Facebook is probably the biggest advertising platform on the web. If you want to make sure people see your campaign, Facebook is probably the right place for you. Similar to other social media, Facebook isn’t great for all kinds of content. Anything that is considered “adult”, gambling, get rich quick schemes and similar are off-limits. And the list of banned things is growing each and every day. So before promoting your products or services, make sure that they are compliant with the platform.
Affiliate marketing and Facebook go hand in hand. Affiliates from all over the web use Facebook's incredible reach to spread their message and promote the products and services that they want to sell. This is nothing new. Affiliates have been doing this for years, and the process is well optimized. If you want to consider yourself a serious affiliate, you need to know how to promote your campaigns on the platform.
Facebook Is Not The Money Printing Machine It Once Was…
As with everything, things change throughout the years. The same happened to Facebook. Those who started using the platform early found themselves in an incredible space. They had access to millions of people and the tracking tools were incredible. Those who got into the game early had the opportunity to make some serious cash! But even if you missed Facebook’s glory days, it’s not too late to start and make a decent living off your ads.
Lately, things have been a bit more difficult. Facebook got a lot stricter with what it allows people to advertise, and there are many cases of banned business accounts and restricted advertising campaigns for no apparent reason. Facebook also likes to keep secrets about why they ban campaigns. If you don’t have someone that recognizes their patterns, you will spend a lot of time troubleshooting what the thing that bothers them is. All of this has been greatly exaggerated with the new iOS update.
The new iOS update made the world’s biggest advertising platform far less useful than it was a couple of months ago. In the search for more privacy for their users, Apple diced to block advertisers from tracking users. This made huge waves in the industry. Most campaigns for iOS and Apple devices have become unprofitable or even impossible to run properly. And the problem will only get bigger in time. Manufacturers like Google will probably implement similar features into their Android OS.
Until that time comes, you can try and learn how to run campaigns on Facebook, and do it profitably. Even if Facebook stops being the best platform for advertising in the coming years (which is not likely), you will have the necessary knowledge to run campaigns on any platform online! So let’s not waste further time and let’s learn how to set everything up!
Setting Your Campaigns Up
1. Setup Your Page or FB Group
The first thing you will have to do is create a business page or group through which you will advertise. This page can take the form of your product, company, brand, or anything you want it to. Your page will host all the ads that you run through Facebook.
Creating pages on Facebook is very easy. You visit the “Create Page” page and fill in all of the required details that you are asked for.
2. Growing Your Audience
Now that you have made your page, it is time to grow it and gain valuable leads that might become customers. This can be done in a lot of ways, and here are some of the most common ones!
- Start Planning Your Ad Campaigns
You should always have some sort of plan you can follow and goals you can strive for. The usual one for Facebook pages and groups is growing your audience. It is basic, effective, and easy to understand how to do.
You need to remember that nobody likes ads. If YouTube was a huge ad video with only 15 seconds of actual content in between, you surely wouldn’t watch it. Use the same logic for your posts as well.
There is a famous 80/20 rule that works surprisingly well. It boils down to this. Your posts are 80% useful info that doesn’t advertise your offer in any way. It just tells a story, guides your audience, or teaches people something new. While the last 20% should be reserved for promoting your offer. This ratio gives people enough perceived value to your post to make it more likely for them to read your sales pitch as well.
Some people do the 80/20 rule on each post, while some do it in general. So that 80% of posts are entertaining, or educational, while 20% of posts are promotional. These numbers aren’t set in stone. You should try to adjust them accordingly to the needs and interests of your audience. - CTA Buttons
Call-to-Action buttons are everywhere. If you have ever run any marketing campaign before, you probably know how much they can help your Landing Pages convert. Knowing this, it’s no wonder that you should spend some time adding CTAs to your Facebook campaigns as well.
You will find the “Edit Page Button” in your page settings. There you can change it to the thing that best suits your goals. “Follow”, “Order”, “Call”, “Contact Us”, and many more options are possible. - Analyze The Data
Now that you have things going for a bit, you need to analyze your data. Try understanding why some posts work and why others don’t. See which types of posts work the best and try creating more of them. Always test all of the creatives, copy, and approach to maximize your results. - Grow Your Audience
Try creating interesting posts that will attract people. Remember, at this stage, you are still not running any ads. You are just trying to learn what works before you start spending. Don’t expect any incredible numbers of new visitors, as organic reach is limited heavily. Your current objective is to learn as much as you can. Try finding out who your ideal audience is and try focusing on them in the future.
