A marketer's guide to Advertising on Facebook and how each ad type can be used for specific marketing goals and lead generation.

1. How to create Facebook ads in 8 steps

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In earlier posts, I have discussed how a business owner or a marketer can
Create Facebook Ads (Basic News Feed ad) and Set up Facebook Conversion
Tracking.
In this post, I will discuss about
Advertising on Facebook and how each type can be used for specific
marketing goals
2

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1. Marketplace/Standard Ads
• Marketplace ads are the most familiar ones on Facebook and an advertiser has full
control of the ad’s creative elements – headline, body content and image.
• These ads can be seen on the right hand sidebar of your regular news feed page.
• The ad should be limited to 99×72 pixels for an image, 90 characters for the body
text and 25 characters for the title.
• This is how the ad looks:

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Key Features
a. You can drive users to your website, external URL or any other page on
Facebook. Take a closer look at the image, you will see that just below
the ad headline, the website has also been mentioned.
b. Marketplace ads drive user engagement by letting users see how many
of their friends have ‘liked’ a page. If a friend of a user likes a page, the
same will pop up on the users’ home page.

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Use this ad type if your marketing goals are:
Lead Generation: Drive visitors to an external landing page. Because of the
targeting options, you can target the ads perfectly so that each click is relevant.
Example: An author who has written a romantic novel keeping adolescents and young adults
in mind, he/she can very well target the same group based on demographics, geographic
location, age group etc.
Increase sales: These ads are perfect for B2C marketers to lead users onto their
e-commerce websites.
Example: E-commerce sites like Jabong, eBay, Voylla etc, drive users directly to their online
shopping sites when they click on their ads on Facebook.
Brand Awareness: Since this ad does not have the option of ‘Like’, an enticing ad caption
& image can get curious users to click on the ad, visit your page and engage.
Example: With several online shopping portals/small businesses cropping up by the day, it
may not be possible for all Facebook users to know each one of them. These ads are an easy
way to get users onto a freshly launched website/landing page.

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2. Sponsored Ads
• These ads are built around user activity, i.e. a marketer pays to highlight an action -
like, comment or share that a user has taken and then that action is shown to a
users’ friends & their friends.
i. A Facebook User (let’s call him ‘A’) likes a Post on a new Company’s Facebook
Page (let’s call the company XYZ Co.).
ii. This action can now be advertised by ‘XYZ Co.’ using Sponsored Ads, to A’s friends
and friends’ friends.
iii. Check out the image below. Because someone on my friend list has ‘liked’ Samsung
Mobile’s Facebook Page, a sponsored ad appears in my newsfeed, letting me know of
the action.

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Key Features
a. You can target a particular section of the audience by narrowing down the
specifications.
b. Sponsored ads are available for both business profiles and pages.
c. Such ads are triggered
by actions like, liking, commenting, sharing, installing an app, joining an event
or liking/sharing a website. Promoted posts are labelled ‘Sponsored’ posts
either on the right hand column or on the desktop of your news feed page.
d. Unlike a marketplace ad where you cannot ‘like, ‘comment’ or ‘share’ an
ad, a sponsored ad lets you do that.

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Use this ad type if your marketing goals are:
Getting more likes: There is a ‘Like’ button in the ad itself. Apart from liking the ad, this
ad can also be used to take a user to the landing page/sign up page.
Brand Awareness: Expose your site/brand name to like-minded people.
• Example: When a friend likes a page, it shows up on the users’ news feed. The user
might be interested in what his/her friend has liked and visits the page/profile.
However, over the next few months, Sponsored Stories, one of Facebook’s more insidious
ad campaigns will slowly be cut out.

9. 3. Page Post Ads
• Page Post Ads are geared towards small
business owners/starters who are looking
for a foothold in Facebook.
• These ads can include
links, photos, videos, offers, events or even
questions.
• These ads come as ‘Recommended Pages’
on your right side bar on your news feed.
• Whenever your fans are online, they will be
shown your post in the form of an ad.
• See the image below.
• Go to your timeline, can you see the
text which reads, ‘Create an ad to get
more people to like your Page’ and a
budget drop down box? Click on this
to increase your page likes.

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Key Features
a. Users are directly led to the particular page once they click on the ad. This
helps make the content on the page go viral and engage more users. The ad is
just a way of driving more users to ‘like’ your page.
b. These ads are aimed at small business owners/starters who do have the
time to go through the elaborate process of creating ads or are looking to gain
foothold on Facebook.

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Use this ad type if your marketing goals are:
Driving Engagement & Brand Awareness: These ads are visible to anyone who is on
Facebook. Unlike marketplace ads, a user can like, share and comment on the ad itself
without being swayed into an external URL and it also shows any action that has been
taken by a friend.
• Example: Like you can see from the image shown above and the name of the ad
suggests, page post ads are mostly added by celebrities, fans who create Pages for
celebrities, communities & groups, fan page etc. Advertisers can specifically target a
group of people with these ads.
Get more likes: The most important aspect of this ad is to get more likes on your page.
• Example: A new product/service in the market can advertise on Facebook and build on
their brand awareness. This ad is almost a sure shot way of attracting new fans through
‘Likes’.

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4. Promoted Ad Post
• Like the name suggests, these Facebook ads allow you to promote
anything that you can create through the status sharing bar.
• When you are updating your status – photos/videos, offers/
event/milestone/questions, click on the ‘Boost Post’ button to promote
the feed. The cost of a promoted post can range from anything between
$5 and go up to $300, depending on the target you choose.
Over the last few months Facebook has been on a drive to simplify things on
their site and prevent marketers from getting confused. Facebook will soon
be removing the option of posting ‘Questions’. Marketers can simply ask
their questions in a regular post and get answers through comments.

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Key Features
a. This ad appear in News Feeds and not on the right-hand column of a news feed page where
they might be neglected by some users.
b. These ads are also easy to set up and work well for promoting events, special offers and
engaging images.
c. But, here’s the catch – you can promote a post only when your page has 400 or more likes.
d. Here is an example. In the image below see how by increasing your budget, you can
increase your target reach.

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Use this ad type if your Marketing Goals are:
Get more likes: To help push the ad content to more fans who would not
have organically seen your content.
Drive Engagement: To increase engagement on your page. You can set your
budget based on the estimated reach you have in mind. (Like $300 can reach
your ad to 240000 to 440000 people).
Lead Generation: This ad type lets you promote a new post that needs lead
generation, like a webinar, competition or an event.

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Here is a table to quickly summarize things for you
Marketplace Ads Sponsored Ad Page Post Ad Promoted Ad
What can you
promote?
Facebook pages,
Apps, Events,
External URL
Facebook Pages
Posts from
your Facebook
Page
Any post on
your Facebook
page
What is the
content?
Image, headline
and content text
created by you
Stories from
Facebook about
your page
Page post
including
comments, likes
& shares
Page post
including
comments, likes
& shares
Where are
they placed?
Sidebar
Side bar and
desktop news
feed
Side bar
and desktop new
s feed
Desktop news
feed
Whom can
you target?
Everyone
regardless of
whether they are
connected to your
page or not
Can target any
user (or friends)
connected to
your page
Everyone
regardless of
whether they
are connected
to your page or
not
Everyone on
Facebook
Where can
you buy
them?
Facebook.com/ad
s
Facebook.com/a
ds
Facebook.com/a
ds
Below each post
on your page

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