The Basics of Facebook Advertising

Facebook is a social media and advertising great, boasting over 3 billion active monthly users. While nobody can target an ad to all 3 billion of those users, having a good grasp on Facebook advertising basics can help your ad campaigns run more effectively and reward you with an increased ROI when you set realistic goals and optimize your campaign’s data properly. 

What are Facebook Ads? 

Facebook ads are paid for by businesses to promote their products, location, or services to audiences that they’ve determined might be interested. Facebook ads come in many forms, from static image posts to playable mini games, and can target a wide range of audience demographics depending on your budget, the intention behind your ad, and the quality of your content. 

Facebook ads typically look similar to regular in-feed posts, but ads feature a “sponsored” banner to retain transparency. They also typically have more elements to them, like call-to-action stickers encouraging the audience to call the business, visit a website, or browse an online shop. 

Types of Facebook Ads

Image

One of the most common types of ads, image-based ads are great for highlighting your products, brand, or service. Images can be altered across placements to ensure high quality ads no matter where your audience sees them. A popular way to create an image ad is by boosting an already-existing Facebook or Instagram post, whether it did well already or is poised to become your next viral post! 

Stories

Mobile-optimized content in a vertical format, presented in line as users scroll through their friends’ stories, is another popular type of ad. Stories ads provide more freedom than regular video ads, with a more casual feel thanks to the opportunity to use stickers, emojis, filters, and more. 

Video

The temptation to post a long, beautifully shot and directed video of your product, service, or other advertised item is strong – but consider the attention span of your audience, and what they were doing before they saw your ad. The average user isn’t going to pause their scroll for a 15 minute advertisement, especially if they have the freedom to navigate away! 

Keep video ads short and sweet, and consider leaving a script out of the equation. Many users browse Facebook and Instagram with their volume muted to avoid constantly changing sounds or bothering others nearby as they scroll through their feeds, so a quick demo of your product in action is likely to perform better than a conversation-based video that would require listeners to change their volume. 

Slideshow

Slideshow ads on Facebook are usually between 3 and 10 slides. Slideshow ads are popular for mobile placements, since they use less data than playing a video and load faster. This kind of ad also encourages engagement as your audience swipes through the slides. 

Carousel

Carousel ads on Facebook allow your audience to click through up to 10 photos or videos, each with its own description, link, or headline. Carousel ads are popular for advertising product ranges, color and design options, processes like product creation or products in use, transformation photos, and more. Each image or video in a carousel ad can be linked to its own landing page to make it convenient for your audience to browse further. 

Messenger

There are actually three types of Facebook Messenger Ads: ads that bring users into a Messenger conversation with you, Facebook Messenger Stories ads that appear between a user’s connections’ stories, and Facebook Messenger Inbox ads that appear between conversations in a user’s inbox in a row with the same appearance as a regular message. 

Messenger ads on Facebook bring your audience into a Messenger conversation with your Page when clicked. We recommend enabling permissions for Facebook’s AI chatbot to answer basic questions and requests for information, or forward the user to a live customer service agent at your Page. 

Collection

One of the Facebook Ad types that makes great use of Facebook algorithms is Collection ads. Businesses have the ability to let Facebook’s algorithms choose which of their products appear to individuals in your audience. Collection ads are more customizable than Carousel ads, giving businesses more room for creative choices and unique elements. 

Playables

Though not so relevant to hoteliers, Playable ads are a type of Facebook ad and still deserves a spot on the list. These are meant for gaming apps hoping to entice their target audience to try out their game without having to navigate away from what they were doing before the ad. 

Effective Facebook Ad Content

Creating effective Facebook Ad content is a multi-faceted process that can be tough to master, especially in the hospitality industry. Effective Facebook Ad content 

• Is Vertical or Square: Most of your audience holds their phone vertically, so you want ad content optimized for that orientation
• Has Short Text: Your average user scrolls fast! You have to grab their attention quickly – quickly as in within 2-3 seconds on a desktop and less than half a second on mobile
• Contains Movement: Movement like Reels and even animated elements help your Facebook Ad stand out in your audience’s feed 
• Has Calls-To-Action (CTAs): Depending on what’s appropriate for your property or product, you can choose from a range of CTA buttons for your Facebook Ad based on your engagement goal, like receiving messages or booking a room at a limited rate

Defining Ad Campaign Goals

Well-defined ad campaign goals are SMART:

• Specific: Whether you’re reaching for sales, brand awareness, or another KPI, make the goal clear and specific
• Measureable: Shoot for a goal that can be tracked for success
• Achievable: Be sure your goal is realistic for the scope of your brand and the campaign’s time frame
• Relevant: Confirm that your goal is worth the time and effort to work toward, and that it would be beneficial to achieve it
• Time-Bound: Create a timeline with due dates for assets, performance check-in points, and an end date

Effective ad campaign goals help you choose the best campaign objectives to meet your goals. 

Getting Started with Meta Ads Manager

Before you jump into ad creation, be sure that your Page’s access is up to date and all of your employees, especially those who will have responsibilities within your campaign, have been added to Meta Ads Manager as an employee. The person who set up the Business Manager for your Page is automatically given Administrator access – it’s a good idea for at least one other person to have Administrator access in case the original is out of office, or somehow loses access to their Facebook.  

Roles within Meta Ads Manager

There are several roles within Meta Ads Manager. 

Employee

Employees can be given access to any assets or tasks they need to work on within your business’s Ads Manager. Administrators grant said access or assign the tasks. Unless they have another role assigned to them, employees should be given employee roles in Ads Manager. 

