Facebook Ads Manager: A Beginners ‘Beyond the Boost Button’ Guide to pull more leads in 2023

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The Facebook Ads Manager is the tool to make, manage and optimize Facebook ads.

Now is the time to up your Facebook Ads game. Because when you realize the blue ‘Boost Post’ button is not doing ‘what it says on the tin’ – driving substantive business results.

Let’s dive headfirst into the Facebook Ads manager and creates adverts that convert.

Only with the Facebook Ads Manager can you find audiences, attract leads, scale campaigns, and manage ROI. Time to dive in and see how this all works.

Facebook Ads Manager a Beginners guide to double your leads in 2023

People buy the *why* you do what you do not *what* you do.

If you use the blue Boost button to get (leads and sales) it is like starting a fire in the BBQ with €50 notes. Yea, it works, but there are better and cheaper ways to fire up the ‘old BBQ for the family summer picnic.

Note: Boosting a Post has specific and real-world positive uses. The basis of the 3×3 video grid is boosting posts!

Here is a deal:

How about you exchange those €50 notes for 10 or 20 or 100 leads (which is easy by the way)?

But, what if you need to scale to 1000 leads in 60 days then what do you do? The blue Boost Post button is not gonna get the job done.

Have you installed the Facebook Pixel on your website? Its use is *mandatory* at this stage. You are free and welcome to run paid media without using or installing the pixel, however, attribution is not possible with tracking. And the Pixel does the tracking for us.

… the Facebook pixel is a piece of code that you can place on your website to report conversions, build audiences and get rich insights about how people are using your website … Facebook

Start with a Base Business Strategy – (Goals, Content, Targeting)

The best day to plant, a tree was 20 years ago. The second best is today – Chinese proverb

Strategies like tress are best ‘planted’ years ago, in lieu of 20 years ago, start today.

No need to panic at the strategy word … simply follow along and take action.

Fundamentals: Strategy is a real world plan to get you from where you are to where you want to be. Objectives / goals are the ‘end point’ you are aiming at. Strategy is the how you get to your ‘end point’. A strategy comprises your goals, content, and targeting.

Social Media Marketing Basics: People use Facebook for distractions. People use Google to get answers and where to buy *stuff*. People don't open Facebook with the intention of buying stuff. Facebook is distraction.
This distraction vs. purchase differentiates Facebook/Instagram from Google, Amazon, and eBay. Your ideal client is not holding iPhone with their credit card in hand, ready to buy your super special 'special offer'.

Because of this distraction mindset on 'FaceGram' give people something before you ask them to buy your stuff. What appears to be the most direct line to a purchase, see ads -> buy product, is, in fact, the fastest way to lose the attention and interest of the people that matter most to your business. When you approach FaceGram with the mindset of ‘I need to get a sale from you’, rather than give your audience something they value, be it intertainment or education you will lose. Every time.

…to be successful on Facebook you must be cogent to the context of the platform that you’re playing on.

Why Facebook Advertising?

Because of the size of the opportunity and the tools available:

1.7+ Billion people on Facebook, 1.5+ Billion of them as MAU; 1+ billion use Messenger, and a further 600+ million on Instagram. These are mind-numbing numbers and your ideal client is in these groups.

Not simply the volume of people, but the hours per day they spend on Facebook. Hours. A. Day on Facebook.

Eyes ready to see your ads.

Because:

The numbers illuminate the size of the opportunity using the Facebook Ads Manager. And the blue Facebook ‘Boost’ button limits access, therefore limiting results. This 3×3 Video grid post is a brilliant use of the Boost button is the $1/day Facebook ads Strategy.

Think about the opportunity this way:

Not everyone on Facebook is your ideal client or target audience. But, your ideal client is on Facebook and Instagram, and the only way to find them and put messages in front of them is by using the Facebook Ads Manager.

Why Advertise (Paid Media) and why Facebook (Boost Button)?

Why pay to advertise your business? (see this POEM post )

To reach the people who matter most to your business with the least effort, faster.

Stop and think;

No rule states you must pay to market your business. None. Paid media, has a role to play and fits into the Paid, Owned, Earned marketing trifecta of ‘promotion’ of the 4Ps of marketing.

When you turn the tap on:

One way to think of paid media, especially Facebook Ads, is a way to amplify your owned media efforts.

What do I mean by amplifying?

Take, for example, a video you ‘posted’ two days ago, the ‘behind the scenes’ office ‘tour’ video showing the office dog, people, your desks, the break room etc. That video is beginning to have a significant number of views, likes, comments, and shares.

Push that video further – expose more people to it – with €1/day or €5/day for a few days. And watch your audience expand by X³ or X⁴.

Yes,  a large audience by itself does not revenue make. What you do with that audience does make revenue!

What you do is this:

Take that video audience and put them into 3 different buckets using the video view custom audience tool. Bucket one,  people who watch 10 seconds of your video; bucket two, people who watched 50%, and bucket three, people who watched 75% of your video.

These three groups are brand aware, each with different degrees of engagement and intent.

The people who watched 75% of the video are interested, engaged and probably ready for your offer.

