Besides all the controversy over data security, Facebook remains the largest social network on the planet. While some brands choose not to use it for various reasons, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the impact it can have in the online business world.  

If you want the right people to see your Facebook ads more frequently, you must consider using the Reach objective. Don’t worry, if you don’t know what that is, this blog is just for you. We’ll help you discover the full might of Facebook Reach Ads targeting the right custom audiences.

Why Is Facebook Advertising So Important?

Facebook has transformed from a way for college students to connect into the largest social media network in the world. Today, Facebook is considered an exceptionally powerful marketing tool to help grow your brand across the globe. While being on social media as a brand is great, using Facebook Reach Ads correctly can really help your marketing efforts.

Facebook advertising enables your brand to target reach a specific type of audience. This is different to the more traditional approach where you hope that your campaigns actually reach the target audience you have in mind. Facebook Reach Ads allow you to pinpoint your target audience to a much greater extent based on certain criteria including interests, age and location among others. This type of Facebook advertising offer a much higher chance of achieving your business goals.

What Makes Facebook Reach Ads Different?

This type of ad campaign only uses the Reach Objective unlike the others focusing on winning ads. Here, you choose to show multiple ads with different messages to your target audience in a short space of time.  With traditional Facebook ads you set up a campaign with multiple ads in one ad set whereas Facebook Reach Ads is all about creating multiple single-ad sets to target the same audience.

Who Should Use Facebook Reach Ads?

This is best suited for high-end services with an extended decision-making process where leads must consume loads of information before making a purchase. If your brand sells actual products, the Reach Objective is perfect for short-term website remarketing followed by the Conversion Objective for warm and cold target audiences.

For service providers, one of the best places to use Facebook Reach Ads is after an event trigger like an opt-in. An example would be to choose the Conversion Objective for an opt-in campaign with lead magnet signups. Follow this up with the Reach Objective to create an omnipresence campaign to serve show ads to people who have opted in.

Another smart use is using Facebook Reach Ads toward the top of your sales funnel, before the opt-in. This targets a very specific local market or leads visiting specific web pages like the contact us page or services page.

Setting Up A Facebook Ad Campaign

Brands can no longer ignore promoting their business online as digital marketing continues to evolve rapidly. Social media, paid search advertising (PPC), email marketing, SEM and SEO are only a few of the powerful marketing tools at your disposal. Facebook Reach Ads are immensely powerful and this is how it works and why you should get on board.

Step 1: Create a Custom Audience of Opted-In Leads

In this example, let’s assume you’re focusing on a campaign with an opt-in trigger for downloading a lead magnet like an eBook. This means creating an audience that highlights only those who have actually opted in and for this you should use a website custom audience and an event action.

To create this audience:

  • Open Facebook Ads Manager
  • Select Audiences in the main menu (takes you to your Audiences dashboard)
  • Click on Create Audience
  • Select Website traffic as the source

Facebook Reach Ads

If you’ve already set up event tracking for leads to trigger on the Thank You page of the opt-in, select Lead as the event type. You can also include a website or landing page URL instead but remember to exclude the www and https prefix.

Facebook Ads

Setting the right criteria

Set the audience duration from 30 days to 180 days as this is already a small audience. By choosing 180-days will enable you to include as many people as possible. Now you simply type in an appropriate name and click on Create Audience. Use a descriptive name like ‘eBook-Launch-Opt-in-180-Days’ to make it easy to identify the audience. It may take a few hours to populate and you should get a good indication after 2 or 3 days.

Step 2: Create a Facebook Reach Campaign and Your First Ad Set

Next up is selecting the Reach objective and to create your first ad set.

  • Go to Ads Manager dashboard
  • Click on Create to set up a new campaign
  • Select Quick Creation mode and name your campaign
  • From the drop-down list, choose the Reach objective
  • Turn off Campaign Budget Optimisation if you don’t want Facebook to optimise reach to just one ad set
  • Name your ad set and select your Facebook page
  • Name your ad and click Save to Draft

Facebook Reach Ads

Setting A Budget

The ad spend really depends on your budget but let’s start off with £1 per day. While this isn’t very high, you will have 5 to 10 ad sets where each one has their own budget. Your total Facebook Reach campaign budget is your daily limit per ad set multiplied by the number of ad sets. This meas if your budget is £1 per day for all 10 ad sets, your total daily budget equals £10.

  • Go to the Ad Set level and define your budget and schedule
  • In the Audience section, choose the opt-in website custom audience you just created
  • Leave the remaining demographic information open as you should have done all of the segmenting in the website custom audience section
  • Click on Edit Placements and select Facebook and Instagram Feeds

Facebook custom audiences

Frequency Capping

Now it’s time to set a frequency cap and campaign optimisation. Using frequency capping helps avoid ad fatigue as you essentially limit how regularly your target audience sees each ad. For ads to be successful, you want to remain top of mind without being annoying. A good example can be 1 impression every 7 days if you’re running seven different ads.

Step 3: Create A Facebook Reach Ad

The final step in setting up your first ad set is to create an ad for your target audience. To create an ad:

  • select your Facebook page and Instagram profiles
  • choose the ad format such (single image, video or carousel)
  • add your content (text, images, call-to-action, URLs etc.)

Facebook Reach Ad

Step 4: Duplicate Ad Set And Create New Ads

Instead of going through the entire process to create a new ad, simply duplicate the first ad set and change the content. Ad duplication just makes creating a new draft and ad sets much faster and easier.

To create your second ad:

  • Navigate to the Ad Set level of your campaign
  • Check the box next to the first ad set you created
  • Click the Duplicate button and change the name to Ad Set 2 and include the ad type as well
  • Go to the Ad level of your new ad set and change the ad accordingly

Facebook advertising

How To Create Additional Ads

The last thing you need to do is repeat the duplication process to create the rest of your Ad Sets and ads. A top tip is to only duplicate one Ad Set at a time as it is much easier to keep track of and avoid unnecessary mistakes.

You should ideally have an ad set level with multiple ad sets which target the same audience. Within each Ad Set there should be a single ad where none of them are the same. Once you’ve create all the Ad Sets and you are certain that all the criteria is correct, it’s time to switch them on and make it go live.

Important Tip:

Remember that this is only the beginning of this type of ad campaign. You can create new ad sets over time with ads based on fresh content and updated client results or testimonials for added impact.

Final Thoughts

If you follow these steps, your Facebook marketing campaign will greatly limit ad fatigue while still appearing consistently in your lead’s news feed. Facebook Reach Ads can help build brand recognition and authority while getting your target audience to take action, moving them seamlessly through the sales funnel.

Need help marketing your business online? Please get in touch for a free quotation to find out how we can tailor specific solutions for your brand as WSI specialise in SEO, PPCsocial media management and Marketing Automation among others.

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