your future campaigns.

After you finish choosing ad placements, scroll down to the Optimization & delivery section. You can set a cost control if you have a specific spending goal. If you don't set one, Facebook will spend your entire budget to get the most results.

When you're done, click Next.

Step 7: Set Up Tracking

Remember we talked about Facebook Pixel earlier? Now it's time to put it to use!. For this step, Facebook Pixel must be installed in your online store

Step 9: Measure Your Campaign Performance

Your advertising adventures are not yet done! Now, you need to track your ad performance in Ads Manager. Check if your ad is being delivered efficiently, and edit your campaign if needed.

We can't stress enough the importance of measuring your ad performance. Not only does that help you see which ad formats work best for your business, but it also helps you discover more about your target audience and improve your ads over time.

For example, beginners often want to know the best days to advertise on Facebook, or the best time to advertise on Facebook. Unfortunately, articles answering these questions are often oversimplified and potentially misleading. Just because a specific time slot worked for one business doesn't mean it'll work for yours.

So if you have your own small business and need a store, try the Ecwid platform for free

Ecwid is not just an ordinary platform for a store, it is your digital platform that will help you sell your products more easily on Facebook, as well as on other social networks... Learn More...

Source: Ecwid

Photos: Ecwid