Facebook Ads Manager is the platform’s native tool for anyone that wants to take advantage of the vast audience Facebook provides to online marketers. One of the biggest reasons for Facebook Advertising’s appeal is the sheer amount of data it holds on members, making it one of the best ways to reach a specific audience.
The Facebook Ads Manager tool is helpful for businesses of all sizes. Indeed, from solopreneurs to multinational corporations, virtually everyone has used it to manage their campaigns at some point – at least until they’ve moved on to even more powerful alternatives.
It’s designed as an all-in-one tool and serves as a central control point for anyone looking to advertise on Facebook itself, along with Instagram, Messenger and the brand’s Audience Network. From the initial creation of ads and deciding who needs to see them to monitoring their performance, most people starting out with social ads will quickly become relatively familiar with the platform.
It’s designed to keep things relatively simple on the surface. Most of Facebook’s income comes from advertising, so they don’t want to make life difficult for advertisers that want to spend with them. However, there are some compelling advertising features for those that need even more control.
In this article, we’ll dive deeper into what Facebook Ad Manager does.
So, What Is Facebook Ads Manager for Small Businesses?
Facebook Ads Manager is a tool anyone can use to promote their business, or indeed anything they like, natively on the Facebook platform. It covers both Facebook and Instagram and complementary services like the Facebook Messenger platform.
It’s simple to get started on the platform, but there’s much more to it than initially meets the eye. There are even dedicated Facebook Ads specialists out there; such is the amount of time that can be spent creating and tweaking on the platform.
Why is Facebook Ads Manager Important?
Facebook Ads Manager is required for anyone to advertise on Facebook or it’s partner networks. Since there are so many options available, it can be difficult to figure out Facebook Ads Manager and often takes some tutorials to get up and running. Most people get accustomed to running campaigns using Ad Manager before moving on to more specialised systems, and it’s a great way to discover the kinds of ads you can create and the vast volume of audience insight you can expect from Facebook’s massive amounts of data.
The irony of Facebook Ad Manager, is that it’s a reasonably challenging and a clunky bit of software considering one of the wealthiest companies on earth owns it!
Facebook made over US$28 billion (NZ$39 billion) from ads in Q2 2021, so there’s no question that their advertising system works. Any small business that wants to be a part of that will often consider starting its journey with the official ads platform. It can serve as a fantastic basis for understanding what reaching customers on social channels is all about.
5 Tips for Small Businesses Starting Out with Facebook Ads Manager
Assuming you haven’t already decided to put off dipping your toe into Ads Manager based on the fact you could spend all day, every day tweaking and monitoring campaigns, we’ve got a few tips to help any small business make the most significant impact in the shortest possible amount of time.
1. Decide on Your Audience Beforehand
Over 4 billion people have a Facebook account. Almost three million of them use the platform at least once a month. Of course, it would be fantastic if every single one of them bought your products and services, but it’s unlikely.
Part of the appeal of Facebook Ads is that the network often knows people’s names, locations, interests, ages and more. However, online advertising is all about the return on investment, so you need to ensure you show your ads to people that stand a reasonable chance of turning into customers.
It’s often best to do this before you even look at your ad options. There’s such a thing as being too targeted. You might remember a 2014 case when Facebook Ads targeting was so powerful that someone managed to convince their roommate they were going crazy with ads targeted at just them. If it was that powerful then, imagine how narrowly you could focus your ads today!
Essentially, you want a wide enough focus to not miss out on potential customers but narrow enough that you’re not blowing your budget on people who will never be interested in what you’ve got for sale. Of course, that’s easier said than done, but something being difficult is all the more reason to get started!
2. Consider Letting Facebook Do Some of the Work for You
Facebook wouldn’t make billions from ads every quarter if every advertiser needed to be a highly-trained specialist that has devoted their life to the art of making money on social media. It’s so eager to get your ads live that it might well do some of the work for you.
Does Facebook know more about your business than you do? Probably not. However, it knows plenty about its audience – that’s what makes it such a popular choice among targeted advertisers.
