Welcome to course three of the Facebook social media marketing professional

Certificate. In this course will introduce you to the basics of social media
advertising. In the United States alone, $36 billion was spent on social media
advertising in 2019 according to eMarketer. Spend expected to increase over the
coming years. That growth is not too surprising. Social media advertising is
popular with marketers for many reasons. Compared to more traditional formats such
as TV commercials, print Ads, Ads on social media have many advantages, here are
five of them. Number 1, with social media ads you can tailor your message to
distinct target audiences and you've a lot of control over who sees your ad. Number
2, social media ads are interactive. They allow your prospects to engage with your
content, for example through likes, comments or shares. Number 3, you can test
different variations of your ads and parallel. That allows you to step by step
create the ads that performed the best for your audience. Number 4, social media
platforms leverage smart algorithms to help you reach your business goals and
identify who's likely to visit your website, sign up for your newsletter, or
purchase an item. Advantage number 5, social media ads fit almost any budget. You
don't need to invest thousands or millions of dollars to get started. Even the
small corner shop create effective campaigns and social media to reach their local
audience. By the end of this course, you will have learned the fundamentals of
social media advertising and you will be ready to run your first campaign. You will
also be well-prepared for course four, but we will take a deep dive into Facebook
Ads Manager, planning, designing, and executing a campaign step-by-step. For now,
let's have a look at the five modules of this course. In Module 1, I will introduce
you to pay advertising on social media. You learn about the different components of
social media ads and how they differ from organic posts. Will also discuss why and
when you might want to invest in advertising. In Module 2, you will learn what
makes social media ads effective and how you can create them yourself. I'll share
tips and how to design and write compelling ads with you, and what tools can help
you along the way. You'll also learn how to write effective creative briefs that
allow you to collaborate well with others when planning your own campaigns. In
Module 3, you will gain as solid foundational understanding of data, database
advertising and privacy protection, which is important for any social media
marketer to have. In Module 4, you will get a first taste of building ad campaigns
on Facebook and Instagram straight from your Facebook business page or Instagram
business account. Finally, in Module 5, you will work on your project for this
course. You'll be writing a creative brief for a social media advertising campaign
and then produce an ad based on that creative brief. This will be an exciting and
fun course with a lot of examples and case studies to introduce you to social media
advertising.

Why and When tp pay for ads

As you've learned in the previous courses, you don't need to pay to create an
organic presence on social media. However, you do need an audience for your message
to have a business impact. In this video, you will learn why growing that audience
may be a reason to consider paid advertising. When first starting out, you'll
likely only have a few followers, so the relative impact of your content will be
fairly low. Your audience will of course grow overtime, especially if you post
engaging content and interact with the people that visit your page or your account.
Play video starting at ::39 and follow transcript0:39
Your organic posts can only reach the people who like or follow you as well as
their friends. And on top of that, not everything you post will end up in the feed
of your followers. Most social media platforms use algorithms that prioritize post
from friends and family. And they use many other factors to predict whether your
post will be engaging enough to give it a spot in your followers feed. You'll find
that overall this can make it quite challenging to see large reach for your posts.
So if you find that your follower growth is slowing and if you see that the actual
number of people exposed to your posts is too low to drive meaningful results, you
should consider investing in paid advertising. And this will help you expand the
number of people who get exposed to your product or your business. In other words,
paid advertising can help you increase your reach.
Play video starting at :1:36 and follow transcript1:36
The main goal of paid ads is to reach people who are likely to become your
customers. Social media ads allow you to get your message out to just those people
who may have an interest in your product. And this is possible through a variety of
targeting options as we'll see later. But for now, it's good to remember that paid
advertising can help you reach a specific audience that you may not be reaching
already with the organic social media efforts.
Play video starting at :2:7 and follow transcript2:07
In contrast to traditional advertising channels such as TV or out of home
campaigns, social media ads are very accessible. Self serve ad platforms allow you
to create your own campaigns and you can spend as little or as much as you like
depending on what your goals and your budget are.
Play video starting at :2:26 and follow transcript2:26
Bigger organizations with sizeable budgets might still choose to hire an agency to
design the creatives and manage and optimize their campaigns. But it's definitely
not necessary to get started, and you will learn this in this course. In our next
video, we'll take a closer look at some of the differences between paid and organic
marketing on social media.

