How to Create Facebook Page Like Ads to Boost Social Proof

Facebook advertising comes in all shapes and sizes. Some ad campaigns urge you to visit websites to sign up for free product trials. Others advertise Facebook business pages through Page Like ads.

Thinking of running a campaign to gain more Facebook likes? Here’s what they can do for your Facebook business page, and how you should run each Facebook Page Like ad campaign the correct way to make your Facebook ad spend count.

What are Facebook Page Like ads?

Facebook Page Like ads are business page advertisements created to earn page likes and accumulate followers for the advertised page. These ads are easy to create, and you can set them up directly from your Facebook page or by creating a new campaign on the Ads Manager and selecting “Page Likes” under the Engagement campaign objective.

The Facebook ad campaign above is an example of what a Facebook Page Like ad looks like.

The ad’s primary text tells us what the page is for, and its headline contains the page’s name. The description right below the ad’s headline gives us a bit of information about the page, and the CTA button tells us to “Follow” Digital Photography for Moms. Subsequently, the advertiser backs their ad up with a creative that’s relevant to the page’s name. Pretty simple, right?

To ease confusion, some Facebook users in your audience might see “Follow” instead of “Like.” This is nothing to worry about because Facebook rolled out a new design for Facebook pages in January 2021, with some countries getting the updated interface before the others. The action button your audience sees will depend on their location.

Why do Facebook Page Like ads work?

Facebook Page Like ad campaigns when done right -- work wonders. Most importantly, your goal is to provide social proof and build trust with your audience.

Another objective is to increase your Facebook business page’s number of followers. Why? A powerful social proof is your page’s big following on social media, alongside post engagements. Both things set your future posts up for success.

‍Social proof is a common marketing term that is based on the idea that people will conform to be liked by society. Facebook Page Like ads use this idea to get target audiences to click on the “Like” CTA button.

The defining point of a page’s social proof is when people see that it has a considerable number of followers and a lot of post engagements. Followers and engagements make your page trustworthy in the eyes of your audience. Social proof makes them think a page is worth their attention. They look into the page and find relevancy that resonates with the things they’re interested in -- a clear call for them to click on the “Like” button!

In addition, Page Like ads aren't expensive. This type of ad campaign’s average Facebook advertising costs stands at $1.07 per like. Making them significantly cheaper than app install ads, for example, which has an average cost per download of $5.47.

Considering the short- and long-term benefits you’ll reap after curating your Page Like ad to fit your business page’s perfect audience, every like is worth its price. This brings us down to advising you against an illegitimate way of accumulating page likes -- buying them.

Why you shouldn’t buy Facebook page likes

Buying Facebook page likes is an unethical way of earning page followers in the eyes of marketers and Facebook itself. There are many reasons not to do it, with your page’s credibility as the main factor. Buying likes ruins your relationship with and understanding of your audience.

As a result, you won't be able to paint a picture of who your audience is. Without understanding your audience, how are you supposed to reach current and new ones with your future content? You earn page followers consisting of mass-created accounts who won’t engage with your page aside from the page “Like” you paid for. Moreover, Facebook can detect fake accounts used and ban them, affecting your page’s follower count.

How to create Facebook Page Like ads

You already know what Page Like ads can do for your page. It's time to find out how to create your own.

In Facebook Ads Manager

Campaign setup

Start setting up your ad campaign by going to Facebook Ads Manager. Click on Create > Create New Campaign > Engagement > Page Likes.

Give your Page Like ad campaign a name, and you’ll move forward with the Facebook Ad Setup Dashboard.

Ad set setup

The ad set level setup for your Facebook Page Likes campaign doesn’t require a lot of tinkering with Facebook Ads Manager, but your ad campaign’s ROAS will be highly dependent on how you’ll determine your target audiences, schedule, and spending.

1. Budget

In this part of your Page Like ad setup, you’ll set the daily budget you’re willing to spend for this particular ad campaign. You can set the budget using campaign budget optimization (CBO) or ad set budget optimization (ABO).

Moreover, you can set an end date for your ad set, on which it would stop running. It’s not a requirement to set an end date for your ad. Doing so only gives you the option to set a lifetime budget for the ad set. Meaning, you'll leave the daily budget allocation to Facebook. Bigger budgets allow Facebook’s algorithm to work faster and find ways to achieve your ad campaign objective using the relevant targeting options you set.

2. Audience targeting

Targeting will define who you want Facebook to show your ads to. You have the option to target bigger and broader audiences to allow more potential page fans to see your ads. This means you can show them to a particular group of Facebook users with interests, profiles, and behaviors relevant to your Facebook page.

There needs to be a correct balance between narrowing your targeting down and letting Facebook’s algorithm do its job in targeting specific audiences. Otherwise, you’re bound to spend more on reaching out to highly specific audiences. This makes engagement remain a possibility rather than a definite outcome. There’s no way to paint a picture of what your target audience looks like. You can only provide Facebook enough information to identify your audience.

Targeting broad audiences leaves you with people who will like your page because of an attractive ad copy or creative. However, you can’t rely on them to engage with your future organic posts. This will lead to Facebook's algorithm tagging your posts as low-value to a particular audience. Low-value posts are shown to fewer platform users.

With enough Meta pixel data, you’ll have other options to target audiences using custom and lookalike audiences. These audiences allow you to reach people from:

• Customer lists
• Website visitors
• Facebook users who share similar characteristics with your customers and site visitors

When running Facebook Page Like ads, the last thing you want is redundancy. Avoid showing your Page Like ads to people who already interacted with and followed your page by selecting inclusions and exclusions in Audiences > Connections.

