So, you’ve read our previous blog on how to start a sweets shop on Facebook? You’ve got things moving, but sales are still more of a trickle than an avalanche? You now need to take the next step to get your business out to a larger group of people.
And what is the next step? Paid promotion.
Paid advertising on Facebook doesn’t need to be expensive. In fact, with intelligent targeting you can start getting your message out there for less than £100.
This blog will teach you exactly how to advertise your sweets business on Facebook. We’ll talk you through exactly what you need to do to set up Facebook Ads and launch your first campaign.
Read on to learn how you can promote your small business on Facebook and get fast results.
About Facebook advertising
Using Facebook’s suite of advertising tools allows you to promote your Facebook shop across Facebook, Instagram and their range of partner websites incredibly easily.
In-depth audience targeting gives you the ability to promote your sweet shop to the exact type of person you know will buy from you, while the entire systems is set up to be as simple to manage as possible. This, combined with the low minimum spend required, provides an incredible opportunity for small businesses to reach new audiences and drive steady, consistent growth.
Ultimately, it’s the easiest, fastest way to promote your Facebook sweets shop beyond your immediate circle and start bringing in more revenue.
How to set up Facebook Business Manager
Your first step when embarking upon a paid advertising campaign on Facebook is a simple one: setting up Facebook Business Manager.
Found at business.facebook.com, Facebook Business Manager is, in Facebook’s words, “a one-stop shop to manage business tools, business assets and employee access to these assets.”
Essentially, it’s where you go to manage all your Facebook marketing activities. You will use Facebook Business Manager to start campaigns across both Facebook and Instagram, develop audiences, access in-depth reports and much more.
And you can set yours up in three simple steps:
Step one: create your account
Naturally, your first step when using this platform is to create an account. Start by going to business.facebook.com and clicking the Create Account button in the top right of the screen
Next, enter you’re the name of your business, your name and the email address you want to use to manage the account. This could be an email account you’ve set up specifically for your Facebook sweet shop just your personal address.
Click ‘Next’ to go to the next screen, where you’ll be required to enter your business details, before selecting the option at the bottom left which states you’re using Business Manager to promote your own goods and services and clicking ‘Submit’.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll receive a confirmation email to the email address your specified. Follow the instructions in this to confirm your account.
Step two: add your Facebook business page
Once your account has been created, you’ll need to add your sweet shop’s Facebook page to Business Manager. Again, this is a simple process.
Simply log in to your Business Manager and click ‘Add Page’ on the dashboard then do the same again in the pop-up box.
Following this, you’ll just need to start typing the name of your page in the text box which appears. This should autocomplete with your business page. Once it has done so, simply click ‘Add Page’ and it should be automatically added without requiring any further steps.
Step three: add your Facebook ad account
Finally, you’ll need to create a Facebook ad account. This process is similar to adding your page, starting by clicking ‘Add Ad Account’ on your dashboard before clicking ‘Create Account’. Following this, simply add your business details (making sure you set your time zone and currency correctly), before confirming the account will be used for your business.
Optional step four: add your Instagram account
If you also use Instagram to promote your sweets business, you should also add this account to Business Manager. Adding your Instagram account will allow you to easily manage paid advertising for both Facebook and Instagram through one central platform and is a simple, two-step process:
- Click the gear icon in the top right of your Business Manager dashboard to go to your settings page
- Click Instagram accounts in the column on the left before selecting ‘Add’ and inputting your Instagram information.
Congratulations! You’ve now got your Business Manager account set up and are ready to run some ads for your Facebook sweet shop. But where on earth do you start with that?
How to boost posts on Facebook
Boosting posts is the simplest way to trial Facebook advertising. You can do it directly from your page and have one set up and running in a matter of minutes.
Although boosting posts does have less flexibility than running adverts through Business Manager, it’s a great way to quickly give a post you’re seeing success with a wider audience, thereby putting your sweet shop in front of a much wider range of people. To boost your first post, you’ll simply need to do the following
- Go to your Facebook page and find the post you want to boost, click the blue ‘Boost Post’ button in the bottom right of the post.
- Select your audience. You will be offered a range of audience targeting options, from targeting people who like your page already to ensure your post reaches more of your followers to building out a specific audience of people. The simplest way to expand you audience without going too in-depth is to target ‘People who like your Page and their friends’, this will allow you to expand your reach in the local area without having to build out a customised audience of people.