The beautiful thing about the ads manager and power editor is you can create a Lookalike audience from these video view audiences you just created. LAL audiences are clones of your ‘original’ audience. In an almost sleight hand trick, Facebook finds people, in your country, having the same characteristics and intentions which match closest to your seed audience.

So, make a LAL of your 75% video view audience. Then show the original video to this new LAL audience and make your offer to the new group of video view watchers.

Lookalike custom audiences are reserved for the Ads Manager and Power Editor.

You say: ‘Exposure does not pay the bills?’

So true, so true. And do not fall into the trap where people ‘see ad -> buy product’. Exposure is a top-of-the-marketing funnel activity – where brand-unaware people become brand aware. Do more of the ‘marketing magic’ and presto they become customers (did I gloss over a few steps? Yup).

Facebook or bust, right?

Well, no.

After the size of the opportunity ‘argument’; the best reasons to use Facebook ads are the ‘targeting’ and retargeting options. (Have you installed the Facebook pixel yet?) The fourth best reason is the relatively low cost to advertise.

By targeting options, I mean the tools available to find the people who matter most to your business, either by building audiences from scratch or using your existing website traffic.

Retargeting uses the Facebook Pixel to put website visitors into a *bucket* allowing you to show adverts to them. Use retargeting people who visited your website but did not become a lead or ‘purchase’ a product/service. This post dives deep into the Facebook Pixel. Read, reread and install the pixel.

Costs are per CPM basis or CPL basis – newspapers, radio, leaflet drops, and networking are all more expensive. This post defines the most 39 common advertising terms as a refresher.

Bulls-eye, bulls-eye, 50 pts for the middle circle.

Back to targeting – take a local gastropub located in the city centre with 40K+ people plus an additional 14K living in the outlining suburbs. The owner would like more walk-in customers on Tuesday and Thursday evenings as those are the slowest nights.

Or

Targeting a high-end branding and website design business in need of 5-10 new leads per week. The ideal client is a woman business owner with 2-10 employees. With a website that wants to refresh and upgrade, adding blogging and a shopping cart to their website. Not limited by geography, but, limited by country.

(as he hangs these examples in the air for a second…)

It is ok to boost posts from your page. The downside of the blue boost button are, the fewer choices, less control of your ads, higher cost, and fewer placement options. Worse still website custom audience and lookalike audience are not possible. So and yes, this article you are reading is for the ‘beginner’ (everyone was a beginner once). ‘Asking for a friend’ have you installed the Facebook Pixel on your website? Probably a good idea.

Facebook Ad Manager: The Ads Structure

The ad structure is upside down, in reality.

You see:

People see your ad in their news feed, on Instagram, or wherever. If curious, they click to seek out your Facebook page, and your website, and if really adventurous sign up for your email marketing system.

If you use the Facebook boosted post button, it is also ‘right side’ up – you post a page post, press the boost button, choose to target, budget, and off you go.

On the backhand:

The Facebook ad structure is upside down, and for a reason.

First, decide the Campaign objective, the ad set with an audience, ad placement; bidding options, budget, and lastly build the creative – the ad.

See backwards!

The Facebook Ads Manager

Find it here: https://www.Facebook.com/adsmanager

Or click on the down arrow in Chrome browser on the desktop, then ‘Create Ads’:

Clicking ‘Create Ads’ lands you on the page below.

This page is the ‘guided ads’ building page. The page asks you to choose your objective and what is ‘what is your marketing objective?’.

Click the ‘Close’ button in the lower-left corner to take you to the Ads Manager:

Yes, the ads manager is intimidating to look at, at first glance.

But, a closer look reveals familiar names ‘Campaigns’, ‘Ad sets’, and ‘Ads’.

Yep, the tabs follow the structure described above.

Closer, Come a little closer … into the Facebook Ads Manager

Look at the top left corner, next to the white and grey Facebook ‘F’ and you see the red square with three lines.

Click on that ‘hamburger’ and see what happens. Argh!! What is all this? Exactly!

Tool, tools, tools, and more tools. Each item opens into its own dashboard.

A detailed and deep walk-through is for another blog post or two. Here are the highlights anyway.

Reading Left to right:

Frequently Used, Plan, Create & Manage, Measure & Report, Assets, Setting.

Each sub-category opens more tools. Tools to help us build, create, manage, and understand audiences and ads.

A quick look:

‘Audience insights’ – Research what your audience likes and does not like about other topics – besides your brand.

‘Audiences’ under the Assets tab is where you build website custom audiences, look-a-like audiences, and build a saved audiences.

‘Ads Reporting’ is the tool to learn how your ad campaigns are performing.

Get started with Facebook Ads Manager

If you are given the keys to a brand-new Ferrari; do you jump in and drive? Hell yes! Or do you plan out the biggest badest road trip ever? The Facebook Ads Manager and the platform is no different.

A supercar will take you from here to there in style, comfort, class, and luxury at lightning speed. The Facebook Ads Manager is the same.

However, start with what and how you want to achieve what you want to achieve.

You want sales yes, obviously, but, be smart and don’t peddle ‘special offers’ in the face of the 1.5 ‘trillion’ people on FaceGram expecting and expecting to be a billionaire overnight. It is not gonna happen.

