For the past weeks, we’ve talked about simplifying business management by automating time-consuming but very important tasks.
My absolute favorite was automating social media because although I know how important it is for the business, I don’t always have to give my full attention due to other critical tasks (a lot of them, actually).
I also loved how I got so many responses on my ‘ultimate secret’ of keeping it together – automating but not losing my brand and connection to my followers. If you don’t know what I’m talking about… you. have. to. read. the. blog! Trust me, it’s worth your time. 🙂
As our automation series nears its end, I’d like to do it with a bang! What other way to do that than to teach you how to automate your Facebook ads? From designing images to getting your targeting on point all the time, I’ll cover it all.
Let’s begin…
Here is how you can automate your Facebook ads effectively.
To make this easier for you, let’s try to imagine Facebook ads as an amazing dish that you have to create. The ingredients are the following:
Good Imagery
“There’s no way to automate good imagery!” How many times have you read this somewhere? Today, let me defy this statement and show you how you can create amazing images for your Facebook ad without having to start from scratch every time.
The tool that we’re using is Canva – www.canva.com.
Step 1: From the homepage, you’ll see different image sizes. Click on “more” to find the correct setting for a Facebook Page Ad. This is usually found at the bottom section of the page under “Ads”.
Step 2: When you’ve found the Facebook ad setting, click on it and start picking the layout that you want to use for the Facebook Ad.
Pro tip: It’s important to maintain your branding so it’s easier for your followers to notice your business when they see your content on their feeds. You want your followers to say “Oh this is definitely[insert your business name]!” every time they see an offer from you.
Correct Targeting
Targeting is the heart of your campaigns. With wrong targeting, you’ll be spending on people who are less likely to subscribe or buy your product. This would mean that you’d be wasting your precious time and funds for nothing.
So how do you automate your targeting for Facebook ads? How do you create your audience once and be able to use it for your future ads?
The answer that you’re looking for is custom audiences! These audiences are very specific and targeted, and are customised so you can use them for your future campaigns.
The four types of custom Facebook audience that you can create are the following:
- Customer List. This type of list allows you to target the people from your email list. By simply uploading your list through a text file, Facebook will run through a scan and try to match the emails from your list to the their users. The matched emails will be collated and added to your custom audience. Other type of lists that you can upload are phone numbers, Facebook User IDs, etc.
- Website Traffic. If you want to target visitors from your website, you can do so by creating a web traffic custom audience. For this type of custom audience, you may show ads to people who visit your website. You can set up your audience to include everyone who visits your website, or even create separate audiences for people who visit specific pages on your website.
- Mobile App Activity. You may also create a custom audience to reach people who take specific actions in your app – like reaching a specific level in a game, adding items to their cart, or rating your app.
- Lookalike audience. Lookalike audiences let you reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they’re similar to a customer list you care about.
For example, when you’re done creating a custom list for your emails, you can create a lookalike audience so Facebook will find users with similar interests and demographic to those on your list.
When you’ve already created your audiences, you’re set to start automating your Facebook campaigns. Simply create an ad using the images you’ve created and choose your highly targeted audience in the custom audience drop box.
When you’re done with that, you’re ready to run your ad continuously, until you decide to stop it. Don’t worry, you can set a lifetime budget, so you know you’re not spending more than you plan to shell out for ads!
With your image formats and targeted audience saved, you can easily create new campaigns in less than 10 minutes, and have it run for a whole month or the duration of your offer. No need to constantly start from scratch when it comes to designing and targeting.
That’s automating done right for you! Are you ready to create your next campaign? Will you automate it following the steps above? Let me know in the comments below!