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How To Set Up Facebook Ads For Your Live Stream

Reach a wider audience for your live stream with Facebook ads. Don’t get too intimidated, let me show you how you can set it up without tearing your hair off!

Why Use Ads to Promote Your Facebook Live

Facebook ads are a great way to promote your brand and business. To make sure you’re reaching out to as many people as possible for your upcoming show, use ads to promote your broadcast and catch your target audience’s attention.

And because more and more people prefer watching clips on social media, this strategy is a surefire way to reach your target audience more efficiently.

Here’s how you can set up Facebook ads for more views and engagement for your live stream.

How to Run a Facebook Ad for Wider Live Show Reach

It may sound complicated but setting up a Facebook ad to promote your live stream is actually easy to do once you get the hang of it.

But before setting up your Ads Manager, schedule your live stream first. It helps to have an existing show to promote when you start a campaign for your broadcast.

Then, you need to determine the budget you’re willing to allocate for Facebook ads. Not everyone has an unlimited marketing budget, especially small businesses. But with these ads, you can tailor-fit your ad reach according to your budget allocation.

Follow these steps to start reaching out to more people for your upcoming live show.

Step 1: Choose Your Campaign Objective

Go to the Facebook Ads Manager page and choose the objective for your campaign. Remember to choose the option that best fits your need. You will see three main categories:

  • Awareness – brand awareness, local awareness, and reach.
  • Consideration – traffic, engagement, app installs, video views, lead generation, and messages.
  • Conversion – conversions, catalog sales, and store traffic.

Every objective is specified for the kind of results you want to get.

For example, if you want to increase your video views, then choose “Video Views” under Consideration.

Step 2: Give Your Campaign a Name

Once you’ve determined the objective of the ad you want to run, give this campaign a name that reflects what you want this campaign to be.

You’ll most likely run other ads in the future so it’s important to tag your campaign with an identifier to make it more memorable.

Consider including these elements when you name your campaign:

  • Your business name
  • Your target audience or location
  • Your custom audiences
  • The creative ad type (will it be a video or a banner?)
  • The Facebook page to run it on

Step 3: Select Your Audience Targeting

Prior to setting up your Facebook ads campaign, you should already know who you’re planning to target your ads to.

Choose the country, currency, and time zone of the areas you want to cover for your campaign.

Here’s the fun part.

You can choose to target the audience you want to reach based on some detailed factors.

  • Target existing audience – Start retargeting your ad to people who have already watched your video or a part of it before.
  • Lookalike audience – Find your warmest audience by retargeting people with similar interests as your existing subscribers.
  • By interests – Now you can also expand your reach to new audiences by inputting interests that are linked to your upcoming topic. You will be able to reach people who have not encountered your show but may be looking for answers to their pain points.

Isn’t that cool?

Of course, you shouldn’t forget to also define your targeting by the following elements:

  • Location
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Language

facebook-ads-targets

Once you’ve set this audience targeting up, you can save it for future ads. That way you won’t have to start all over again for future scheduled live streams.

Step 4: Decide Your Placement

This is when you decide where you want your ads to appear. It can run on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Audience Network or Messenger.

If this is your first time running a Facebook video ad, then choose the Automatic Placements option. Facebook will show your ads across several platforms as much as your budget will allow.

If you already know where you want your ads in, then choose Manual Placement to choose the specific platforms you want.

Step 5: Determine Your Budget

You can choose either a daily or a lifetime budget for your ads. Set the budget you’re comfortable with and Facebook will make sure you won’t spend beyond the limit you’ve set for your ads.

This section also determines how often your videos will appear on the platforms you chose.

Creating Facebook video ads may be an additional expense for your marketing strategy but you can expand your reach for a reasonable amount. For example, you’ll be able to reach up to 80,000 people for just $200.

Step 6: Set Up Your Ad

Creating a Facebook ad to promote your upcoming broadcast improves engagement with new viewers. It will also allows you a deeper penetration of your target market depending on your budget.

You can choose between creating a new ad and using an existing post. If you already created a teaser of your upcoming show, then you can use that. But, if you want to make a new clip or banner for it, that’s a great option, too!

You need to fill out the following sections for your ads:

Identity

Choose the page you want your ad to anchor on.

Format

You have three options for the format — a single image, video, or image slideshow. Choose the best format to promote your broadcast.

Videos may have better chances of engagement compared to images.

According to Hootsuite, people browsing on social media spend 5x more time watching videos than a still image or ad.  Business Insider also noted a 50% increase in revenue for small businesses who tried video marketing in 2015, which means running Facebook video ads is definitely working.

Media

This section catches your target audience’s attention, so you should pay special attention to this when you want to promote your pre-scheduled show. You can choose up to 10 images or videos from existing posts or new uploads to showcase in the Facebook ads you want to run.

Some media you may want to use to promote your live stream are:

  • Type of Media:
    • GIFs
    • Teasers
    • Banners
    • Short clips
  • Type of Content
    • Announcement of the upcoming live
    • Overview of your show
    • Description of the topic you’re planning to talk about
    • Behind the scenes of your live shows, etc

When you upload assets to promote your live stream, make sure they follow the specs and other guidelines recommended by Facebook.

Texts and Links

Your copy should have the following to become more effective:

  • Headline or the main point of the upcoming live stream
  • Description text
  • Website link (if you have one) or link to the scheduled broadcast
  • Branded content tag (if your ad features a third-party brand)
  • CTA

You can include up to five options for each section as well.

facebook-ads-overview

Step 7: Submit Your Ads

Once you’re happy with the setup, then you can now submit your video ad for review. It will go to Facebook’s ad auction which determines the best way for it to get to the appropriate people.

Step 8: Monitor and Measure Your Ads

Once your Facebook Video Ad goes live, it’s time to monitor and measure its results in Ads Manager. You should set a specific checkpoint to determine how the campaign is doing.

There you’ll see your budget, your reach, impressions, cost per result, and total amount spent.

Now you’re all set to expand your reach and increase engagement for your videos!

Other Ways To Promote Your Live Stream for Maximum Exposure

Aside from Facebook Ads, you can also promote your live stream in other (free) ways. The key to get maximum exposure for your broadcast is to schedule it ahead of time. This gives you enough time to promote and gain more attention for your live. It also allows you to gain leads and convert them into buying customers.

Aside from creating a Facebook Video Ad, then go ahead and do the following:

  1. Post your live everywhere.
  2. Do a chatbot campaign.
  3. Send reminder emails to people on your mailing list.

Check out this blog post for more detailed instructions on how to promote your brand for lead generation.

Try running an ad for your live stream now and compare the results with your organic campaign.

Sign up with BeLive now and expand your brand reach with the help of Facebook ads! You can also join our online community to connect with other content creators and business owners.

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