How to Create Facebook Ads Step-by-Step [An Easy Tutorial]

Want To Learn How To Create Facebook Ads? Here’s How!

We drove 596 purchases for this client who sells healthier versions of cakes and mini muffins.

We drove 370 booked massages through Facebook ads alone for this massage client.

We drove 92 purchases and over 24,000 video views for this sightseeing pedal tour service, and the list goes on.

We manage millions in advertising spend on Facebook for our clients every single day.

And the clients we just mentioned are a tiny peek into the wide range of industries and businesses that are successful with Facebook ads. 

Facebook ad spend reached $31.43 billion in 2020.

This means despite everything that happened in 2020, and all the negative attention Facebook received…

…businesses were still investing in Facebook ads to grow their business. 

In some cases, relying on Facebook ads to grow their business.

And it must’ve paid off, because “64% of social media marketers plan on increasing their Facebook ad activities next year.”

We know it has paid off for our clients. 

And we think part of the reason is because Facebook has over 2.89 billion monthly active users.

Their user base is so vast, both in numbers and demographics, that just about every business can find a portion of their target audience on the platform. 

And the only way to really reach them there is with Facebook ads.

So today, we’re going to show you how to create Facebook ads.

And if you stay until the end of the post, we’re sharing 3 of the most common mistakes we see new advertisers make. 

Keep reading as we’re going to walk you through how to create Facebook ads step by step.

However, if you’re completely new to Facebook ads, we think it’d be good to first look at a big-picture overview of how Facebook works as a whole. 

Overview Of How Facebook Works

1. Business Suite

This is where you can “manage all of your connected accounts across Facebook and Instagram in one place.”

So think of this as the main umbrella that encompasses everything else we’re going to talk about today, including your:

• Facebook page,
• ad account,

…and more.

If you haven’t created a business suite yet, go to Facebook for Business, click the blue “Create account” button, then follow the prompts from there.

Then, within your business suite, you have several elements. The first thing is your Facebook page. 

If you haven’t created your Facebook page yet, you’ll need to do that in order to create Facebook ads and run them.

Read our post on Facebook business page to learn every single thing you need to learn about them including how to set one up.

2. Ads Manager

This is where we will spend the most time today. 

Now, whether you knew it or not, every person who has a Facebook account automatically has access to the Ads Manager. 

Just look along the sidebar, and click See More if necessary, and click Ads Manager.

Now, if you’ve never used it before, your screen will probably have prompts to help you set up your ad account.

You’ll just need to make sure once you’ve got it created that it’s added to your newly created Business Suite by clicking:

1. the accounts dropdown,
2. then ad accounts, 
3. and lastly, the blue ad button.

From there, you can select your ad account. Once you’ve got your Business Suite, Facebook business page, and Ads Manager all set up and squared away…

…with the payment methods you want to use for your ads confirmed and everything, the last thing you’ll need to do is set up your Facebook Pixel.

3. Facebook Pixel

Facebook Pixel is a piece of code from Facebook that’s specific to your Ads Manager account that you install on your website.

Installing one will allow you to track activity better (like seeing how many website sales come from Facebook ads, for example).

It’s important to note the Facebook Pixel’s tracking capabilities have become a little limited since the iOS 14 update rolled out.

So, we made another post around Facebook Conversion API tracking that could be a good workaround for you.

But once you’ve got all of that setup, you’ll now be ready to create Facebook ads and start running them.

Breakdown Of Facebook Ads Manager

You should think of your Ads Manager in 3 levels. This includes the:

1. Campaign level – This is where you will select your overall goal and objective.
2. Ad set level – This is where you set the schedule, budget, and targeting.
3. Ad level – This is where you set up the copy and creatives, aka the ads themselves. 

Now that you know these, it’s time to create Facebook ads.

Steps On How To Create Facebook Ads

Step1: On the campaign screen here, click the green Create button, and then choose the campaign objective that makes the most sense for you. 

If you’re totally new to these, we would advise hovering your mouse over the information icon to learn more about what each campaign is centered around…

…and, you can click into some of them as well. 

For instance, when you click into the Engagement campaign and scroll down, you can see you have the option to optimize for 3 different engagement types:

• post engagement,
• page likes, and
• event responses. 

It’s important to understand that Facebook designs these campaigns to be goal-oriented.