Crucially, it’s also well aware of the need to keep its own profits up. For Facebook to make money, relevant people need to see and click on your ads. So essentially, it’s in the company’s best interests to make your ads work as well as possible. The better you do, the better they do, and their advertising intelligence isn’t to be underestimated.
You might want to go manual eventually. However, just because it’s automated doesn’t mean that Facebook’s ad suggestions are subpar. Indeed, they might be the ideal starting point for those that are curious and short on time.
3. Think About Automatic Placements
Where will your ad perform best? Would it work well in the main news feed, or perhaps in the sidebar where people are accustomed to commercial content? Unfortunately, there’s no way to know for sure when it comes to individual ads. It often comes down to trial and error.
Once again, Facebook can help you out by taking the decision out of your hands. Most people that know what they’re doing with ad placements have spent hundreds of hours testing and modifying. But who has time and resources for that?
As with the auto ads mentioned in the previous tip, you’ll almost certainly want to switch to manual placements eventually when you have the data to back it up. However, when just starting out, trust Facebook to get some decent results on your behalf and use the information you gather to inform the next campaign.
4. Be Firm on Your Budget
Unfortunately, Facebook won’t display your ads out of the kindness of its heart. So whether you’re seeking impressions, clicks or anything else, every interaction will have an impact of some description on your budget.
Left unchecked, it can quickly get expensive. Don’t be afraid to remain conservative with your ad spend early on. It’s a lot easier to stomach paying $20 for nothing in return than $1,000 to find out your ads aren’t resonating with the audience.
For any online advertising to become worthwhile, you need to earn more than you spend. It doesn’t make any business sense to throw money around chasing a lost cause. If $20 isn’t enough to get the ball rolling, it’s better to revisit the campaign and do some testing rather than crossing your fingers that things will get better.
5. Don’t Forget the Destination
The first steps into Facebook advertising are always exciting. You could spend hours tweaking, designing and testing to develop what you believe to be the perfect ad. However, if you’re going to spend a day on the ad, don’t spend five minutes on the landing page.
If you’re selling a product or service, make sure you have a great page ready for anyone that clicks through. Gaining a visitor isn’t the end of the process by any means. You’ve got their interest, but you still need to make a sale. Pre-empt their questions and tell them why they won’t find anything better than what you’re selling elsewhere. Think about what the next step for visitors might be.
In effect, you can pay to get someone onto your site, but you can’t bribe them to complete the transaction – at least not without eating into your profit margins.
Is There an easier way than Facebook Ads Manager?
We’re glad you asked! It won’t have escaped your attention that we consider Facebook Ads Manager an excellent entry point to the world of social media advertising. You can see the various ad types, positions and targeting options in how Facebook envisions them.
However, you’ve also got to write ad copy, source images and videos and monitor campaigns. If you’re testing to find out what works best, you have to repeat the process multiple times.
Facebook Ads Manager is great if you have one ad, a single audience and hours to spend tweaking and monitoring. However, when you’ve only got one ad running, you can’t really learn anything. You won’t even be able to determine whether a campaign is generally good or bad, as you’ll have nothing to compare it to.
That’s where Otterfish can help. It’s designed for advertisers of every level, from brand new social marketers to full-time professionals. Otterfish ensures your ads follow the best digital marketing practices without you even needing to think about it.
That means creating, testing, putting live and monitoring, all with just a few clicks. In addition, it integrates directly with Facebook, enabling you to take advantage of all the benefits the platform provides, with an incredibly powerful creative engine on top.
In just a matter of minutes, you can have multiple ads, all promoting the same product or service, ready to go live. But, crucially, each one is different enough to make a real difference to your marketing plan. From the impact of images and placements to the power of copy and colours, Otterfish will provide insight and actionable information as your ads run, without spending hours on manual testing.
Best of all, it’s completely free to get started! So sign up now to see how Otterfish can take your Facebook ads and their effectiveness to a whole new level.
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