Organic post vs.Paid ads

In the previous video, we saw how paid ads can help you increase your reach or in
other words, the size of your audience and how they help you getting in your
message in front of people most likely to be interested in your product or service.
By the end of this video, you will have a better understanding of the key ways in
which social ads differ from organic social media posts. There are five key
differences between an organic post and a paid social ad and I will walk you
through them over the course of the next minutes. Organic social posts can appear
in the feeds of the people that already follow you and once you have post your
content on your page or profile, the content is usually shown to a portion of your
followers. As your audience shares and engages with the content, your posts will be
shown to more people. As we saw in the previous course, content engagement is one
factor that determines the reach of your post. So be mindful of what content you
share with your followers. The most successful posts focus on creating value for
your followers rather than getting people to buy. So try to tell stories, inspire,
and educate your followers with your organic content. You can of course, plan in a
special promotion for your loyal followers once in a while but they should be mixed
in with great content that engages your followers. You want to help them get to
know and trust you and your brand. With organic posts, you share content and hope
that it seen by your target audience but paid ads are guaranteed to get displayed
as long as they don't violate any of the platforms policies, of course. That is the
first way in which paid ads differ from organic posts. Paid social ads will show up
in the feeds of people who belong to which ever audience you decide to target and
it doesn't matter whether this audience already follows you or not. You could
target any audience based on demographics, location, interests, and other factors.
Remember DCB cleaning services? They provide cleaning services and now they plan to
introduce a new product called SnackWall. Companies can subscribe to SnackWall
choose snacks via the SnackWall app and DCB will then make sure the company never
runs out of their favorite snacks. James is tasked with introducing SnackWall to
the market. In the first six months after launch, DCB focused on attracting
existing customers to the new SnackWall service. But after that, DCB wanted to
reach new potential customers who work at startups around Silicon Valley and who
might have an interest in healthy snacks. So James decided to use paid ads on
Facebook because that way he could reach this specific audience. It's a way for him
to reach prospects beyond the people that already follow the company's Facebook
page. Social media advertising is powerful because of its targeting capabilities.
If you find that you're not quite reaching your intended audience with your organic
efforts, it may be a good idea to consider spending some money on advertising. When
you choose to use paid advertising, you'll also get more control over when and
where people will see your message. Since a lot of social media content is consumed
on mobile, it's possible to pay for ads that show when people are in a particular
location, like near your store for instance. Paid social ads look very much like
they are organic siblings and they blend into the native experience of the
platform. However, there are two elements that usually differentiate them from
organic posts. First, a note that they are sponsored or promoted as in this example
of an ad from Wayfair on Pinterest, and second, paid ads often also have a call to
action button that takes users to the desired locations, such as a landing page.
Here is an example of an ad on Instagram and its call to action button that says
"Shop Now". Of course, paid ads are different from organic posts as they are not
free. How much you pay to get your posts seen is usually determined in what it's
called an auction. Each time there's an opportunity to show an ad to someone, an
auction takes place similar to a competition to determine which ad to show to that
person. This auction happens in the background, but the price and success of your
campaign are mostly determined by a number of factors. How much you're willing to
pay for a given action, such as a click or a video of you, how many other
advertisers are interested in the same audience, and how relevant your ad is to the
audience, among other factors. Every social media platform has its own unique
equation for how an ad wins an auction. We'll go into ad relevance later but for
now, do keep in mind that while you can focus a lot more on selling actual products
with paid ads than organic posts, the key to success is making sure that the ad
resonates with your audience.

