Step-By-Step Guide On How To Create Facebook Ads In 2020
With 2.7 billion users, Facebook is a massive social media platform. It consumes user’s days as they can get lost endlessly scrolling through content on their feed. So, how do you create Facebook ads to start boosting your online business?
Facebook’s advertising platform gave the little man a chance by offering an easy to learn and use the dashboard for creating advertisements. It removed traditional advertising norms that included high budgets, large productions and experienced creatives.
Anyone can advertise on Facebook now. In this article, we will cover the basics of how to create Facebook ads. You will learn how to create your first Facebook advertising campaign.
Sign Up For A Facebook Business Manager Account
Before you begin setting up your first Facebook ad campaign you need to create a Facebook Business Manager account.
Having a business manager account will allow you access to Facebook’s Ad Manager, which is what you will use to create and track your advertising campaigns on Facebook.
If you haven’t set up your business account yet visit business.facebook.com and follow the steps for setting up your account.
When setting up your Facebook business manager account, link your company’s main Facebook page. Through business manager, you can assign access to other Facebook users who you want to help run your company page and Facebook advertisements.
Set Up Your Advertising Access
Once your business account is created, open Business Manager Settings.
Once there, select “Add New Ad Accounts.”
Facebook is now going to ask that you set up your payment method which is what you will use to pay for your ad campaign.
Enter The Facebook Ads Manager Dashboard
Looking around you will notice you have four tabs in the dashboard:
Account Overview:
Your account overview will show you a summary of information pertaining to your audience reach, the amount spent, impressions and link clicks. Your account overview will also provide information on the type of audience your campaign reached including their age, gender and the time they viewed your ad.
Campaigns:
The campaigns tab lists all the campaigns you currently are running are inactive and campaigns that have concluded. Through this tab, you set up ad campaigns which include setting your marketing objective. This tab will also show you the results of each of your campaigns.
Ad Sets:
Facebook ad sets are where you will see the ad sets associated with your selected campaign. Through ad sets, you can define your target audience, budget, scheduling, bidding and placement for your ads.
Ads
The ads tab is where you will actually create each ad you will run. This is where you choose the image or video you wish to use, your headline, description, CTA and more. This is also where you will see a preview of your ad.
Create Your First Facebook Ad Campaign
To begin click the green button found in the top left corner of the Campaigns tab that reads “Create Campaign.”
This is where you will select the marketing objective of your campaign. You will have 11 options to choose from:
Awareness:
- Brand Awareness: For when you want to reach people who would be interested in your brand or product.
- Reach: Allows you to show your ad to a set maximum amount of people.
Consideration:
- Traffic: This is meant for sending people to another destination from your ads such as your Facebook page or website.
- Engagement: For if you are wanting to increase engagement on your Facebook posts, images and videos.
- App Installs: Helps for generating more app downloads.
- Video Views: Encourages more users to view your Facebook video.
- Lead Generation: Helps drive sales leads by requesting user emails.
- Messages: Encourages users to send messages to your company page in Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.
Conversion
- Conversions: Helps with driving action on your website, app or Messenger.
- Catalog Sales: For creating ads that show items from your store catalog.
- Store Traffic: Encourages users to visit your physical store when they are in a certain proximity to your location.
After you select your campaign object you can assign your campaign a name.
You will also notice that you can select to conduct a split A/B test. An A/B test is where you create two different ads within your campaign that have slight differences from one another.
Facebook will then split your budget between the two and run both those ads. Facebook will measure which ad performs better. If there is a clear winner before your budget is fully used, Facebook will allocate the loser ads budget to the winners for the remainder of the duration of your campaign.
As you become more familiar with Facebook ads you can begin using this tool to help create effective campaigns.
Now that you have your campaign objective selected, hit continue.
Creating Facebook Ad Sets
Specifying an Audience
This is where you begin creating the audience you want your ad to target. You will notice that you will have the option to create a new audience or use a saved audience.
Since you are starting from scratch you will want to create a new audience:
- Locations: Begin by selecting locations and adding the areas you want to target. You can as well exclude certain areas. You can set proximity for the area ranging from a 10-50 mile radius.
- Age: Age is pretty self-explanatory. You can set the age range for the audience you want to reach.
- Detailed Targeting: This helps you pinpoint certain users on Facebook. You can add demographics, interests and behaviors your target audience is comprised of.
- Language: Again, pretty self-explanatory. You select what languages your target audience speaks.
- Connections: Here you can select to target certain users who have some kind of connection with your company. This includes whether they liked your company page, use your app, responded to one of your events, etc.
Ad Placements
For placements, I recommend going with Automatic Placements. Facebook’s algorithm will allocate your budget across multiple ad placements based on where your ad is likely to perform best. This is best if you really are not all that familiar with Facebook’s platform.
However, if you want full control, you can select where your ad is placed. Just note, the more options you select to have, the bigger your potential audience will be.
Budget & Schedule
This is where you define how much money you wish to spend on the campaign.
By selecting a daily budget you can assign a set amount to your campaign for each day. A lifetime budget is how much you wish to spend throughout the course of the entire campaign.
By selecting to use a lifetime budget, you will be asked when you wish to begin running the campaign along with the start time. You also choose the date and time for when you want your campaign to conclude.
Facebook will run your ad through that period based on your set budget.
Creating a Facebook Ad
Now that you have your audience, budget and placement assigned, you can begin creating the actual ad that will appear throughout Facebook’s channels.
Identity
Your ad will need an identity. You can select your ads identity from either one of your company’s Facebook pages or from your Instagram account. Your identity will appear on your ad, in the same way, someone’s Facebook profile picture and the name that is displayed on posts.
Format
You choose what type of format your ad comes across as. You can pick between a single image, video, or image slideshow which will cycle through the images you upload.
Media
This section is where you choose what media assets you wish to add to your advertisement. You can choose from images or videos previously added to your page, or you can upload new images directly from your computer. You have the option of choosing up to 10 pieces of media.
The media you choose is the most important aspect of your ad. Your media is what will catch the user’s eyes.
Text & Links
Here is where you will begin filling in your copy. On the right, you will have a live preview of what your ad will look like throughout the different placements you choose or that Facebook assigns to you.
You can add up to 5 different headlines in which Facebook will optimize by displaying a different one each time based and using the one which performs the best.
The same goes for your description and website URL. You can add up to five options.
I would say the second most important section on your Facebook ad is the Headline. Your headline will appear at the bottom of your ad next to your call to action button. As soon as the user stops on your ad your headline needs to drive them to click your CTA button.
Speaking of Call to Actions, it is important to have the proper link attached to your advertisement. If you forget about this step your whole campaign can be a waste.
The Next Steps
Once you hit create, your ad will be sent to Facebook for approval. As soon as it is approved, your ad will begin running on your set date and time.
Back on the Facebook Ad Manager dashboard, you can view how your ad is performing. Use this information to measure your ad performance. At the conclusion of your campaign, you can refer back to it to see what worked and adjust your campaign accordingly.
Upon the conclusion of your campaign, you can choose to go back and alter your campaign or simply create a new one.
Lastly, this is a basic overview of how to create Facebook ads. Each objective has some slight variation where you will need to possibly add more information or fields. Also, Facebook offers a simple way to advertise by boosting Facebook posts.
Boosting Facebook posts is a quick way of reaching a larger audience instead of creating an individual advertising campaign. You can learn more about boosting Facebook posts here!