How To Create Your First Facebook Ad Campaign In The Facebook Ads Manager
- Matthew K.
- Aug 2, 2022
- 11 min read
Looking to start your first Facebook ad campaign and scale your business?
In this post, we will cover everything you need to start your Facebook advertising campaign, as well as provide a step-by-step guide on launching your first ad campaign.
Why Run Facebook Ads?
It's 2022 isn't everyone on Tik Tok?
According to a recent study by Buffer, Facebook still sees the highest Monthly Average Users (MAUs). With Instagram in 4th.
Coincidently, by using the ads manager you can also choose to show ads on WhatsApp. This means that you can reach 3 out of the 4 top social media platforms by running Facebook ads.
Your target audience is on Facebook and if you wish to scale, you need to be in front of them.
How To Run Ads On Facebook: Facebook Business Manager
The Facebook Business Manager is a centralized hub to manage all your Facebook assets.
Essential assets to launch your first Facebook ad include:
Facebook Business Page
Facebook Ad Account
Facebook Ads Manager
Instagram Account
Facebook pixel
Although this list may seem overwhelming each step is relatively quick to set up and luckily for you I've created guides for each step. So if you get stuck feel free to jump to the appropriate guide and get help.
Facebook Business Page
To run Facebook ads you need to have a business page that can be associated with your Facebook ads.
If you don't know what a business page is a need help understanding that as well as how to create one feel free to use our guide on creating your business page.
For our purposes, it's helpful to know that a Facebook business page is different than a Facebook page. A Facebook page does not allow you to run ads for your business or allow for the type of growth your business needs.
Instagram Account
Most businesses will already have an Instagram account.
If you don't, you need an account, so that ads you run on Instagram can be associated with your account.
Facebook Ad Account
Setting up your Facebook ad account allows Facebook to connect your Facebook spend to your credit card.
In addition, all Facebook ads you create will be associated with your account. If you ever have problems, Facebook reps will be able to identify the ads with your ad account and help you.
Facebook Pixel
The Facebook pixel is a small piece of code that you place on your website. The pixel tracks the activity of users on your site and tells the ads manager when conversion events occur.
A conversion event could be a visitor to your site, an add to cart, or a purchase.
Facebook Ads Manager
The ads manager is a tool included with the business manager and is the location where you will be creating your Facebook ads.
Connect Everything In The Business Manager
Now that you have all your Facebook assets created we need to connect this all to the Business manager.
Connect everything in the Facebook business settings.
Add yourself under people by inviting yourself. Then share access to the big four: Facebook page, Instagram account, Facebook pixel, and ad account.
For more help setting up your Business manager check out our guide.
How To Launch Your First Ad Campaign
Great you have connected everything to your centralized hub which is the business manager.
The next step is to dive into your Facebook ads manager and start running Facebook ads.
Structure Of A Facebook Ad Campaign
A Facebook campaign will be structured like the below.
Facebook Campaign - This is where we are going to set our objective. There are six ad objectives we can choose from. Don't worry we will cover each of these.
For now, what we need to know is that your ad campaigns tell Facebook's algorithm how to gauge success.
Facebook Ad Set - Your Ad Set is where we set the target audience we are going to create ads for, we can also set the ad set ad spend, and determine the placement for our ads in the ad set.
Want to target yoga-loving food fanatics in California within a particular age range. This is the place to do this.
Facebook Ad Level - This is where you decide on the creative to be used in your ads. As well as the Facebook ad copy we think will help the Facebook ad convert.
Getting Started With First Facebook Ad: Create Your Campaign Objective
To create your first campaign navigate to the Facebook ads manager. You can do that from all tools or go directly.
Once there select the green, "Create" button.
From here you can choose your campaign objective.
An important note is that whichever objective you choose Facebook is going to optimize your Facebook ad towards that campaign objective...
If you are looking for sales don't launch an awareness objective campaign as Facebook will judge success by the number of people who see your ad not, by the number of purchases.
Awareness Objective
Starting with the awareness objective, as mentioned above, we can use this objective to have our Facebook ads reach more people and improve the chance of being memorable. This objective might help with video ad campaigns, and brand awareness in general.
Traffic Objective
With the Traffic objective, you are telling Facebook to optimize your Facebook ads for traffic to the site. If driving more traffic to your site is important this is the objective for you.
Engagement Objective
The Engagement objective might seem similar to the Traffic objective, it is quite different.
With Engagement, we are telling Facebook to optimize for people taking some kind of action with our ad. This could be anything from liking our page to clicking on a link or even just viewing a video.
Engagement is quite different than traffic to the site, with traffic we can retarget these people on other ad platforms like Google Adwords.