Organic ppost vs. paid ads on facebook and Instagram

In the previous video, we had a look at the ways in which paid ads differ from
organic posts, and you will find that the main components of ads on different
social platforms, are the same. But it's helpful, to take a closer look at examples
from Facebook and Instagram. After all, they are the biggest social media channels,
so it's important you get to know them in detail. By the end of this video, you
will have a better understanding of why ads on Facebook and Instagram can be a
valuable addition to organic posts, and you'll be able to point out the two ways in
which they differ from their organic siblings. No matter what kind of business you
have on Facebook and Instagram, you can connect with people who care about what you
do. Through regular posts, you can keep people who followed or liked your page
informed on everything happening in your business, such as: sales, events,
promotions, or information about your product or services. Same goes for people who
followed your account on Instagram. When you post to your page, people who've liked
or followed your page can see that post. And when you post on your Instagram
account, people who follow you can see your content in their feed. People may like,
comment, or share this content if they wish, and this type of reach is called
'organic', which is another way to say that it's free. You create a post and it
spreads organically from people who engage with your content to their friends and
so on. This process is an important part of increasing your number of page or
account followers, but it may not grow your audience as quickly as you'd like, and
this is when you might want to think about advertising. Advertising on Facebook and
Instagram, can help you accomplish specific business goals. Here are a few ways in
which you can utilize ads on Facebook and Instagram. First, let's say you want to
grow your Facebook page to build an audience of loyal followers. Then you can
create an ad to promote your business page to more people, which can help increase
engagement on your posts, and get you more likes, comments and shares. Remember
Imre at Calla & Ivy? She wants to grow the audience for her website, so she can
sell her hand bound bouquets online. One way in which Imre could build up the
audience for a site is by promoting her Facebook business page. That way, she can
increase her followers, which may help her to get the word out. Second, you can use
ads to market your goods and services on Facebook and Instagram. To do that, you
can create an organic post showcasing your businesses products and services, and
then turn it into an ad, and with that ad, you can reach shoppers who are likely to
be interested in your product, and turn them into customers. On Facebook, ads you
create from posts on your page are called "boosted" posts. So for Calla & Ivy,
boosting posts with images of bouquets that people can buy on the website could
help to get the posts in front of immerse target audience. Boosting posts may also
help Imre to get more people to react, share, and comment on them. Third, if you
have a local business, you can use ads to drive potential customers to your store.
By targeting people who are living nearby or visiting a specific city, you can make
it easier for them to discover, and visit your physical place of business. So Imre
could use this type of ad to get people to come, and check out her store in
Amsterdam. Fourth, you can use ads on Facebook and Instagram to promote your
website. If you've invested in a great website, use your Facebook page to help
increase traffic to it. That's especially useful if you have an online shop and
wanted to promote and directly sell the items you offer. So for Calla & Ivy, this
is a great way to get the word out about their new website and get people who are
interested in hand bound bouquets to visit the site and buy some flowers.
Advertising on Facebook and Instagram can be a great way to accomplish these goals
and many others. Based on what you choose, your will ads can appear in people's
Facebook and Instagram feeds, and stories alongside images and videos, shared by
their friends, family, and other accounts and pages they follow. You can also
choose to show your ads in Messenger where people are connecting with others. There
different ways you can set up an ad on Facebook and Instagram, either based on an
existing post, or from scratch, and we'll dive into the details later. Either way,
your promoted post will appear alongside other posts and stories, and look almost
like an organic post. However, there are two differences we briefly want to point
out here: first, at the top of your promoted posts people will see a label that
lets them know you've sponsored the post, because you want to reach out to them.
Have a look at these examples. Second, ads can have a call to action or CTA, and
this call to action is a little button at the bottom of the ad that tells your
audience what to do next. Facebook and Instagram give you some suggestions for your
call to action, such as learn more or sign up. Alternatively, you can also pick
from a list of options. Call to action buttons are optional but they can be a
powerful way to point your audience in the right direction.