- Select your ad placements. By default, your boost will be set to run across Facebook, Facebook Messenger and Instagram (if you have your profile connected in Business Manager). Although they must run on Facebook, you do have the option to remove Messenger and Instagram if you desire.
- Set your ad duration and budget. The final step in boosting a post is to set how long you would like the boost to run for and how much you are willing to spend. You can start from as little as £1 per day, though obviously the more you can spend, the more people you will reach. A budget of £25 over 7 days is the ideal way to get your post out to a significant number of people without risking too much money, but you can always start with a smaller amount and modify your budget in the future if it goes well.
- Select a payment option. Your post is now ready to go, all you need to do is add your payment details or select payment details you’ve previously input in Business Manager to get things started.
- Boost your post! You can now boost your post and start getting your sweets brand out to more people. Logging into your Ads Manager will also allow you to see reports on the status of your post and how it’s doing throughout. Although the figures take a little time to filter through, this will allow you to get (almost) live updates on performance, rather than waiting until your campaign is finished.
Creating an ad in Facebook Ads Manager
Of course, if you want to implement more complex campaigns as part of your marketing plan, you’ll need to venture into Facebook Ads Manager. Although Facebook Ads Manager offers an unrivalled number of options, many of them aren’t necessary when you’re just starting out. Here’s how you can set up a simple marketing campaign for your sweet shop using Facebook Ads Manager.
Go to Facebook Business Manager: navigate to Facebook Business Manager then go into your Ad Account and hit the green ‘Create’ button on the left.
Choose your objective:
The first thing Facebook presents you with is a list of options which allow you to define your objective for the campaign. The objective you choose will dictate how Facebook’s algorithms show the ad and can provide different options for your creatives. Hovering over the ‘i’ on each objective will show you what each objective means.
In this example we’ll use the ‘Engagement’ objective, which is designed to help you get more page likes, post engagements or event responses. These three options will appear as sub-objectives once you’ve selected it. As we’re looking to build an audience for your Facebook page, we’ll choose ‘Page Likes’
Name your campaign and set your budget
Before moving forward, you’ll need to set a budget for your campaign. If you want to have an ongoing campaign, a daily budget allows you to set it up and leave it. A lifetime budget, on the other hand, will stop the campaign once the limit has been reached.
You’ll also need to give your campaign a memorable name so you can quickly know which one it is once you’ve ran several campaigns.
Targeting
Upon continuing, you will move into your ad set, which is where you define your target audience and placements for your ad. If you’re operating with a larger budget, you can have multiple ad sets per campaign, so we could run the Page Likes campaign and then have two ads sets – one targeting men and one targeting women. In this instance, sticking to one makes the most sense.
You’ll need to name your ad set before continuing. If you’re just running one ad set, this can be the same as your campaign name.
Your first step once you’ve named the ad set is to select the audience you want to target. To start with, you’ll need to target people based on their location and other demographic information, choosing traits you think best meet the audience you wish to appeal to.
In this example, we’ve targeted people in Manchester who have an anniversary coming up and may want to treat their loved one to some delicious sweets. The charts on the right show the size of this audience.
Select your placements: once you’ve decided on your audience, you’ll be able to decide where you want your ad to appear. Ads created through Ads Manager are eligible to run on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and across Facebook’s partner sites. You can either leave this is default or change it to only target a specific platform.
Leaving it to run across all platforms at first will let you get a good idea of where your ads might prove to be the most successful, so we’ll leave it on ‘Automatic Placements’ for now.
Schedule your ad: you’ll then be given the option to set a start and end time for your ads. If you’re operating on a strict budget, we recommend setting a defined end point and letting Facebook spread the ad out evenly across that date range.
If you’re running multiple ad groups in your campaign you can also set a specific budget for your ad group here, so one group doesn’t take up all your budget.
Create your ad
Now for the fun bit – creating the advert which will promote your sweet shop. Facebook has a few different ad formats which are eligible for use depending on your objectives, but they all follow the same formula.
First off: select the image or video you want to use for your advert. You can either create your own using a tool like Canva or select one of the free stock images Facebook makes available. Then write the text you want to use. Make sure to keep this short and simple, you don’t want to distract people by posting an essay!
You can click the button in the top right above your ad preview to preview it on your device and see it in its full glory.
Check everything and launch your ad: once everything is done, simply click ‘Review’ to ensure you’ve set everything correctly, then hit ‘Confirm’ to launch. Now you can sit back and watch the numbers go up as Facebook sends your advert out into the world.
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