Facebook Adverts are the best way to boost your business. To get your ad campaigns up and running you can head straight to the Ads Manager or business manager to create your Facebook ad campaign. If you don’t yet have a business page, you’ll need to create one first.
If you’d prefer to use Business Manager, you can get the details in our post on how to use Facebook Business Manager. Ads Manager is the starting place for running ads on Facebook and Messenger. It’s an all-in-one tool suite for creating ads, managing where and when they’ll run, and tracking campaign performance.
Steps to Creating Facebook Adverts
1. Create a Facebook Adverts ad account
When you sign up for Facebook, you’re given a personal ad account ID by default. You can see this ID by going to Ads Manager and looking in the upper left-hand corner. To use Facebook Ads Manager, you need a verified payment method and:
- A Facebook Page.
- To be an admin, editor, or advertiser on someone else’s page.
If you do not have a Page for your business, you can follow Facebook’s steps to set one up. Any Page you create will be automatically given an ad account. If there is a Page you wish to advertise for that was created by someone else, you need to ask the Page admin to assign you an admin, editor, or advertiser role on the Page. If you already have an existing ad account for your Page but would like to create a new one, you’ll need to have a Business Manager account. Once you sign up for Business Manager, you can create a new ad account.
2. Head over to Facebook Adverts Manager
All of Facebook’s ad campaigns run through the Facebook Ads Manager tool. These steps are for using it on a desktop or laptop computer. The easiest way to find Facebook Ads Manager is to click and bookmark this direct link. You will be brought directly into the Facebook Ads Manager for your ad account. If you manage more than one ad account, use the account drop-down menu to pick the right account.
3. Choose your objective
Log into Facebook Ads Manager and select the Campaigns tab, then click Create to get started with a new Facebook ad campaign. Facebook offers 11 marketing objectives based on what you want your ad to accomplish.
Choose a campaign objective based on your goals for this particular ad. Keep in mind that for conversion-oriented objectives (like sales), you can pay per action, but for exposure objectives (like traffic and views), you will pay for impressions. For this example, we’ll choose the Engagement objective. From there, we need to specify which kind of engagement we want, this is according to writings on Wordstream.
4. Name your campaign
Name your Facebook ad campaign and declare whether your ad fits into any special categories like credit or politics. If you want to set up an A/B split test, click Get Started in the A/B Test section to set this ad as your control. You can choose different versions to run against this ad after it’s published. Scroll down a little further to choose whether to turn on Advantage Campaign Budget. This option can be useful if you’re using multiple ad sets, but for now, you can leave it turned off.
5. Set your budget and schedule
Next, you decide how much money you want to spend on your Facebook ad campaign. You can choose a daily or lifetime budget. Then, set the start and end dates if you want to schedule your ad in the future or choose to make it live right away. Running your Facebook paid ads on a schedule may be the most efficient way to spend your budget since you can choose only to serve your ad when your target audience is most likely to be on Facebook. You can only set a schedule if you create a lifetime budget for your ad.
6. Target your audience
Start by selecting your target location, age, gender, and language. Under location, you can even choose to include or exclude cities over a certain size. You can also prioritize people who’ve recently shown an interest in the product or service you sell. As you make your selections, keep an eye on the audience size indicator on the right of the screen, which gives you a sense of your potential ad reach.
You’ll also see an estimated number of daily reach and Page likes. These estimates will be more accurate if you have run campaigns before since Facebook will have more data to work with. Always keep in mind that these are estimates, not guarantees. Use the Detailed Targeting field to specifically include or exclude people based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. You can get specific here. For instance, you could choose to target people who are interested in both traveling and hiking but exclude people who are interested in backpacking.
7. Choose your Facebook ad placements
Scroll down to choose where your ads will appear. If you’re new to Facebook advertising, the simplest choice is to use Advantage Placements. When you select this option, Facebook will automatically place your ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network when they are likely to get the best results.
Once you have more experience, you may wish to select Manual Placements. By choosing this option, you get complete control over where your Facebook ads appear.
8. Set brand safety and cost controls
According to Hubspot research, scroll down to the Brand Safety section to exclude any types of content that would be inappropriate to appear with your ad. For example, you can choose to avoid sensitive content and add specific block lists. Block lists can exclude specific websites, videos, and publishers. When you’re happy with all your options, take a last look at the potential Reach and Page Likes estimates.
9. Create your ad
First, choose your ad format, then enter the text and media components for your ad. The formats available will vary based on the campaign objective you selected back at the beginning of this process.
If you’re working with an image, choose your media from your Facebook gallery, and select the right crop to fill your placement. Use the preview tool at the right of the page to make sure your ad looks good for all potential placements. When you’re happy with your choices, click the green Publish button to launch your ad.