Ad formats on popular social media platforms

Now that you understand the main components of a social media Ad. Let's have a look
at examples of what paid Ads look like on different social media platforms. By the
end of this video, you will know how to decide on which platform to run your paid
Ad campaigns. So let's have a look at a few campaign examples. When an auto
dealership from Long Island closed its sales department during the COVID pandemic
they used Facebook, and Instagram to update the community about continued service
and safety measures. But also used to Ads on Facebook and Instagram to thank local
health co-workers by offering free oil changes and vehicle sanitation. Next, have a
look at these Ads on LinkedIn. Similar to what we've just seen on Facebook and
Instagram, LinkedIn also allows you to run Ads in the News Feed. In addition, you
can also target specific audiences through a message that is delivered straight to
their inbox on LinkedIn, and this format is called 'Sponsored InMail'. But unlike
the feeds Ad,, the sender of the message is usually a person and not a brand. On
Twitter, in addition to the In-Feed Ad, which you can see an example of here, you
have a couple of other advertising options. One option is a sponsored trending
hashtag. In this example here, PoalaSnaps is sponsoring the hashtag
#CaptureTheMoment. This promoted trend is now listed among all the other organic
trends on Twitter. If a user clicks on the promoted trend, there are shown a list
of related post with a post from the advertiser at the top. Another option on
Twitter is to promote your Twitter account as you can see here. This allows you to
build awareness for your account and build your base of relevant followers. Next,
check out these Ads on YouTube. First, the top right, you can see a traditional
display Ad, and in this case, it's promoting the pet services of Inu+Neko. Next, we
have a so-called overlay Ad, and this is basically a display Ad that is displayed
on top of the video for some amount of time. Finally, as you probably have seen
before, you can run video Ads on YouTube. Your Ad can be positioned at the
beginning or the end of a video or shown at some point during the clip. YouTube
both offers Ads the user can skip, or Ads that cannot skip. The latter are limited
in time. On Pinterest, you can turn your pins into Ads and those are displayed
among the organic pins. You can either show your product and content into the
square or vertical image, as you can see in these examples, or you can use a video
Creative and your Pinterest Ad. Here you see an example ad from DCB Cleaning. Have
a look around these and other social media platforms and check out some of the Ads
you can see there to familiarize yourself a bit more. In the first course, we
talked about the factors that may help you decide which social media channels you
will be active on. We've learned that you have to make some choices, as it's often
possible to manage your presence in all channels. The same is true for advertising
on social media. You don't want to advertise on every social media channel out
there that will be hard to manage and will quickly become expensive too. Often it's
a good idea to advertise in the channels. You will have established an organic
presence. But there will also be cases where you are expanding your reach beyond
those platforms. Which platforms work best for you depends on a variety of factors.
First, consider your target audience. Who are you trying to reach? Demographic
characteristics such as age or gender, interests, professions, and locations vary a
lot from channel to channel. Second, how much can you spend? Your overall budget
will determine how many channels you can advertise on and which ones will give you
the highest return on investment. Most social media platforms charge you based on
one of two factors. You either pay for each click your Ad receives or is based on
the number of Ad impressions. On Facebook, an impression is counted as the number
of times an instance of an Ad is on-screen for the first time. So if an Ad is on
screen and someone scrolls down and then scrolls back up to the same Ad, that
counts as one impression. However, if an Ad is onscreen for someone two different
times a day, that counts as two impressions. Other platforms might apply different
logic to when an impression is counted, but generally, it's linked to an Ad being
displayed. The third consideration when choosing social media platforms for your
campaign is asking yourself what type of content you're sharing. Images, short
videos, long videos, case studies.. Different platforms work better for certain
content than others. Photos, for example, are perfect for Instagram or Pinterest.
Longer videos often best for campaigns on YouTube and white papers or case studies
tend to be well received on LinkedIn. Have a look at the next reading to determine
what options you have on the different platforms.

