In case you’ve been living off in  Antarctica for the past few years, let me break it to you: Facebook is big. Really big. Like over-66%-of-America-uses-it kind of big. As marketers, we’re thinking, “I want a piece of that!”. Like I pointed out in my previous Facebook marketing article (hint: no money involved!), it is difficult to generate major results without utilizing Facebook’s many advertising options. Learn how to use those options using content marketing.

Facebook Ads and Content Marketing

If anyone reading this has a background in content marketing, they may be wondering how advertising on social media fits with content (or inbound) marketing. After all, isn’t inbound marketing about bringing prospects to you instead of invading their personal space? The answer to that question is yes, and that’s how Facebook ads work so beautifully. Facebook tries to give its users an experience that’s tailored to them and makes it easy to control who is seeing your ads. Follow these content marketing steps by implementing them into your Facebook campaign.

• Go in with a goal, and make it specific. What should this ad accomplish, and by how much? For example, you may decide that you want to grow website traffic by 25% for every week that you run the ad.
• Choose the right ad format. Facebook has many ad types, so research and choose the format that will work best for your goal. When you choose an objective when creating a Facebook ad, suggestions for ad types will be provided. Take them into account!
• Target a specific audience. Since Facebook wants to customize each user’s news feed as much as possible, the social network site makes it easy to narrow down your target audience. Experiment with different variations to use which works best.
• Let’s clear up what we mean by ad: in content marketing, ads should be something valuable for your customer, not just promotional. This means providing customers with a limited-time offer or a cute video- something they want to see, not feel bombarded by. This isn’t the same thing as a billboard or a traditional print ad which interrupts a viewer’s daily life.
• Since you have been implementing content marketing, you have lots of valuable content you can be using in your ads. Lucky you! Try advertising your free e-book (in return for contact info, of course) or your upcoming webinar.
• Use calls-to-action and forms in your ads. Some Facebook ad types integrate forms while other lead to your website where you can engineer a form to be filled out.
• Track, track, track. Use both your usual tracking software and Facebook’s tool, Ad Manager, to see how effective your ads are. Play around and experiment with all different variables to see how to use your advertising budget effectively.
• Repeat what was successful!

Check out this Hubspot checklist for a thorough guide to creating a Facebook ad.