Remember the distraction vs. purchase mindset people have on FaceGram? FaceGram is a backyard BBQ party where you don’t barge in like a used car salesman or MLM and sell to your aunt, cousin, neighbour or husband.  You must give before asking. Right? Right. Good so…

…be subtle, plan your funnel, and warm up people before you make an offer. Maybe give a lead magnet in exchange for an email address.

Nurture and build relationships. Fix your funnel before you run any ads.

Top tip: Match the ‘buyer’ state with the correct content and offer.

‘Warming up?’

You’ve heard: “People must know you, like you, and trust you before they buy from you.”

Or

… the ‘buyers journey’ …

Or

… Eugene Schwartz’s “Problem unaware -> problem aware -> solution aware -> provider aware ->most aware” stages from his book ‘Breakthrough Advertising

Yep, at each step, people/buyers have questions that need answering. Content answers those questions and helps people move to the next step. ‘Content’ is images, videos, Facebook Lives, Periscopes, blog posts/articles, white papers, webinars, cheat sheets, ebooks, etc.

Important point not to be swept under the carpet:

The ‘price of your service’ and ‘complexity of your product’ loosely, determine the number of steps to move a prospect/buyer/person from brand unaware -> ready to buy state. A €10 t-shirt is different purchase consideration compared to a €999 coaching program.

A simple Facebook Advertising Funnel

It is a simple funnel, despite its appearance.

In words. Make an Ad and put the blog post in front of your ideal client(s) audience, e.g. 100K people. Over 5 days 1% of the 100K will click on your ad to read the blog post on your website, 1000 people. These 1000 are now pixeled (you read the Facebook pixel post I mentioned 8 times earlier right?).

On the blog post, you have a ‘content upgrade’ lead magnet offer to offer to these 1000 people. A percentage of these 1000 readers will take your ‘content upgrade’ lead magnet offer and give their email addresses in exchange.

Retarget or remarket to the part of the 1000 people who did not take your ‘content upgrade’ lead magnet offer.

Putting it all together – Demo Facebook Ads Audience Building

Demo no 1. Live Facebook Ads and audience building for a local restaurant using the ‘carpet bombing technique.

Gastro Pub – PPE with video, carpet bomb with video, retarget with offers.

Example no 2. Clare the Branding / Website design business – read magnet, retarget with lead magnet, and schedule a free phone call.

Audience building.

Blog post / Read magnet – The 10 Design Elements To Consider Before Building A New Website

Interest: Hubspot, Wix, Divi theme, WordPress, Facebook for Business, Marketo, Mailchimp, adweaver, convertkit, Leadpages, Clickfunnels, Local Enterprise board, Digital Marketeer, Inc magazine, Entrepreneur magazine.

Richard Branson, Cliff Ravenscraft, Gary Vaynerchuk, Mari Smith, Amy Porterfield, Mario Folio (B-School), Ryan Diess, Jon Loomer

Demographics: I would use a 50-75 mile radius of the office if in-person consultants are needed. Remote clients then target any country with the same language.

Targeting a high-end branding and website design business in need of 5-10 new leads per week. The ideal client is a woman business owner with 2-10 employees, who has a website and wants to refresh and upgrade, adding blogging and a shopping cart to their website. Not limited by geography, but, limited by country

FAQ’s

Frequently Asked Ads Questions

How do I edit an ad in the Facebook Ads Manager?

If the ad is running select the ad, and make the changes. Then press the review button. Done.

Note – Any change to an ongoing campaign will ‘reset’ the campaign and all accrued social proof and traction. Meaning – the FB ad platform needs 48-72 hours, to begin achieving the goal of the campaign objective selected.

If you change an image or words etc after 24 hours, the ad set data resets and you begin from time zero again.

How do I ‘buy’ an ad through the Facebook Ads Manager?

Press the ‘order’ button, etc Or what else?

What features are in the Facebook Ads Manager?

Every tool you need to make, create, research audience, manage pixels, and monitor Facebook advertising.

What does Facebook Ads Manager do?

It is the main interface between ‘us’ and the making of Facebook Adverts

How does the Facebook Ads Manager work?

It is a set of tools allowing us to make, manage and monitor ads

How to deactivate my Facebook Ads Account in Facebook Ads Manager?

The easiest is to remove the payment method from your ads account. Click the hamburger, then setting and ‘Billing & Payment methods’, then edit payment methods.

How to remove credit card from Facebook Ads Manager

See the above answer: Click the hamburger, then setting and ‘Billing & Payment methods’, then edit payment methods.

https://www.facebook.com/help/242462812536016

How to change payment method in my Facebook Ads Manager:

Click the hamburger, then setting and ‘Billing & Payment methods’, then Add Payment Method.

My Facebook Ads Manager is not working

your Facebook Ads Strategy starts here –>Download this 7 simple Facebook ads formula for…

The Facebook Ads Manager is a complex and confusing beast of a tool

and the only method to get comfortable is to dive in, get comfy, read and learn.

tell me what is your worsts part of the Ads Manager?

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