The five components of a social mmeia ads

Independent of the platform you decide to run your paid social media campaign on,
social media ads tend to consist of the same basic elements. By the end of this
video, you'll have a better understanding of the five components that make up a
social media ad. Let's walk through them. First, your target audience. Clearly
defining your target audience is the very first thing you should be doing and
compared to many other forms of advertising, social media platforms allow you to be
very specific and choosing who to show you ads to. Ask yourself the following
questions, start with the demographics. What's the age of your target audience? Is
it a specific age range of people you want to target? What's the gender? Are you
interested in targeting men, women or both. What's their educational level and
their profession? What's their location? Do you want to reach folks in your
community or in other parts of the city, state or country. What are their
interests? What hobbies does your target audience have? and finally, what are their
behaviors? Do they visit certain websites, follow particular accounts or causes?
Ideally, you have a good description of your target audience already. You may
remember the target audience for Calla and Ivy's new website. Imra, the owner is
targeting women between 30-55 years old with some higher education who live in
Dutch metropolitan areas. They've an interest in interior design, fashion and
sustainable living, and they browsed interior design websites in magazines, they
also like to follow a few well known Dutch lifestyle bloggers and they enjoy yoga,
the outdoors, and entertaining friends. Getting very specific in describing a
target audience will help you in reaching relevant people only instead of random
users. The second component of your social media ad is the text or the copy of your
ad. Here you articulate clearly and concisely, what do you want people to
understand and remember about your offering. What does your brand stand for? What
value do you offer? What problems or needs do you solve? When developing your copy,
keep the audience in mind that you're targeting and make sure your words resonate
with them. We will dive into how to develop effective copy later. The third
component of a social media ad is your Ad creative, and that's usually an image or
a video that conveys your message and that tells a story. The more visually
appealing your ad creative is, the better. It will be more likely to grab people's
attention, be shared, and be remembered. When designing your creatives, you want to
make sure your content matches the interests of your audience. Remember, you're
spending money when someone views or clicks on your ad. If you're showing Ads that
are not relevant to your target audience, you're wasting your time and money and
you will likely not see success with any kind of advertising. If some tips for you
on how to create beautiful and relevant creatives later. The fourth component of a
social media ad is your call to action. A beautiful and relevant ad is great but
without a call to action or short CTA, the viewer might not know what to do next.
Add a CTA like buy now and save 20 percent or offer ends soon. That is sense of
urgency to your viewer. Your call to action should encourage people to take the
right action. In some platforms such as Facebook offer you CTA buttons that you can
add to your Ad. The last basic component of a social media ad is your destination,
often referred to as the landing page. This is the place your audience gets
directed to after they click on your ads. This can be your website, a specific
product page in your web shop or your page in an app store. Being intentional about
the user experience on your landing page is a very important aspect of planning
your campaign.Your ads could have brilliant copy and beautiful imagery but if users
click the ad and then don't follow through the intended action, it's likely because
your landing page is not effective. Now whole course is about designing great
landing pages, but the one thing to remember for now is the importance of a
matching message. You want to make sure that your ad content and their
corresponding landing page create one consistent experience and use similar
headlines, images, calls to action, and most importantly advertise the same offer.
Your landing page should feel like a natural extension to your ad. Your audience
knows that they are in the right place and what action you would like them to take.
If you're promoting a pair of shoes with a special discount, make sure the landing
page shows the same pair of shoes with the exact offer you advertised. Otherwise,
you will risk that people will close the landing page right away because they can't
find the offer you are promoting.

Anatomy of a facebook and Instagram ad

In the previous video, we broke down the components that make up a social media ad
on almost every platform. In this video, we'll have a closer look at Facebook and
Instagram. By the end, you'll have a better understanding of the five different
elements of an ad on these platforms. Facebook's tool for planning, creating, and
managing ads called Facebook Ads Manager, allows you to run campaigns on a number
of platforms. Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network. On Facebook and
Instagram, your ad can be shown in a number of different places. But for now, we'll
just focus on what ads look like when placed in the feed and in stories. Here's an
example of an ad for Inu and Neko shown in three different placements. The Facebook
feed, the Instagram feed and Instagram stories. I will walk you through the
different components of these ads and point out differences along the way. First,
we see the page icon, the name of the advertiser. The icon and the name are
determined by your Facebook business page or you Instagram business account.
There's also labeled underneath your page name that lets your audience know you've
sponsored the post, meaning you've paid for displaying it. Next, the visual. In
some ways, this is the most important element of your ad. It's the eye-catching
photo or the must watch video that says something about you, your business or your
product and that shows people what you're all about. A great visual makes people
want to stop and spend some time with your ad. Let's talk about copy. The important
thing here is that people often skim read their screens. So say what do you want to
say straight away in as few words as possible, get straight to the point. For
example, "Celebrates spring with 20 percent off everything" or, "A good boy
deserves a good grooming." as you can read in some of these ads. The best copy is
copy that matches the overall message that you're trying to convey. If we advertise
summer sale, the image probably shouldn't show children building a snowman. For
Facebook news feed ads, your ad has two additional pieces of copy. A headline
placed under your visual and a link description that tells your audience what to
expect about the destination that you're linking to. Now, your call to action.
Simply put, this is what you want people to do after they see your ad. Facebook and
Instagram have a great list of call to action options that include, Book Now,
Contact Us, Shop Now and Learn More. Note how the CTA button looks a little bit
different in each placement. A click or a swipe up on an Instagram stories ad,
brings your audience to the destination you've set up. Note that while Facebook
lets you select a button for your CTA, some other app platforms such as Pinterest,
they don't have that option. In that case, you should make sure you include a call
to action in your copy because it's important to nudge people to the action that
you want them to take after they see your ad. Finally, in feed ads, you find a
number of ways your audience can engage with your posts by adding a reaction,
comment or sharing your ad. It's important to monitor the engagement on your ads,
especially the comments. Because it's common that potential customers ask questions
about your product or services before they decide to make a purchase, so make sure
to answer them.

