Facebook advertising can be an incredibly powerful tool for businesses of all sizes to acquire new customers. With over 1.93 billion daily active users, Facebook and Instagram provide unparalleled reach to get your products and services in front of targeted audiences.
But where do you start if you’re new to Facebook ads?
In this complete guide, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know as a beginner, from setting up your accounts to creating and optimizing your first ad campaigns.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Why Facebook ads are worth your time and money
- The key assets and accounts you need
- How to create effective ad creative
- Setting up your first campaign and ad sets
- Choosing the right campaign objective
- Targeting your ideal audience
- Setting budgets and bidding
- Tracking performance and optimizing campaigns
Let’s dive in and get you started with Facebook advertising!
Why Invest in Facebook Ads?
Here are some of the key reasons Facebook ads can be beneficial for your business:
- Huge reach – 1.93 billion active daily users on Facebook and Instagram
- Targeting capabilities – Unparalleled ability to target your ideal customers based on interests, behaviors, demographics, and more
- Proven results – Companies consistently achieve great ROI across industries
- Cost effective – Average cost-per-clicks around $1, cost-per-thousand impressions around $11
- Testing capability – Test audiences, creatives, offers rapidly to see what resonates
Facebook ads allow you to get in front of people when they’re in discovery and shopping mode. And you can target your products and services to just those most likely to be interested.
Facebook Advertising Assets You’ll Need
To set up Facebook ads, you need to create a few key assets and accounts:
- Facebook Page – This represents your business identity and where ads will run from
- Facebook Ad Account – Where you’ll create and manage campaigns
- Facebook Pixel – Enables tracking website conversions from your ads
- Payment Method – Credit card or other payment for Facebook to charge ad spend
Take the time to set these up properly for a good foundation.
How to Create Compelling Facebook Ad Creative
The visuals and text of your ads (known as creatives or creative assets) have a huge impact on performance.
Here are some tips for creating effective Facebook ad creative:
- Highlight benefits – Don’t just describe features, convey the key benefits people will get
- Use eye-catching visuals – Stand out in the newsfeed with crisp, high-quality images/video
- Write clear, concise copy – Get to the point quickly and clearly
- Leverage captions – Add engaging captions to explain images and introduce your brand
- Use questions – Pique interest with thoughtful questions relevant to your target audience
- Test different formats – Try single images, carousels, slideshows, and video ads to see what resonates
The right creative is key for getting attention and driving clicks to your site or offer.
How to Set Up Your First Facebook Campaign
Once your assets are created, it’s time to set up your first campaign. Here are the steps:
- Choose your campaign objective – Do you want website conversions, engagement, video views, etc? This focuses the optimization.
- Create ad sets – Ad sets group ads with similar targeting and budget. Name your ad set based on the audience.
- Pick your audience – Who exactly do you want to target with this ad set? Combine demographics, interests, and behaviors.
- Set the budget and schedule – Daily budget and run times for this ad set. Starting with $5-10/day is reasonable.
- Design your ad creatives – Make eye-catching, relevant visuals and text tailored to that audience.
- Place helpful links – Send people to relevant landing pages or offers on your website.
- Launch the campaign! – Review campaign and start with the lowest budget that makes sense.
Test different ad variations, audiences, and strategies with small budgets first. Evaluate performance then optimize what’s working.
Choose the Right Facebook Campaign Objective
The campaign objective informs Facebook which actions you want the campaign to optimize for. Common objectives include:
- Traffic – Get more people to your website
- Engagement – Generate likes, comments, shares on Facebook
- Conversions – Maximize purchases or lead gen on your site
- Brand awareness – Broad reach to increase brand recognition
Most ecommerce brands will want “conversions” as their primary objective so the ads drive sales.
Target Your Ideal Audience on Facebook
Dialing in your target audience is crucial for success with Facebook ads. Ways to target include:
- Location – Target local or broad geographic areas
- Age and gender – Reach specific demographics
- Interests – People who like relevant topics, brands, activities
- Behaviors – Purchase habits, business types, mobile device usage
Test different audiences to see what resonates best and generates conversions. You can create “lookalike” audiences to find more people like those converting.
Set Your Bid Strategy and Budget
When creating ad sets, you’ll choose a bidding type and set a budget:
- Bid amount – Manual bid vs letting Facebook automatically bid for you
- Campaign or ad set budget – Set at the campaign level or for individual ad sets
- Budget optimization – Optimize for conversions or clicks within your budget
- Scheduling – Set campaigns to run continuously or within certain hours
Start with automatic bidding and an ad set-level budget of at least 0.5X your product price when testing. For ongoing ad sets, use campaign budget optimization.
Track and Optimize Performance
Once your campaigns are live, track key metrics in Facebook Ads Manager and Facebook Pixel:
- Cost per result – What’s your CPA, CPL, CPC? Is it acceptable?
- Conversions – Are you getting enough purchases, leads, or desired actions?
- Traffic metrics – Impressions, reach, frequency, relevance score
Based on performance, tweak your audiences, creatives, and/or offers over time. Kill underperforming ad sets quickly and build on what works.
Conclusion
Creating targeted, high-converting Facebook ad campaigns takes testing and optimization over time. Start small, analyze results, and continually improve.
Use this guide to get set up with the essentials. And let me know if you have any other Facebook advertising questions!