Facebook Advertising: The Self Employed-Guide 2021

You don’t need advertising on Facebook as a small business? Not correct! With over 32 million users in Germany alone, the social network is one of the most popular. With numerous opportunities to target a large number of people, Facebook offers the perfect opportunity for self-employed and small businesses to increase their awareness. And this is how it works:

Nowadays, anyone who wants to ensure more reach and interaction with (potential) customers can no longer avoid social networks. And since Facebook is still one of the most popular of these platforms, the question quickly arises: How do I advertise on Facebook?

The answer lies in 5 steps:

1. Set up a business profile
2. Set a goal
3. Define your target audience
4. Set up campaigns
5. Don’t forget essential tips

Since this shortlist is not particularly meaningful, we now explain in detail how you can successfully advertise on Facebook – starting with the correct user profile.

Advertising on Facebook: Put yourself in the right light

In order for you to be able to use Facebook‘s advertising options at all, you need, among other things, a professional Facebook company page. A business account is vital for the reputation of your company. More and more decision-makers grew up with the Internet and, when looking for business partners, quickly discard companies that cannot at least be found in the major social networks.

In short, companies that present themselves online and want to reach their target group with advertising on Facebook (or the linked subsidiary platform Instagram ) need a business profile.

Which goal do you want to achieve?

Before you can start creating ads, there are a few essential things to do. First of all, you should be aware of what the fundamental goal of your advertising campaign is. For this, Facebook offers three main categories:

Awareness: Would you like to ensure a more regional understanding of your products or simply increase your reach? Then this is the correct category for your campaign.

Consideration: You can use the “Consideration” category to ensure that people find out about your company. This happens, for example, through more traffic on your website, app installations, interactions with the posts on your profile or events. But you can also get people to message you and watch specific videos. This category is also ideal for generating leads.

Conversion: The third category can help you if you want to encourage users to take a particular action – for example, visiting your store, selling catalogues or taking action on your website, such as completing a survey. In order to be able to understand these actions and thus the success of your campaign, the installation of the/ Facebook pixel is necessary.

Determine who should see your ads

The selection and definition of the right target group is the be-all and end-all of any marketing strategy. There is also a reason for that because the best advertising is of no use if it doesn’t address the right people. Who takes out equestrian insurance when they’re just looking for a new refrigerator?

Who invests in new software to optimize business processes if they don’t have any business whose operations need to be optimized? So think in advance who your target group is and what criteria you can use to define it.

It’s not tricky for advertising on Facebook. Because Facebook uses all the data on the preferences and behaviors of its over 32 million users in Germany to assess and group them, this enables you to define three different types of audiences that you can address.

This is also called targeting:

Targeting through interests and demographic data: You can define your target group through their interests. For example, likes and group memberships are taken into account. And you can narrow it down using demographic data such as age, occupation, gender and place of residence. It is essential not to use too few, but also not too many, criteria for restriction.

Otherwise, your target group will either be too big or too small and not offer optimal conditions for advertising on Facebook. In the “Target group definition” graphic, when assigning criteria directly in the campaign, you can see whether your criteria allow an optimal size or whether you should readjust.

Targeting via Custom Audiences: Here, you can individually determine who should see your advertisements. For example, people who viewed 75% of your last video or who performed a particular action in an app linked to their Facebook account.

Targeting via lookalike audiences: These are people who are very similar to your defined target group. This similarity is calculated on the basis of the user data available on Facebook. Facebook then shows your ad to people who, for example, behave very similarly to the visitors to your website and could therefore be potentially interested in your product or service. In this way, you can also reach people whom you have not yet considered.

Three levels for perfect advertising on Facebook

You are all ready now to set up your campaigns. Facebook campaigns consist of three levels.

Campaigns: At the top campaign level, you define the primary framework conditions, such as the goal of the campaign or the budget. Because advertising on Facebook is, of course, not free, but you can determine precisely how much money you want to invest in your campaigns. Either as, for example, as a daily budget (X EUR per day) or over a certain period of time (X EUR in the next 14 days).

Ad groups: A campaign can have multiple ad groups. For each ad group, you then define the target group, the period and the placement of your advertising. So that your ads are effective, you can place them in different places: in the right column, in the feed itself between the posts, on the marketplace and via audience networks.

The marketplace is especially worthwhile if your target group consists of people who have a specific purchase intention. Audience Networks are partner networks of Facebook that display your advertising, for example, in online games on the smartphone. You can also distribute your ads via Stories, Instagram or even Facebook Messenger.

Ads: For each ad group, you can now design the ad that is shown to the users. Define the format for each ad: A single picture, a video, a slideshow or a combination of photo and video? Depending on the goal, a different structure may be worthwhile.

If you want to show several products at the same time, the carousel is suitable, while a “normal” contribution made up of images and text is suitable for asking for a survey.

Last tips for advertising on Facebook

No guide is complete without some final tips to put the finishing touches to your goal.

• Use retargeting properly. Just as you can target users with targeting, it is possible, to continue targeting them after visiting a specific page or after purchasing a product. In this case, the advertisements created on Facebook are in display.

For example, in partner networks or on other websites.  Take the product life cycle should into account: Did you sell someone a printer two months ago? Then you should now place advertisements for him with suitable printer cartridges.

• Provide your advertisements with a clear call to action, i.e. a clear call to action. Instead of a vague “Click here” button, it is better to present the interested parties with a concrete added value such as “This is how you address the generation of tomorrow!”
• Use suitable images for advertising on Facebook that not only look appealing but also stand out from the rest of the feed.
• Use so-called A / B testing to optimize your ads. Combine different motifs, texts, videos etc. and see whether an advertisement with an additional text or image might receive better.
• Before posting the ads, Facebook will review both the ad itself and the linked page. To find out in advance what is allowed and what Facebook advertising guidelines are, and take this into account when creating.

Advertising on Facebook may seem like an impenetrable labyrinth at first. But with this post, you have got a good overview of the essential points that you have to consider when creating advertisements. Now nothing stops in the way of your successful advertising campaign to win new customers.

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