Evaluating Effectiveness of an Ad

You now understand the different components that make up a social media ad. But
what makes an ad effective? By the end of this video, you will know how to evaluate
whether an ad is set up for success. Let's take a look. Remember, an ad has five
core elements. First, there's the target audience, then the copy of the texts of
the ad, then the Creative, an image or a video that call to action, CTA, and
finally, the landing page. For an ad to be effective, it's important that it's 5-
core elements work together. Everything has to match and here's what that means.
First, the message you communicate has to be right for the target audience. Then
the image you select has to match your copy. There should be clear call to action
that expresses what you want your target audience to do next. Then the ad and the
call-to-action should match what people will find on the landing page. Let's look
at what an effective Instagram ad for Calla & Ivy might look like. This ad here is
targeted to design conscious women between the ages of 30 and 44, who have a need
to beautify their home. That's the target audience. The copy reads, "Bring the
spring colors into your home." Well, that should be appealing to women who want to
add some beauty to the home interior. The image shows a beautiful spring bouquet
which reflects exactly what the text promises. There's a call-to-action, CTA in the
form of a button that says, "Shop Now." Well, that is clear. When you click, it
brings you to this landing page here that shows the exact bouquet from the add and
you can buy right from this page. That matches very well and the ad makes it easy
for the user to follow through on the call-to-action. That is an effective ad. Now,
let's look at this Instagram ad, again, for Calla & Ivy. The target audience is the
same. Design conscious women between the ages of 30 and 44, who have a need to
beautify their home. The copy reads, "New, Discover our wild rose bouquets. Enjoy
20 percent off today." That matches the target audience well. Roses are beautiful
and this target is interested in discovering bouquets that can improve their home
interior. The image, however, is of a bouquet of tulips and that is odd. The image
doesn't match the copy and that can be very confusing to users. The CTA says, "Shop
Now", which is clear, but because of the conflicting texts and image, the users
can't really know what to expect when they click on the button. Roses or tulips?
That confusion can lead to people skipping the ad altogether. The landing page is
one of a beautiful rose bouquet and you can buy the bouquet, but unfortunately, it
is not was in the image of the ad, so some users may be disappointed. Now, let's
look at a few examples of real-life ads. Here's an example of an ad on Facebook for
The Guardian Weekly magazine. While we don't know what the exact description of the
target audience is, we can imagine that they would be looking to attract people who
are interested in news and world affairs. The copy in this ad is clear and it
should appeal to this audience and it very clearly states what the offer is. The
images in this ad reinforce the text. They reiterate the offer and they show the
magazine. There is a clear call-to-action button that tells users to take the next
step. When users now click on the ad, they see this landing page here, which is
clearly related to the ad and shows the exact same offer. The user can immediately
proceed from here and subscribe. Here's another example of an ad for PayPal for
Business. This ad is targeted to small business owners. Again, the copy of the
message is very clear. The associated image is related to the copy and while it's
harder to come up with an appealing image for a more abstract service like this
one, PayPal was able to express the functionality of its platform in its image.
It's a clear call-to-action message in the form of a button that says, "learn more"
and when you click on it, you land on a landing page that clearly relates to the ad
and follows through on the promise to teach you more about the platform.