How to Place an Ad on Facebook and Other Digital Platforms

Digital advertising has never been more important. With online audiences making up the majority of internet searchers, your business stands to benefit greatly from getting your ads in front of your potential customers. The most popular platforms for digital advertising are Google, Facebook, Instagram and increasingly Amazon and LinkedIn. In 2020, Google ads commanded 28.9% of the U.S. digital ad market while Facebook held 25.2%. At the same time, Amazon surpassed 10% of the market share. According to eMarketer, LinkedIn gets about 20% of digital marketing revenue while Instagram takes about 15% of the pie.

How to Place an Ad on Facebook and Other Digital Platforms

How to place a Google ad

Google is by far the most used search engine so it can be very effective to advertise on Google. According to ads.google.com, there are a few simple steps to placing an ad on Google:

1. Choose your main advertising goal such as getting more calls.
2. Select the business you are advertising for.
3. Choose whether the ad should link to your website or business page.
4. Write your ad. Don’t forget headline(s) and a description.
5. Add keyword themes to match relevant ad searches (suggestions come pre-loaded).
6. Choose the geographic region that you want your ad to appear.
7. Select your daily average budget.
8. Review your campaign before confirming payment and placing the ad.
9. Manage your ad(s) in your Google Ads account.

How to place an ad on Facebook (and Instagram)

Facebook ads are great for business-to-consumer businesses. They are easy to create and track, and best of all, they are affordable with “set your own budget” options.

According to Facebook.com/business/ads, there are seven simple steps to creating and managing Facebook ads once you’ve identified your marketing goal:

1. Choose your objective. Increasing page followers or getting leads are two examples.
2. Select your audience, which means identifying age, interests and geographic location(s).
3. Decide where to run your ad. You can choose Facebook only or add on Instagram and/or messenger.
4. Set your budget and timeframe. Identify the number of days you want to run your ad and enter the daily or lifetime budget you want to spend.
5. Pick your format. You can choose a single image, multi-image or video.
6. Place your order.
7. Measure and manage your ad. Once your ad has been approved, you can track performance and edit your campaign in Ads Manager.

How to place an ad on Amazon

Advertising on Amazon can increase product visibility and sales on Amazon. According to https://sell.amazon.com/advertising.html, here are the steps to placing Amazon ads:

1. Login to Seller Central (or create an account).
2. Create your campaign. This can be for sponsored products, brands or displays. In this phase you will select what you want to promote.
3. Set your budget. The budget for most ads on Amazon is controlled by the cost per click. You choose how much you want to spend for a click, and set a budget for the maximum amount you are willing to spend on your ads each day.
4. Measure success through your Seller Central account. You will be able to track your impressions, clicks, click-through-rate, the traffic to your Store, total advertising costs, and more.

How to place a LinkedIn ad

LinkedIn has a lock on business-to-business advertising so if your customers are other businesses, this is where you should be advertising.

According to business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/, there are seven steps to placing ads on LinkedIn:

1. Choose self-service or managed ad campaigns.
2. Sign-up for Campaign Manager before attempting to create ads. Get familiar with it as it is where you will be managing your ads.
3. Choose your ad format. You will need to decide if you want to create Sponsored Content, Text Ads, or both.
4. Create your ads. For Sponsored Content, you can choose an update to your Company or Showcase Page to promote, or create new Sponsored Content. For Text Ads, you will want to specify where the ad should link to, then add an image, headline and brief description. For either type, it is a good idea to try out several variations to see which perform the best.
5. Target your ads to the right audience. Use the tools provided by LinkedIn to choose criteria that will help you select the right audience.
6. Set your budget. You can choose to bid on cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM). Each type is suitable for different needs: CPC is ideal for ads with a conversion goal, whereas CPM is best for ads aimed at increasing brand awareness.
7. Measure and optimize. Regularly login to Campaign Manager to monitor metrics and test new variations based on your initial results.

Digital Advertising help with Softwired

Softwired provides digital marketing solutions for our clients and partner agencies. We’ve got you covered for web design, blogs, landing pages, SEO, local online presence and optimization, digital marketing and advertising, and social media marketing. We build websites with WordPress themes and have also been using the HubSpot platform to build blogs and landing pages since 2012.

Over the years, we’ve worked with lots of clients who need help with web engineering and digital marketing tasks but don’t have in-house staff. Finding freelancers can be a nightmare and cause a lot of problems when promising delivery of service. Whether you’re interested in web design only, digital advertising help or more; we’re ready to help you get started!