3. Start Using Facebook Ads
Ok, so you created your page or group, you started posting regularly on it, and people are slowly starting to like it. Now that you have a small audience it is time to start and earning some money off of it. The best way to do it is through the Facebook ads system!
Before running your first ad you need to know a few things.
- Your Ideal Audience
- Your Exact Goals
These two things sound simple, but they are the core behind every campaign. You need to know who you want to advertise to. If your campaigns focus on a broad audience, you will get a lot of hit-and-miss people that won’t convert easily. This is why your targeting needs to be very detailed. The more you know about your ideal customer the better!
Targeting the right people doesn’t matter much if you don’t have a clear goal. If you want to sell something to them, make sure that you know what exactly you want to sell, how you want to do it, and how plausible your goal is. Depending on what your goals are, so will your campaigns change.
After deciding this, you also need to account for the fact that nothing ever goes as fast and smooth as you might expect. Expect spending a bit more than you expected, and waiting a bit longer than you would like to. As you slowly gain experience, you will adjust to this and you should become faster and more efficient.
- Creating Ads
Creating the ads themselves is easy. You go to the Ad Manager page and click on create. Then you will have to choose the exact goal of your campaign.
Be specific, pick the thing you want the page to accomplish as Facebook will optimize it internally for that goal.
Facebook ads follow this hierarchy. Campaigns > Ad Sets > Ads. Campaigns contain ad sets and ads. They are the main hub for your campaigns. Within them, ad sets can be considered as broad “folders'' to your ads. You can use them to A/B test and optimize your campaigns further.
Creating the ads themselves is very simple. You follow all of the instructions that show on-screen and fill out any detail you are asked to fill out. The biggest thing you need to focus on is your specific ads. They need to have incredible headlines, attention-grabbing visuals (creatives), and a well-written and understandable sales pitch.
The next thing you will need to decide on is your budget. Budgeting is always hard and there is no “one fits all” budget that can be used by everyone. If you spend too little, your campaigns won’t show up to the people you need them to and your campaigns will fail without even having a chance. Spending too much has the opposite effect. You will spend a lot of money that you don’t have to. There is always an optimal budget that will give you both attention and profitability. This is hard to reach, but a usual strategy is to slow off small, and slowly increase your budgets as you learn.
Some Things You Should Keep In Mind
Of course, just creating a campaign is not even half of the work you will need to do. If you want to make profitable campaigns, you will need to optimize the hell out of them. This will require a lot of time and dedication on your part. You will need to learn what works and what doesn’t, and how to fix it.
- Use The FB Pixel!
Pixels are incredible tools that can help you track your audience and their interests. Use pixels to learn how your campaigns are working and what you can do to make them better. - A/B Test Everything
Testing is a big part of any marketing campaign. Luckily, Facebook makes it simple through its ad sets and singular ads. - Be Creative and Attention-Grabbing
Go hard or go home! Or at least that is what some people say. When advertising, it’s all about the first impression. You only get a few seconds of “eye” time. So your headlines and creatives need to be attention-grabbing and creative. Don’t try doing cliche headlines and images. Try something new, be different from the rest! - Experiment With Budgeting
Some say that CPM biddings are the cheapest ones for small campaigns. The truth is that you will need to find the right thing for your case and optimize the hell out of it! - Don Give Up
One of the most common things that affiliates do is quit at the first sight of trouble. Try persevering, stay consistent, and don’t give up. Millions of people made fortunes through Facebook advertising, there is no reason you can’t as well!
Final Thoughts
If you want to grow your affiliate marketing business in 2021, Facebook is a great way to do exactly that! This incredible platform offers unrivaled users, and reach that can help you sell your product or service to a big part of the population. The only thing you should know is that most youngsters don’t use Facebook, and choose to use platforms like Instagram as well. Advertising on that platform is as easy as on Facebook, so don’t be afraid to try that approach as well!
Have you run Facebook ads? How do the new changes to FB impact your business?
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