So if you select the post engagement campaign…

…Facebook is going to show the ad to people within your target audience who are most likely to engage with your post. 

We see a lot of new Facebook advertisers pick campaigns like Post Engagement or Lead Generation since they don’t require a Facebook pixel to utilize.

But, they’re left frustrated because what they really wanted were website sales. And that’s not what those campaigns are optimized for. 

So really, take the time to pick your campaign objective wisely based on your goals. 

Step 2: From there, scroll down and you can name your campaign, ad set, and ad.

Now even though this is optional, we would advise you to name everything in a way that will help you keep your Ads Manager organized. 

You want to be able to look at things at a glance and know what they are, without having to click into them. 

And this will probably make more sense as we go along.

But for example, we would name your campaign by:

• goal (like Conversion Campaign),
• ad set,
• target audience name (like Females 21-55 w Yoga Interests), or
• a description that will be obvious to you.

Step 3: Then click Continue, and you’ll be brought to the campaign screen. 

If your business or ad falls within any of Facebook’s special ad categories, you will need to specify so here.

Step 4: You can also toggle on A/B split testing from this screen if you want Facebook to help conduct that.

Or, you can conduct A/B split testing manually which we will talk about a little later. 

But you can also toggle on campaign budget optimization here, which will be helpful if you are doing the Facebook-assisted A/B split testing.

And that’s because it will automatically distribute your budget across the better-performing ad sets. 

You can set your budget to be daily or lifetime, and if it’s set to lifetime, you can set up ad scheduling.

Step 5: Once you’ve got everything on this screen the way you want it, you can click Next to head over to the ad set level. 

You’ll want to make sure you’ve got the Facebook Pixel that is installed on your website selected here.

And then, you can set up the budget and schedule on this screen (if you didn’t on the previous screen). 

Again, you can set it to a daily or lifetime budget.

And if you want to run your ads on a schedule, you can select the hours and days you want your ads delivered. 

This can be beneficial for brick and mortar stores, like a restaurant running a “Call us now” ad.

You wouldn’t want that ad to be delivered when you’re restaurant is closed.

Step 6: The next step is where you set your targeting.

Now we have a whole post on Facebook ads targeting that goes through every single targeting option that Facebook provides. 

This includes their demographics, behaviors, and interests as well as their custom targeting options, like Lookalike audiences and retargeting.

So if you’re pretty new to Facebook ads or are a little lost on who to target, we highly suggest you go read that post next. 

But essentially, you can use all of Facebook’s targeting options to create a new audience here.

Or if you’ve saved an audience before, you can select that from the saved list to target again.

Step 7: The next section is Placements.

Facebook will always have automatic placements selected, but we suggest clicking manual placements and looking through them all yourself. 

There are 4 main platforms here:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Audience Network
• Messenger

It’s also important to note that not all placements are compatible with all campaigns.

And if you scroll down and hover your mouse over the different placements, you can get an idea of how they will appear to users scrolling.

It also gives you the ratio sizes of what the ad creatives would need to be for that placement. 

Placements is one of those things that you can A/B split test over time to see which placements generate the most results for you at the lowest cost. 

Facebook is going to automatically suggest you use any and all of them…

…but we have found in general that feed placements tend to perform the best if you want to start there.

Step 8: So once you’ve got your ad set squared away with:

• your target audience,
• budget and schedule you want, and
• your preferred placements…

…you can click next to the ad level.

On this screen, you’ll first want to make sure you’ve got the correct Facebook page selected.

And Instagram account as well, if you chose Instagram as one of your placements. 

Step 9: Then under ad setup, you can choose if you want to

• create Facebook ads from scratch here,
• choose from an existing post to put advertising dollars behind, or
• use Facebook’s Creative Hub to make a pretty basic slideshow video type of ad. 

From there, you can choose if you want to run dynamic ads, a single image or video, a carousel, or a collection. 

If you own an eCommerce store, we would strongly suggest looking into the dynamic, carousel, and collection ad options.

Step 10: Once you make your selection, you can upload the media you want to utilize.

Or you can link the catalogue of products you want to pull from, if you chose one of the dynamic options. 

This is also where you add your primary text and headline.

And as you add all of these things, it will preview how your ad will look in the different placements. 

So this is a good checkpoint to ensure your images aren’t cut off, the wrong size in a certain placement, or that your caption is too long. 