Administrator

This access is automatically granted to the person who sets up Business Manager. Anyone at management level for ad campaigns should be granted Administrator access. Administrators on Facebook can create and edit ads, assign ad account roles, and edit payment methods. 

Finance

People in finance analyst roles can access financial information, including account spend, invoices, and payment methods. Finance editors can see financial information and view/edit payment methods. 

Business Partner

Anyone outside of your organization with access to your Page’s Ads Manager is a Business Partner. 

Brand Safety with Facebook Advertising

Ensure brand safety by using advertiser controls like block lists, publisher allow lists, and topic exclusions to keep your brand’s ad placements aligned with your message. You can also opt out of placements that don’t work for your brand or your ad, and opt out of your ads appearing in live content or on publishers that didn’t sign up for monetization. Inventory filters let you control the sensitivity of the content where your ad appears, letting you take your audience into greater consideration than ever before. 

Setting up Facebook Ads using Meta Ads Manager

Create a Facebook Ad

Log into Meta Ads Manager and navigate to your dashboard. Click “Create” and follow the prompts. 

Choose Ad Campaign Objectives

Ads Manager will ask about your campaign objective to determine next steps. The campaign objectives recognized by Meta Ads Manager are: 

• Awareness: to increase brand awareness, increase reach, increase video views, and increase store traffic 
• Traffic: increased traffic to a landing page destination of your choice, like your hotel’s homepage or booking page
• Engagement: seeking increased engagement across the board, the individual KPIs under Engagement are
  • Video Views
  • Messages
  • Conversions
  • Engagement Overall
• Leads: a useful campaign objective for businesses seeking newsletter signups or subscriptions, KPIs under Leads include lead generation, messages, and conversions
• App Promotion: With in-app loyalty programs and other new hotel tech turning a guest’s phone into their room key, an App Promotion objective is just as it sounds – the goal is app installs, or a specific action within your app like a loyalty program sign up
• Sales: an obviously popular objective, the KPIs under Sales are conversions and catalog sales 

There are additional settings available within Meta Ads Manager for the majority of these objectives. Walk through them before your Ad creation process and check out your options with help from Meta’s Business Help Center. 

Define Campaign Objective

You will choose one of the six campaign objective options: awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, app promotion, or sales. The majority of these objectives will open additional options to tailor your ad settings even more.  

Define Campaign Budget

In Ad set options, you’ll choose a specific performance goal and lock in the budget you have available for the campaign. You can choose between a daily or lifetime budget. 

• Daily budgets run your ad throughout the day and spend a daily minimum of $1
• Lifetime budgets run your ad for a specific amount of time

Tip: You can schedule to increase your budget during optimal times to help you reach a larger audience 

Target the Right Audience

As an established brand, you know your audience. You can give basic information about your audience to Meta’s Advantage+ and let it determine a target audience for your ad, or you can use Facebook’s original options and build your own audience like the good old days. 

Choose Facebook Ad Placements

The next step is to choose where your ad appears on Facebook. You have two options: let Facebook choose your ad placement with Advantage+, or choose your ad placements manually. We recommend starting with Advantage+ options, and using your campaign data to facilitate a successful switch to manual selection for better results once you get your bearings. 

Your Facebook Ad placement options are:

• Feeds
• Stories
• Reels
• In-Stream (video content only)
• Search
• Facebook Messages

How to Launch a Facebook Ad Campaign

It’s almost time to launch your campaign! Choose your ad format and upload the creative components of your ad. Images and short videos are the most common, with carousels quickly growing in popularity. Once you’ve provided your assets, consider any design recommendations or prompts from Meta based on the type of ad you chose. 

Before you publish, double check your campaign details like your target audience, the length of the campaign, and your campaign budget. Press the green Publish button and launch your ad campaign! 

Monitor Facebook Ad Campaign Performance

Navigate to your Meta Ads Manager dashboard. Depending on your campaign goals, you can build reports both in Meta and in apps like Sprout that highlight your chosen KPIs. 

Common Reasons Ads Get Rejected

Ads go through automated and human reviews before they reach your audience. There are a few common reasons why ads get rejected, like 

• Text ads that aren’t specific, imply that the advertiser knows specific attributes about the reader, use offensive language, and make false or misleading claims or withhold important information
• Landing pages that don’t accurately reflect the service or product in the ad, contains elements prohibited by Meta’s Advertising Standards, contains content that makes it difficult for a user to navigate away from it, and don’t work properly or aren’t functional at all 
• Ad creative that includes sexual images or videos, misleading buttons, focuses on a body part or pain point, and references Facebook or Instagram in a way that goes against Meta’s brand guidelines

Facebook Ads Terminology

Facebook ads terminology is similar to traditional pay-per-click ads. Here is a brief rundown of common terms:

• PPC – pay per click; describes the pricing model for the ads
• CPC – cost per click; what you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. Divide the spend (cost) by the number of clicks the ad receives
• Impressions – The number of times your ad is served; this number is not “unique,” meaning your ad could serve more than once to the same person
• Reach – The number of people who see your ads; this can also be thought of as unique impressions
• Potential Reach – The estimated amount of people that your ads could reach given the current targeting options and budget that you chose
• Frequency – How many times, on average, a unique individual receives an ad impression; can be calculated by dividing impressions by reach

TravelBoom helps hotels run high-impact Facebook Ad campaigns that drive bookings and elevate hotel brands. If the ad creation process seems daunting, leave it to us. Unlock the full potential of Facebook advertising for your hotel and contact us for a free consultation today.