Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Marketing and Advertising

1.1 What is Facebook and Facebook Marketing?

Formed in 2004, Facebook has grown exponentially into a worldwide platform for social connections and more relevantly, a successful platform to promote businesses and brands. With an estimated 2.96 billion active monthly users, Facebook continues to be the largest and most widely used social media platform.

Facebook marketing refers to the use of Facebook as a tool to achieve your company’s overall marketing objectives and goals. From creating content to asking queries, many aspects make up Facebook marketing.

With its popularity and success, promoting your brand on Facebook is often deemed necessary and here’s why you should start marketing on the platform.

1.2 Why You Should Market and Advertise on Facebook

Creating and sustaining a Facebook page is an excellent tool for businesses looking to grow. Free and easy to use, Facebook provides businesses with a worldwide platform to promote themselves.

As mentioned earlier, Facebook has retained its spot as the most popular social media platform for years. As such, the platform provides a wide audience and possible customer base for you. According to recent studies, 64% of internet users typically discover new brands and products through social media platforms.

Source: Smart Insights

Besides the obvious benefits of having a wider reach to sell products, Facebook is also a great platform to use if you want to build honest and authentic relationships with your audience. Nowadays, consumers are looking for more from brands than just being sold a product; they want a connection with the businesses they like.

People tend to humanise brands and want to feel they have a relationship with them. With social media marketing and Facebook marketing, in particular, there is a platform for this relationship to form and flourish. You can create content that appeals to your audience directly, encourages a two-way conversation, and lets users receive answers or solutions to their queries and issues.

When you have a strong relationship with your audience and consumers who believe you to be honest and trustworthy, it promotes a sense of brand loyalty in them towards your company. Long-term brand loyalty is hard to achieve but is made simpler and easier with Facebook marketing.

In essence, utilising Facebook as a marketing tool allows you to do more than increase sales; you can build an honest and authentic connection with your audience that benefits your company in the long run. Thousands of brands are already marketing themselves on Facebook, with many achieving great success in their goals.

If you haven’t started marketing on Facebook yet, read on as we go through all you need to know to flourish on the world’s biggest social media platform.

2.1 Facebook Business Pages

Facebook Business pages differ greatly from your personal profile that you use to connect with friends and family. Many tools within the Business page are specially created to help you promote your business.

Besides, there are slight differences between a personal profile and a Business page. For Business pages, you gain “followers” as opposed to “friends” which requires no action from you, and is also one of the easiest ways to measure your popularity on the platform.

One of the tools that is only available through the Business page is the process of creating and running an advertising campaign. Running ad campaigns can increase your brand awareness, gain new followers and customers, and increase your sales, which is ultimately something all brands hope to achieve.

For you to succeed in marketing your brand on Facebook, it is imperative to set up a Facebook Business page.

2. Types of Facebook Business Applications

As a supplement to your Facebook page, there are also several business applications on the platform that can be used to promote your brand.

Offers

Facebook Offers are a unique type of page post used to share special discounts or promotions your business offers. It is unique in that there is a direct call-to-action beneath the post that will state “Get Offer”, driving followers to claim said discount or promotion.

Source: Facebook Offers

Here’s an example of what an Offer post looks like. As you can see, it differs from a regular post and states, “Floral & Petals posted an offer” which could grab your followers’ attention.

Besides posting Offers to your page, look into various interest groups on Facebook that may be relevant to your business. Posting offers to these groups can widen your reach and exposure.

Events

Event pages are supplementary pages you can create to promote any events your business may be hosting. Whether it’s hosted virtually or in the real world, Events pages help you to organise and promote any event to your followers or other users.

Events can help generate leads while gaining and retaining users’ attention, allowing you to connect with your audience virtually or in person. As a bonus, virtual events, in particular, are relatively cheap to host and can be ticketed.

Source: Facebook Events

Marketplace

Facebook Marketplace is a free-to-use open exchange on the platform where users can buy and sell new or pre-owned products. All Facebook users can post or interact in the Marketplace, buying or selling items.

If you’re looking to get more product exposure or promote a sale or discount, Facebook Marketplace is a good tool to use. Posting and promoting your items is also a simple process that only takes minutes of your time.

Source: Facebook Marketplace

Groups

Facebook Groups are communities of like-minded individuals who share the same interests or hobbies. Groups can be created by anyone and revolve around any topic. There are millions of groups currently on the platform.

There are two ways to utilise Groups in your marketing strategy: create your own group related to your company and industry or join a group that is relevant to the products or services you offer and promote your business there.

Do a quick search on Facebook with keywords related to your business and find a few Groups that may be beneficial in increasing your audience and customer base.

