Facebook Ads 101 with Michelle Bali

Last week, Michelle Bali hosted her second workshop with the Fashion Zone community. She taught participants how to leverage their email list which they learnt how to build during her first event to create relevant Facebook advertisements.

Before diving into how to create a Facebook ad, Michelle recommended that you should focus on providing value to your customer and building relationships with them while only promoting or selling your product 10% of the time. This is important for having them develop a relationship with your brand rather than coming across as constantly trying to sell them something.

Campaign structure basics

When creating a campaign, you will have 3 levels. The first one is the campaign level which is the objective of your advertising campaign, such as driving website traffic. The second level is your ad sets. Here you’re able to segment your audience based on factors like location. The final level is the ad level. This is where you have your individual ads with the images and text.

You want to create different ads for each ad set based on who you’re targeting. Ad sets are great for experimenting. For example, you can run the same ad in 2 different ad sets (for example, 2 different locations) to see if an ad performs better in a certain location. Michelle recommended having one ad set focused on your target audience, and a second one as an experimental audience.

When doing these tests, make sure the ads have the same image or text so you truly know that it’s the location making the difference. As a general rule, if you’re doing an A/B test with 2 different ads, make sure to only change one component such as just the text, image, or location of the ad rather than changing multiple things. This ensures that you know exactly what is making your ad successful.

Navigating the funnel

When creating your Facebook ads, it’s also important to consider where the customer is in the sales funnel. Facebook allows you to organize this in your campaign objectives. This section of Facebook has 3 parts which are awareness, consideration and conversion. The top of the funnel is the awareness section. This is where your customer is developing product and brand awareness. The second section, consideration, is the middle of the funnel where a customer is considering a purchase. Finally, there’s conversion, which is the bottom of the funnel when a customer is making a purchase decision. When creating your campaigns, keep this in mind to ensure that your audience is seeing the right advertisements based on where they are in the sales funnel.

Using your email list to find a new audience

A great resource Facebook offers is that you can import an email list and create a lookalike audience based on your email list. This is helpful since it allows you to reach an audience that is highly likely to be interested in your content. The result is that you’ll see more purchases, engagement and your ads will be more effective.

Tips and tricks

A great tip for targeting is to target your competitors audience. You can do this by clicking on “additional interests” when selecting your audience. Another useful tip for saving money is to target cheap countries for inexpensive engagement. Typically, targeting people in the U.S. and Canada can be expensive, so you can target people in cheaper countries such as India, the Philippines and Egypt to see how your campaign does. Once you’ve gotten engagement in these inexpensive locations, you can run the ad in your target location with a post that has “social proof” since the post will already have lots of likes and comments before it hits the Canadian or U.S. audience.

How to get noticed

Explainer videos are a great way to showcase how your product works. Make sure to use subtitles since many people browse with their sound off. In addition, you want to take up as much of the screen as possible. Square and vertical graphics are great for mobile, but be sure to avoid horizontal posts since they create too much white space.

Another way to get noticed is to give different offerings based on where a customer is in the sales funnel. Start with a brand awareness ad, then show an ad highlighting a discount, followed by an offer like free shipping. Fun fact, people go crazy over free shipping! This is an easy way to help with conversions.

If you feel like you need a bit of inspiration you can also spy on your competition. On Facebook there is a filter where you can see all the ads a company is running on Facebook. Don’t copy what they're doing, but you can take ideas from them to enhance your campaigns.

Michelle has endless tips and tricks on how to use Facebook ads to your full advantage. If you’re looking to learn more or meet with her, she’s hosting one-on-one sessions on a “pay what you can'' basis where 100% of the payment will be donated to Black Legal Action Centre. You can register for a session here. You can also find Michelle at theonlinebusinessoffashion.com, or through email at mimibcreative@gmail.com.