Step 11: From there, you can add your website URL or the landing page you’re wanting to direct traffic to.

Now, one thing to note here (and about the ad level in general) is that this screen may look a little different depending on the campaign you’ve chosen.

For example, you can see there are options for different call extensions on our screen.

But in the instance of a conversion campaign where we’re trying to get sales on our website, we don’t want to send people to a Facebook event page.

So just use some discretion and best judgment when looking through all the little options on each screen…

…and know that you don’t have to utilize every single one of them.

Step 12: Once you’ve got everything set up the way you want, you can hit the green Publish button!

That will send your entire campaign into a review.

Facebook will need to approve your ad before it can start truly running, which usually takes a few hours to 1 day. 

Now let’s say you want to create more ads to run under that campaign, or more ad sets to run under that campaign…

…this is how you’ll manually A/B split test (like we talked about earlier).

Go back to the campaign screen, and click on the campaign.

Then on the ad set screen, click the green Create button if you want to create more ad sets under this campaign. 

You’ll do this if you’re wanting to test out multiple audiences.

Or, you can click on to the ad level, then click the green Create button. This will allow you to create more ads within the same campaign and ad set.

Testing out multiple ad sets and audiences is what will allow you to drive results at the lowest cost.

And that is because instead of just putting all of your resources into one audience and one ad (hoping for the best)…

…you’re casting a wider net to see which of these multiple audiences receives your message best, and which ad message do they receive best.

So those are the basic steps on how to create Facebook ads!

If you want to see the full walkthrough guide, then watch the video at the top of this post.

And if you want to master social media advertising (Facebook ads included), then check out our new social media ads webinar today.

3 Common Mistakes That You Should Avoid When You Create Facebook Ads

Mistake #1: They make ads about their business instead of their audience.

If you’re going to stop someone mid-scroll, then your ad needs to address their needs, not how great your company is.

If you’ve seen a handful of our posts on our blog, you’ve seen us preach about knowing your audience’s goals and pain points.

And the reason is because it’s marketing 101.

You need to know how your product or service is connected to their G&Ps, and that needs to be translated into your advertisement.

Mistake #2: They publish the ads and either change them too much too often or never at all.

Facebook goes through what’s called a learning phase, which:

“is the period when the delivery system still has a lot to learn about an ad set.

During the learning phase, the delivery system is exploring the best way to deliver your ad set –

actively trying different audiences, placements, and more – so performance has not yet stabilized.

The learning phase occurs when you create a new ad set or make a significant edit to an existing ad or ad set.

Ad sets exit the learning phase as soon as their performance stabilizes, which is typically after an ad set receives around 50 optimization events within a 7-day period.”

So basically, if you keep making changes because you’re not seeing the results you want in week 1…

…not only do you probably need to reevaluate your expectations.

But, you’re also making it harder for Facebook’s machine learning to deliver the ad effectively.

On the flip side of that, there are people who publish the campaign and then never check on it again.

While you don’t need to make a million changes a minute, especially when it’s still in the learning phase…

…you will need to make changes over time, as the ads and audiences that perform the best will likely fluctuate over time.

So in short, find the balance to tend to your campaign appropriately as time goes on.

Mistake #3: They treat Facebook advertising as a separate entity from the rest of their marketing strategies.

You need to view all of your marketing efforts as a piece of a larger marketing funnel.

More often than not, if you’re totally new to Facebook ads, your audience on there is going to be more top-of-funnel.

This means they’re going to be in the awareness and engagement stages.

Unless you’re targeting a warmer audience like a retargeting audience of people who are already familiar with your business and know who you are.

But in our experience, people who see the most success with their Facebook ads are people who are using Facebook ads to generate leads…

…which then automatically filter into their email marketing campaign, for example.

Or, people who have several sets of Facebook ads segmented for cold audiences, warm audiences, and hot audiences.

This means they have different ads for people who have never heard of their brand before…

…than the ads they serve to their Instagram followers and website traffic.

You’re not likely to see a lot of success if you just put out 1 or 2 ads to 1 audience without thinking of where they’re at in their purchasing process.

Or, how they fit in the bigger picture of your marketing funnel.

So take some time to think that through when you create Facebook ads.

If you need more help with your Facebook ads, then check out our Facebook advertising services today.

Or you could also head over to our social media advertising services page to see more of our social media ads solutions. See you there!

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