Source: Facebook Group

2.3 Types of Facebook Posts

On Facebook, there are several types of posts that you can utilise in your marketing strategy.

Text Posts

Text posts, formally known as statuses, are the original Facebook posts and were the cornerstone of the platform. However, text posts have become less popular, especially among business pages, as they don’t typically help drive traffic to external pages nor are they particularly attention-grabbing due to their lack of visuals.

We would recommend using text posts sparingly and only in the right situation. For example, text posts might be a good way to go if you’re looking to start a conversation with your followers. You can posit a question and encourage followers to answer in the comments. Be mindful that if you’re looking to start a conversation, you will also need to keep it going in the comments.

Photo Posts

A picture is worth a thousand words, and that especially rings true on Facebook. Photo posts are a great way to showcase a product or service, and when it’s eye-catching enough, it’s a great way to garner engagement on your page.

Photo posts can also be used to convey information in an easily digestible and concise manner, which is perfect if you’re trying to avoid being too wordy.

Source: Boomerang Garage & Groomworks

Check out this great example of a photo post from Boomerang Garage & Groomworks that conveys information while being visually appealing. Showcasing their servicing package, they list the steps in an easy-to-read and concise manner.

Ensure all photo posts are in the correct size; the optimal size of 1200 x 325 pixels is recommended with a the minimum size being 600 x 315 pixels.

Video Posts

Generating an estimated engagement rate that’s 59% higher than other post types, videos are the best performers on Facebook, according to BuzzSumo. If you want to increase your engagement rates, videos are a great post option.

Videos also allow for product or service demonstrations which could answer any potential queries followers may have about your business and show off your unique selling proposition (USP).

Source: Boomerang Garage & Groomworks

Here’s another prime example of a video post from Boomerang Garage which shows the disinfection services they provide. The video details the whole disinfecting process which shows how thorough they are, leaving out any room for question on their quality of service.

Consider using videos if you want to showcase something that text or photos can’t convey wholly.

Reels

Facebook Reels is a feature on Facebook that allows users to create and discover short, entertaining videos.

It’s similar in concept to TikTok or Instagram Reels, where users can record and edit 15 to 60-second multi-clip videos with music, effects, and various creative tools.

Facebook Reels appear in a dedicated Reels tab on user profiles and in the News Feed, providing a platform for users to share their creativity, explore content from others, and engage with a wider audience.

It’s part of Facebook’s efforts to compete in the short-form video content space and provide users with more ways to express themselves through video.

Businesses are strongly encouraged to create and upload Reels as this is the fastest growing content format for the platform. In my experience, I have had content reach 10x my follower base if the Reels gets great engagement.

Videos on Reels are often encouraged to be authentic, unpolished and shot directly from the mobile phone, so don’t worry too much about having top production value on Reels but remember to shoot these videos in portrait 9:16 format and have them reshared on Instagram too.

Ads do tend to also gain better results when their creative is a Reel so give this format a try when running paid or organic content. I have had traffic campaigns get 5-7%click throughs (industry average is 0.5-1%) so you need to hop onto the Reels bandwagon while it’s trending and effective.

Source: BOOTHYPE

Facebook Live

Facebook Live, a way to live stream on the platform, allows for direct interactions with your followers, conducting product demonstrations, events coverage, or even as a way to conduct sales.

If you’re looking to host a Facebook Live on your business page, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

	Tips for Hosting Facebook Live
1.	Ensure you have a strong internet connection. Nothing drives viewers away like a lagging and pixelated video.
2.	Interact with your viewers. Read their comments, answer any questions, and speak to them directly.
3.	Broadcast for an appropriate amount of time. Avoid going live for only a few minutes as that can leave viewers feeling neglected but also try not to drag out live videos as you could lose your viewers’ interest.
4.	Inform your followers you’ll be going live beforehand. Create a post that provides a sneak peek at what you’ll be showing or discussing during the Live to garner anticipation and interest.

Link Posts

Link Posts simply share a link to an external webpage, making them a convenient and straightforward post type. Using this post type, you can share content that you believe your followers may be interested in, and it is also a great way to drive traffic to content that is hosted on your website.

To create a Link Post, input the URL of the webpage into the “Create Post” box on your page, and it will automatically generate a Link Post. Consider utilising Link Posts if you host content on your website that isn’t receiving as much traffic as you’d like.

Facebook Stories

Facebook Stories work the same way as Snapchat and Instagram Story, where anything you post will only be available for 24 hours. Facebook Stories is the perfect tool to promote anything time-specific and time-limited, such as flash sales.

Each Facebook Story is limited to 30 seconds which is great for bite-sized content that may not fit into your normal posts.