Leads Objective
The lead objective will optimize your Facebook ads for lead collection.
This is helpful if you are looking to collect emails, SMS, book meetings, or sign people up for a giveaway.
App Installs Objective
If you are looking to get more people to install your app, then you will want to use the App Installs objective. Facebook will optimize your ad to get as many installs as possible.
Sales Objective
Most people will start with this objective because it has the highest quality traffic. Facebook will optimize your targeted ads to show them to Facebook users who are most likely to buy.
4 Step Process For Creating Your Target Audience
Now that you have set up your campaign objective the next step is to create the target audience for your Facebook ad.
To get there select the "New Sales ad set" tab within the Facebook ads manager.
Decide On Conversion Location & Event
The first step is to set up your conversion.
With the location, we are telling Facebook where to expect our conversions to come from.
This conversion event was confusing to me at first as we had just set up our campaign objective why do I need to set up a conversion location and event?
With the conversion event, we can choose the quality and intent of our audience.
As you can tell below we have several events we can choose from.
Higher quality events will be closer to purchase. While lower quality traffic will be close to the view content conversion event.
So why not just choose purchase? It has higher quality traffic...
Most people are running Facebook ads to these people using the purchase conversion event.
This makes higher quality traffic like the purchase event expensive.
This is why we choose the conversion event, ad costs may be higher with higher quality traffic.
If it is and we are not seeing the results we want, we may want to choose a conversion event that is higher up the funnel.
This means lower quality traffic.
But a better chance to optimize our ad set and lower cost in the long run.
Note: Remember our campaign structure? Each campaign can have multiple ad sets. This means each ad set can have a different conversion event.
To start, I recommend that each ad set within your campaign have the same conversion location and event associated with it.
Budget and Schedule
Next, you will be asked to set your budget and schedule.
You can either choose a lifetime or a daily budget.
Daily Budget - This is great when you have Facebook ads that are evergreen, you wish to scale these Facebook ads to maximize results, and the budget can increase or decrease depending on results.
Lifetime budget - This is great for Facebook ads that are running for a limited time like a promo and have a set end date and budget.
Audience Selection
In the Audience step, you will decide who your Facebook ads will be targeting.
You can add in a custom audience or a saved audience.
Custom audiences are derived from a set of parameters that you choose in the audience tab of the business manager.
For example, purchasers in the last 30 days or all email subscribers. These custom audiences can be created from the Facebook pixel or uploaded via CSV to Facebook. Once created you can search for existing audiences.
If you would like to learn more about custom audiences feel free to read our guide on creating one.
You may have heard of lookalike audiences. Lookalike audiences are based on a custom audience and can be created in the same audience tab.
For example, you could have a 2% Lookalike Audience of your purchasers in the last 30 days or all of your email subscribers that "looks like" your audience.
Saved audiences are created in the audience tab as well.
The process for creating those is similar to the audience step you are completing now.
Saved audiences are typically used when you have a target audience you would like to use repeatedly.
For your first few campaigns, you can skip saved audiences.
Exclude: Do you have a custom audience that you would like to exclude from seeing your Facebook ad?
Exclude allows you to remove those audiences from seeing your ad.
For example, exclude all purchasers from seeing your first purchase discount ad.
To exclude an audience click the exclude button.
Then search your existing audience to find all purchasers and exclude them from seeing ads in this ad set.
The last few steps are relatively easy.
Choose your location, age, and gender.
Layer in some detailed targeting, you can choose to add additional targets like travelers or frequent travelers to get Facebook to show your Facebook ads to a particular group of people.
Placements: Where Does My Facebook Ad Show Up
With Placements, you can determine where your Facebook ad should show up.
When starting your first Facebook advertising campaign you will choose automatic placements over manual placements.
This allows Facebook to help you determine which ad placement and platform will perform best for you.
Maybe you want your ads to only show up on certain platforms or placements. You can do this by going with manual placements.
By default, all platforms are checked along with placements.
However, if you wanted to exclude the audience network from receiving any ad spend you could uncheck that platform. When done all placements associated with that platform are removed.
Once you have the ad placements selected that you would like to use. You can hover over the ad placement of your choice to see the ad specs.
For example, when we hover over the Facebook Feed we can see the Facebook ad specs are 1:1 for photo ads and 4:5 for video ads.
You can also use Facebook's ads guide for more details on sizing.
Creating Facebook Ads Within Facebook's Ads Manager
The final step before you can go live with your Facebook ads is to add in your Facebook ad image/video and copy.
Within your Facebook ads manager, you are going to go to "New Sales ad"
From here you can add in your Facebook ad creative and ad copy.