There are options to specifically target or exclude people who have engaged with your page through:

• Page follows
• Responding to events
• App usage
• Lookalikes of people affiliated with your page

3. Placements

For Facebook Page Like ads, you only have 2 available ad placements:

1. Facebook News Feed
2. Facebook Marketplace

Note that your audience can see your ad on a desktop computer or mobile device.

“Automatic Placements” lets Facebook’s algorithm place your ad in the best placements. Per ad account, selecting this means Facebook’s algorithm might place your ad in either or both placements, based on where it is expected to drive the best results. On the other hand, “Manual Placements” allow you to select one of these placements or both, but as you can see, there’s not much room for maneuver here, so there’s no big difference between the two methods.

Ad setup

In this section, we’ll tell you about what makes a great Facebook ad. You have control over what your target audience will see and when they do, you should make sure that what they see is good enough to convert them into your Facebook page’s followers.

The image above is Facebook Ads Manager’s ad setup dashboard. Here, you can insert your creative and primary text and get a preview of what your Page Like ad will look like to Facebook users once it’s up and running.

Ad copy

Your Facebook Page Like ad’s primary text will be your chance to tell people what your page has to offer. The best Facebook ads don't come with tame ad copy, so coming up with an excellent copy is essential.

Our example has a short ad copy from Sarah’s Health Journal telling you they want to help you live a healthier life! Imagine changing your lifestyle with just a click of the “Like Page” button that won’t cost you anything. You’ll take the bait, right?

You should test many different pieces of copy to find out what ad copy style and length works for you and what doesn’t. Some advertisers like to use emojis, bullet points, and short primary texts, while some go for blocks of text.

Ad creative

Taking the biggest space in your ad, your creative will visually represent your Facebook page. Make sure whatever you put as your creative is original, attention-grabbing, and high-quality!

You can add an image or a video as your ad creative, which gives you the freedom to come up with ideas and collaborate with graphic designers. In producing creatives, there’s a variety of choices -- all mixing quality and price.

Today’s cheapest option is stock images or free designs from websites like Canva or Flaticon, which also offer free icon packs or other free design resources. Another option that isn’t as cheap but can assure quality is hiring an in-house graphic designer. You can work with them closely and meet in the middle when it comes to objectives and creatives.

A good balance between price and quality is to work with platforms providing professional design services at a relatively low price. Sparkle is a good example of a service that allows close collaboration between yourself and professional designers. You can collaborate with Sparkle's designers and request revisions until your standards are met.

Note: If you produce your creatives in-house, make sure you follow the correct Facebook ad format specifications.

From your Facebook page

There are three ways to set up your Facebook Page Like ads outside Facebook Ads Manager. The first way to the Create Ad dashboard is through your News Feed’s right-hand menu:

Scroll down and pick “Promote Page,” which will take you to the part where you add and select your ad creative, primary text, audience, duration, and others.

The second way is using your Facebook business page’s “Promote” option:

The third way is also from your Facebook business page, under the Manage Page left-hand menu. All methods will take you to the same Create Ad dashboard:

We’re not allowed to change the headline, description, and CTA button for Facebook Page Like ads in the dashboard. We can concentrate on writing an attention-grabbing ad copy in the primary text section and adding the best visual representation of our Facebook page.

After selecting the best creative for your Page Like ad, you can move on to audience targeting, which gives you the option to target demographics, interests, behaviors, and other categories. You can browse through Facebook’s browsable targeting options, or look up other keywords to target.

The next step would be to set the ad’s duration. You can either opt to run it consistently or set an end date, which takes you to the next step -- setting your ad’s daily budget.

Unlike setting up Facebook Page Like ads using the Facebook Ads Manager, setting one up from your page doesn’t give you the option to choose between CBO and ABO. You’re setting up a daily budget for a single ad, which means no automatic or manual budget allocation between ad sets will happen. Once you’re done with setting your ad’s daily budget, you can click on “Promote Now” and wait for results!

When to and not to run Page Like ads

When considering a Facebook Page Like ad campaign, it’s important to note that they’re mainly beneficial for businesses without their own website, aren’t looking to convert audiences, and have increasing their social proof on Facebook as their main priority.

However, for eCommerce and other businesses that are focused on website and app conversions, Page Like ads might not be the best solution. Since their main campaign objective is conversions, it’s highly recommended that they run Conversion campaigns instead of Page Like ads.

If you’re looking for an easy way to start launching new Conversion campaigns (or any other objective you wish to utilize), you can turn your existing Facebook page posts into ads. Madgicx provides you with an easy way to do it using the Ad Launcher. It’s a tool that allows you to launch high-performing and personalized ads based on performance data.

Ready to run your Facebook Page Like ads?

Facebook Page Like ads require simple setups. You’ll get to accumulate more Facebook page likes in no time! While your Facebook business page’s growth journey doesn’t end there, this is considered a feat -- especially if your new page followers are keen on engagement.

As you watch your Facebook page likes and engagement, it’s time for you to cook up organic content that will keep your new followers interested. Come up with high-value posts they’ll see on their Facebook newsfeed, and make them worthy of reactions, comments, and shares from your followers. Think of them as rewards to your page fans for hitting the “Follow” CTA button on your Facebook Page Like ad campaigns.

Once you’ve established a relationship with your page followers, it’s time to continue building your Facebook marketing strategy. Your succeeding steps should be to prep your future marketing efforts to reach more relevant audiences and keep your current followers engaged. Run eye-catching ads and release high-quality content. You have plenty of Facebook ad types to choose from, so gear up.