Source: Revol Carz Makeover Singapore

Here’s an example of a Facebook Stories post from Revol Carz, a car maintenance workshop. It’s simple but achieves its aim of sharing a real example of the work they’ve done. Take note that Facebook Stories work in a 9:16 aspect ratio, so you should ensure that content works within that space.

3. Facebook Advertising

Facebook Advertising is the process of creating paid advertisements that run exclusively on the social media platform. With the ability to target specific audiences, advertising on Facebook is an effective method to increase brand awareness, followers, and generate leads.

However, it may not be a straightforward process, especially if you’re new to the concept — so read on to learn more about Facebook advertising.

Types of Facebook Ads

Image Ads

Ideal for driving traffic to your website or an external webpage, image ads consist of a singular, static picture, and an accompanying caption. For image ad, visuals should be in JPG or PNG format and have a minimum size of 1080 x 1080 pixels.

Facebook recommends captions to stay under 125 characters with headlines and descriptions at 40 and 30 characters respectively. As such, image ad is best for clear and concise messaging with a direct call to action.

Source: Revol Carz Makeover Singapore

Video Ads

Video ads can be versatile in content and, as mentioned earlier, video posts generally perform the best on Facebook. With the ability to catch users’ attention quickly while entertainingly conveying information, videos are a highly recommended ad format.

Ensure that your videos are high-quality and straightforward in their messaging to avoid disinterest from users.

Additionally, take note that video ads should have the following specifications:

• Minimum resolution of 1080 X 1080 pixels
• Format of MP4, MOV, or GIF
• A ratio of 1:1 (for desktop and mobile) or 4:5 (for mobile only)
• Less than 4GB in file size

Source: Revol Carz Makeover Singapore

Here’s another ad example from Revol Carz, a video ad that showcases the results of their work. This video contains photographic evidence of their work and information about their services. Despite containing so much information, it works well as a video ad by portraying it visually and concisely.

Carousel Ads

Carousel Ads are a series of images that users can scroll through from left to right. Carousel ads have a minimum of 2 images and can be used to showcase the same product and its different features, different products from the same store, demonstrate a process, create a larger image, or sell the benefits of a service.

Each image in a carousel ad can have a different headline, text, and call-to-action, making it a great choice for e-commerce businesses looking to promote multiple products.

Source: Revol Carz Makeover Singapore

In this example from Revol Carz, they used the carousel ad to create a larger image while also selling the benefits of their services.

Collection Ads

Collection Ads are similar to carousel ads in that it contains multiple images. However, the contents of the ad are displayed in a more dynamic manner with a key image or video highlighted and the other product images in smaller grid format below. Viewers are encouraged to click on one of the images to display the full catalog of items like an e-commerce shop.

Source: Facebook.com

Such a format is great for retail of online products in industries such as fashion, sports and beauty as it is an immersive format that can drive clicks to your online store.

4. Types of Audiences

Before you create an advertising campaign on Facebook, you should know all about audiences — the pools of users you will be targeting. When you know who you’re targeting, you will know what would best appeal to them. We will discuss three types of audiences here: Core, Custom, and Lookalike.

Saved

Your saved audience, also previously known as a core audience, is the most commonly used audience type when advertising on Facebook.

Saved audiences are created based on four factors: location, demographics, interests, and behaviour. Location refers to the region, country, or area within a country where you want to advertise. Demographics include age, gender, and language.

As for interests, including relevant and specific ones will target users who have searched or shown an inclination for those interests. Behaviours as based on users’ past purchases, device usage, and other activities.

When creating your saved audience, it should reflect the customer persona you may already have in your marketing strategy. If you haven’t created a customer persona, consider giving this guide a read to discover how to create one today.

If you’re still unsure what your customer personas are, you can utilise the Audience Insights tool to better understand your current and potential audiences. More on this in the Analytics Tool section below.

Custom Audiences

Custom audiences allow you to reach your existing customers and audience from other platforms through Facebook. For people who are already familiar with your business, targeting them with ads will essentially serve as a reminder of your business, possibly convincing them to make another purchase.

Custom audiences can be found in three ways:

1. Uploading your customers’ data (name, email, phone number) into Facebook, where it will be matched to the relevant profiles
2. Previous visitors to your website or applications
3. Users who have interacted with your Facebook assets previously

Source: Facebook Custom Audience

As you can see in the image above, there are various sources you can choose from to create a custom audience. Creating a custom audience provides an avenue for you to continue the sales process with customers who have already been exposed to you.

Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike audiences are made by comparing your current and best customers with other users and selecting those that are most similar to your customers. The rationale for this is sound as these users could be more likely to be interested in your business.

When creating a lookalike audience, you need to choose a saved audience for Facebook to compare against and a percentage, ranging from 1–10%, of the source audience to target. Lookalike audiences will also exclude your current customers so you don’t have to worry about any crossovers.