Identity Associate Ad With Facebook Page And Instagram Account
Every time you create a new ad even if you are duplicating it make sure that you have the correct Facebook page and Instagram account.
If you have multiple pages or Instagram accounts connected to your ads manager you don't want to connect the wrong accounts.
Ad Setup: Choosing Your Ad Format
In ad setup, you can choose from the various ad formats available for your Facebook ad.
Under the create ad drop-down you can create an ad from scratch. This means uploading your image or video ad and writing copy.
You can also choose to use an existing post that was posted on your Instagram or Facebook page. This is a great option if you are just getting started and are starting to see success on your organic posts.
For your creative source, you can manually upload your image or video ads or if you have connected your catalogue to the ads manager you can choose that option.
Catalogue ads are great for DABA ads where Facebook shows your products to Facebook users who are in-market to buy your product.
Typically, these ads are products with a white background, and the images used are pulled from your eCom store.
If you would like to use video ads or have more choice outside of the product on white background manual upload is for you.
You have three options to choose from for ad format.
"Single image or video" is easy to understand. You upload the video ad you created or image and that's it.
With Carousel ads, you can upload two or more images to form your carousel ad.
Collection ads are a group of products that you create in your catalogue.
These open into a full-screen experience within the Facebook or Instagram account. Users never leave Facebook with these custom collection ads.
Adding In Creative
Here is the fun part. Adding in those images and video ads.
For your single image and video ad. You can add in your images or Facebook video ads under add "add media".
Facebook offers a create video function. This tool allows you to create Facebook ads for video within the ads manager.
Upload a few different images and Facebook will create Slideshow ads.
These slideshow ads will be seen as video ads by Facebook. This is helpful if you are on a budget and can't shoot video ads, but still would like movement in your Facebook ad.
Add in your copy for primary description, headline, and description.
Lastly add in your Call to action from the drop down.
If you went with a carousel ad. You will need to enter a headline, description (optional, but you should do it), and link for each card.
A card represents each image in the carousel ad.
This means that each card needs its own link, image, and copy.
Once you've added in as many cards as you want, you can add in your primary text and CTA.
If you went with a collection ad add in your primary text and headline. Then choose a template for your collection ad.
Facebook offers several pre-built templates to choose from.
Choose a template then if you have your catalogue connected you can fill out the below information to create your collection ads.
Tracking With UTM's
The last step is to connect your Facebook pixel to this ad image. Select web events as your ad is directing people to an online conversion event.
If you have an app choose that.
You may also see offline events here. Use offline events if you tracking sales that happen in your store. There is some extra setup that will need to be done for that.
Finally, add in your UTM parameters. If need help with this you can use the Google dev tools to create your UTM's
Frequently Asked Questions: Facebook Advertising Strategy
If you are just starting your first Facebook ad campaign here are the answers to some common questions I hear about launching Facebook ads.
If I Hire A Freelancer Or Agency Does The Cost They Charge Include The Ad Spend
Generally, the cost of a freelancer or agency team does not include your spending for Facebook ads. You will need a separate budget for that.
How Much Should I Spend On My First Paid Advertising Campaign On Facebook
The best case scenario is 3-5k per month for 3 months. This allows time for testing and getting statistically significant results.
Facebook's algorithm needs 50 conversion events within a week's time frame to optimize your ad set.
If you are trying to get high-quality traffic with the conversion event, "purchase' you may find that you cannot get 50 conversion events with a smaller budget and need to move up the funnel to a different conversion event.
If 3-5 k is out of your budget then 1k a month for 3 months is an option.
Keep in mind that you won't see your ad set(s) optimizing for your conversion event.
This means a more critical analysis of your overall business numbers to gauge the success of your ads.
...did traffic increase, were sales higher, etc.
I'm Just Starting With My Facebook Advertising What Structure Should I Use
I recommend starting with 3-4 campaigns. DABA, cold traffic, remarketing, and DPA's. If these 3-4 campaigns seem scary, then the best Facebook ads campaign to start is a remarketing campaign.
With this Facebook advertising strategy we are not looking to get new customers but to convert returning visitors into buyers.
To do this you need an audience of all visitors. We learned how to create this earlier in the post.
As a refresher, go to your audience tab, click the blue create audience button, create a custom audience, check the first option website, then use the settings below, and "create audience".
Within your targeting section for your ad set use this audience.
Go Forth And Launch Your First Facebook Ad Campaign
You now have everything you need to go and run your first Facebook advertising campaign in Facebook's ads manager.
If you still need help. Feel free to reach out to me and I would love to help you get started.
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