We’ve talked a lot on the Marketing Words Blog about writing short copy like Facebook posts & ads, AdWords ads, tweets, etc. But, unless you know how to navigate the backend of the system you’re using, it’s hard to get good results. My guest today – Stacey Myers – will walk you through the basics of how to run a Facebook ad to build your list. Enjoy!

Here we are at doable 23 of the ‘Build Your List with 30 Daily Doables’ Blog Tour. Yesterday we talked about commenting on blogs as a list building strategy.  It is well worth a read if you haven’t done so already. A full list of the blogs we have already visited can be found at the Blog Tour Information Page.

A massive thank you to Karon Thackston for hosting us today! We very much appreciate it!!

Don’t forget that not only can you learn some neat tricks about list building but you can also win great prizes. Find all the ways to enter at the bottom of this post.

It’s not just on the blog that you can pick up earn entries – share about the blog tour on social media and use the hashtag #30dailydoables for more chances to win!

This blog tour is to celebrate the launch of our latest book ‘Build Your List with 30 Daily Doables’.  If you grab the book while the blog tour is on, you receive access to some great extra bonuses – make sure you visit the launch page to get yours!

Have an amazing day!

Stacey Myers
www.StaceyMyers.com

How to Use Facebook Ads to Build Your List – Doable 23

You can set up ads on most of the social media platforms.  For the purpose of this post I am focusing on Facebook ads, as this is the platform that most people are familiar with.

Facebook ads are very popular.  You will need to have a Facebook page to run Facebook ads.  Facebook ads are pretty much the most targeted ads there are at the moment.  Not only do they have all the information that we put into our profile, they know all of the activities we take inside Facebook and even on other sites as well. Have you ever looked at something on Amazon and then the next thing you know that same item is following you around on Facebook or other sites on the internet. These are called retargeting or remarketing ads.

With Facebook ads you can boost a post, increase exposure to a page, send people to an app on your page or direct them to an external website.  Facebook likes you to stay in Facebook so the ads work out a bit cheaper if you send them somewhere on Facebook. You can, however, inexpensively send people to a page on your website as well.

There is a lot of sophisticated targeting you can do with the ads. I am going to take you through a basic set up to send people to a landing page on your website.

In this ad I am sending people to a page on my website where I promote a small monthly payment membership program I have called ‘SLAP Monthly’.

There are a couple of different ways you can get to the ad dashboard.  If you are on your profile page click the little dropdown menu and click on create ad or you can go to https://www.facebook.com/advertising.

Click on ‘Send people to your website’, enter the URL that you want people to end up on and click ‘Continue’.

Now we have where we are sending them, the next part is deciding on the audience. Add in any location of the people you want to market to.  Then choose age, gender and language.

The clearer you are on who your ideal client is the more targeted you can have your Facebook ads.

In the interest area you can add some keywords. On the right it will tell you the potential reach of your ads.

Next, is to set a budget.  You can set this to whatever you feel comfortable spending.  You can also specify in here the length of your campaign.  To the right you will get an idea of how many people your ad will reach each day depending on how much money you are spending.  The more you spend obviously the more people you will reach.  Please start small until you feel more comfortable with what you are doing in the ad manager section. You can spend as little as about $1 per day.

Now it is time to choose images.  You can access thousands of stock images through the ad manager, which makes it easier to find a great image to use. You can choose up to 6 images, I have chosen 3 for this example.

You need to click on the Facebook page that will be associated with the ads before the previews will show up.  The next thing to do is write the copy for the ad.  You will need a headline and some body text.  The last thing to consider here is if you want a call to action in your add.  There are a few different ones to choose from.  Have a look through and decide which one is going to be the best fit for you ad.  This section is optional.

Look back over your ad and then when you are happy with everything you can either review the ad first or simply click ‘Place Order’. Your ad will then be submitted for approval.  This takes anywhere from a few seconds to 24 hours to happen.

You can go back in and make changes to your ad at any time.

There are so many other things you can do with ads, but this will give you an idea of how to get started.

One word of warning: on the posts on your page you often have an option to boost the post.  Please don’t do that, as the people you get are not very targeted.  There is a small about of targeting you can choose when you boost a post but it isn’t enough for you to get anywhere near your ideal client.

If there is a particular post you want to run an ad with go back into the ad manager and choose ‘Boost Your Post’ and pick the post from in there. You can then continue as we did in the previous example.

If you would prefer to watch a video of how to set up ads, you can do so in the Resource Area.

Have you used Facebook Ads? How did you go?  Let us know in the comments below.