5.3 Facebook Ads Structure

Before we go into the steps of creating an ad campaign, you need to know about the Facebook Ads structure.

A typical ads structure is made up of

1. Campaign. This is where you let Facebook know of your objectives and budget.
2. Ad set. At this level, you set your budget and duration for each ad and your targeting, placement, and bid settings.
3. Ad. These are the ads themselves, the creative and the ad copy.

5. Measuring Facebook Ad Results

After running your ads campaign, you need to measure the success and find out all you can regarding its performance.

You should note that Facebook discontinued their Facebook Analytics service in 2021 which provided an in-depth look into the results of ad campaigns. Even so, there are other separate tools that can generate insights for you to gather your ads reporting.

5.1 Facebook Ads Center

The Ads Center is an existing tool on your Facebook Page where you can see the results of ads created from your page. It is rather limited but it is still helpful for you to manage all your current and previous ads.

Within the Ad Center, you can view the summary, ads, tool and automated ads.

• Summary: This section shows you an overview of your recent ad performance, including your budget, reach, engagement, conversions, and page likes.
• Ads: This section shows you all the current and previous ads you’ve created from your Page. You can click on the “View Results” button on each ad to get a more in-depth view of that ad’s performance, audience, and details. You can also make changes to your ad here, such as editing your ad budget and pausing or deleting the ad.
• Performance
  The performance chart depicts the number of users you reached and who clicked on your ad, as well as the overall cost for your ad. If your ad ran for several days, it would show the total amount, but you can also adjust this to view daily results to gauge its success on specific days
• Audience
  The audience section shows you how well your ad performed across ages, genders, placements and locations. You can see your audience’s demographics to further understand your target audience. The placements chart shows your ad’s performance across different placements — Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger. You can also see where your ad is performing best as well as where it appears on both mobile and desktop devices.
• Tools: This section shows you different useful tools that can help you optimise your ads. This includes getting personalised recommendations and getting expert advice from a Facebook representative.
• Automated ads: This section will only be available if you’ve created automated ads or have Automatically Boost Posts set up. You’ll find a summary of your automated ads and the results for each one.

5.2 Meta Business Suite

Meta Business Suite is a platform developed by Meta (formerly Facebook) specifically for businesses and marketers to manage their presence and activities across Meta’s family of apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. It provides tools and features that help businesses create, manage, and analyse their advertising campaigns, posts, and interactions with customers.

Meta Business Suite is the central location to manage all your operations across each Meta-owned platform.

Key features of Meta Business Suite include:

1. Content Management: Businesses can create, schedule, and publish posts and ads across Facebook and Instagram from a single interface. This streamlines the process of managing social media content.
2. Insights and Analytics: Detailed analytics tools allow businesses to track the performance of their posts, ads, and overall engagement metrics. This helps businesses understand what content resonates with their audience and optimise their social media strategy.
3. Messaging: Integration with Messenger enables businesses to respond to customer inquiries and messages efficiently. They can manage communications and provide customer support directly through the Meta Business Suite.
4. Advertising: Businesses can create and manage advertising campaigns across Facebook and Instagram, set budgets, target specific audiences, and track the performance of their ads. This includes both feed-based ads and stories.
5. Collaboration: For larger organisations or agencies, Meta Business Suite allows for collaboration by granting multiple team members access to manage social media accounts and campaigns.

Meta Business Suite is designed to simplify social media management for businesses of all sizes, providing them with the tools they need to effectively market their products or services on Meta’s platforms.

7. Key Takeaways

In summary, Facebook is an excellent platform for businesses to market themselves. Despite the rise of popularity of other social media platforms, this hasn’t diminished Facebook’s position as one of the top social media platforms to advertise on with billions of users worldwide.

If you want to master the power of Facebook for your business, check out our 2-day WSQ Facebook & Instagram Marketing Course held here in Singapore. Throughout the course, attendees will learn the ins and outs of Facebook and how to incorporate it into their digital marketing strategy.

Alongside that, we also host a wide range of digital marketing courses to ensure you have a well-rounded strategy.

Check out our Certified Digital Marketing Strategist (CDMS) v2, which covers the following seven modules:

• WSQ Digital Marketing Essentials
• WSQ Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• WSQ Digital Advertising
• WSQ Social Media Marketing
• WSQ Digital Content Marketing
• WSQ Email Marketing
• WSQ Digital Marketing Analytics (Google Analytics)

You’ll be awarded the Certified Digital Marketing Strategist (CDMS) v2 certificate  upon completing these seven modules. These courses are WSQ accredited and eligible students will receive SSG subsidy.