How to Run Ads on Facebook – 5 Winning Strategies for 2024

1. Start by understanding what you want to achieve

Facebook Ads is great as it’s easy to use – you specify the goal of your ad, determine your budget, identify who you want to show it to and press publish. Job done!

However, before you jump in and start setting up your ad, it’s essential to understand your end goal and the purpose of your advert. This will help you ensure that your ad campaign stays on track and that you don’t waste time and money showing your ad to the wrong audience.

Before you begin:

• Identify your target audience. Where do they live, what do they do for a living, what are their hobbies and interests? This will ensure you set up the targeting for your ad correctly.
• Think about what objectives you will set for your Facebook ads campaign. Do you want to drive conversions, increase brand awareness, or generate leads? This will influence the ad format you use.
• Decide what page of your website your ad will point people to. You need to make sure you’ve designed your page for conversions – more on that later.
• Put your budget in place. While you can increase or decrease your budget throughout your campaign, it’s good to have an idea in place. You can set a budget limit, which means as soon as you hit that limit, Facebook will stop showing your ads.
• Choose a bid strategy. This is how the Facebook algorithm will bid for you when determining when and where your ads will be shown. Do you want Facebook to manage the bidding on your behalf (automated), or do you want to control your bids yourself (manual)?
• Determine how you’ll track and measure the success of your campaign. What metrics are most important to you, and how will you identify if your campaign is a success?

2. Experiment with different ad placements

One of the great things about Facebook is that you can take advantage of various ad placements on both desktop and mobile.

For example, as well as the standard ads that you might see in Facebook’s newsfeed, you can also run ads in Facebook Marketplace (like the image below), in the right column of Facebook, as well as Stories and Reels.

Each different ad placement has its advantages. For example, Facebook Marketplace ads are great if you’re selling B2C, while the right column of Facebook is a cost-effective option for businesses on a budget.

As well as different ad placements, why not try running ads under the various Meta-owned platforms too?

You can create ads on Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and the Meta Audience Network, where you can promote your adverts on selected mobile apps.

3. Focus on ads that stop the scroll

People spend about 20 hours a month on Facebook – that’s about 45 minutes a day!

While that might sound like a lot, your ads will have a lot of competition from other businesses that are advertising. This means you need to do everything you can to stand out.

This is especially true on mobile where users will be scrolling through their feed – how will you make them stop, pay attention, and click on your advert?

An excellent place to start is your visuals. Experiment with different colors, fonts, compositions, and images to see what people engage with most. Here’s a great tip – check out the Meta Ad Library to see what ads your competitors are creating. This can help you design stand-out graphics and copy that shows off your unique selling point as a business.