Facebook currently enjoys massive popularity. 1.28 billion people use Facebook services every day – that’s an increase of 18% year-over-year. Talk about an audience! With this many people involved in the social network, it seems as if you can’t afford not to have a presence there.

We have three pieces of advice for Facebook advertising beginners to help kick off their campaigns right. To start out on the right foot, you have to know what you want, know who you want to engage with and know when you want to engage. With these three bits of information, you’ll be on the fast track to Facebook Advertising success – just don’t forget who sent you there!

Target an Appropriate Audience

If a tree falls in the forest, but nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

It’s a good question, and we urge you not to find out with your Facebook ads! You can spend time creating and optimizing the perfect ad, but if it does not have Cultural Relevance, meaning if the ad does not connect to the cultural context of the target audience, then all is for naught.

Luckily, Facebook presents an amazing capacity to target the right audience. (Note: you will find the ability to target on an individual advertisement which can be found under the ad sets, which are found under campaigns). Here are just a few ways you can do that:

• Age
• Location
• Gender
• Interests
• Relationship Status
• Languages
• Political Views
• Education Level
• Whether or not a user is connected to your page

“But Wait, There’s More!”

Facebook also gives advertisers like you the ability to upload your own information you have gathered to create custom audiences. You can target custom audiences by:

• Phone numbers
• Email Addresses
• People who have visited your site
• Mobile advertiser IDs
• User IDs

You can take all of this information and have Facebook craft “Lookalike Audiences” based on demographics all of these groups share.

Tip: With these neat features, it’s easy to target the right people. Be sure to study your website analytics, buyer personas and target audience demographics reports for valued insight.

Know What You Want

A rookie mistake that a lot of beginners make is not realizing that Facebook advertisements have different purposes. Some advertisements gun for you to “like” a page, others are skilled at getting fans to engage on a more personal level and some are great at driving clicks to websites.

Choose from the following campaign objectives:

• Page Likes: Obtain likes to build your audience and refine your brand
• Page Post Engagement: Promote page posts
• Website Conversions: Convince users to perform particular actions on your site
• Clicks to Websites: Urge people to visit your website
• App Engagement: Convince people to use your desktop app
• App Installs: Convince people to install your mobile or desktop app
• Offer Claims: Build offers for people to redeem in-store
• Event Responses: Build attendance at your event

Tip: Once you have determined your main objective, do this on the campaign level using Facebook advertising tools. This means that if you decide to build a campaign to increase page likes, all your Ad Sets and advertisements will target that same goal.

Target the Right People at the Right Time

Targeting different prospects during different times of the day to increase relevancy and drive down cost is called Dayparting. This form of targeting has been a standard since marketing was mostly done on the radio. Now it works on the world’s largest social network as well.

Advertisers have the ability to schedule their posts by date and time.

Here’s how to do it: fire up Power Editor. Once there, click on the ad sets tab and select the ad set you want to daypart. After choosing your ad set, scroll down. You’ll note a pop-up that says Ad Scheduling.

Your start date should be whatever day it currently is. Your end day will not be pre-selected, so you’ll have to go ahead and choose before moving forward.

Set your budget and campaign length.

Click the radio button that says “ads on a schedule.” Then you’ll see a calendar. Just block out by clicking the times and days you’re interested in.

It’s a Simple As That!

Tip: One thing worth noting here is that Dayparting only works on a lifetime Facebook budget.

Tip: Dayparting can increase relevance and drive down advertisement costs – if done correctly. Be sure to understand your audience before jumping into Facebook advertising.

So what if you are ready to deep dive into Facebook Advertising, but you aren’t just as well versed in your market research as you should be? Any PPC marketing agency can lend a hand with this. They can ask the critical questions and gather imperative data for you so you can walk into your decision more educated and ready to rock and roll.

If you feel you understand your audience, and are anxious to give this educational advice a shot, let us know how our suggestions worked for you below, we’d love to hear what you have to say!