How to set up Facebook ads?

Facebook is one of the most popular platforms with more than a billion users every day. This factor is key when entrepreneurs consider a social network to launch advertisements.

Advertising on Facebook can become one of the main methods of promoting a brand on the Internet, so it is often included in the list of advertising platforms. However, before starting the launch of advertising campaigns, it is important to have an understanding of exactly how advertising works on Facebook, understand its types, correct settings and analysis of effectiveness, and know the basic rules of placement. It may seem too difficult, but actually creating and running your first ad in the ad cabinet is possible even with the text guide provided in this article.

Why does every business need Facebook advertising?

It is worthwhile to make and launch an ad in the advertising office because of the opportunity to reach a wide audience. That is, your advertisement will be seen by a huge number of people, some of whom will be interested in your product or service.

Also, if there is proper preparation and setting of targeted advertising on Facebook, it will be seen by a lot of people target audience, which will most likely take the target action: for example, subscribe to the page, follow a link or buy a product. The functionality of the advertising cabinet includes the ability to select certain users who meet the necessary parameters in terms of age, gender, wealth, interests, and more.

Another advantage is the ability to set an advertising budget, control costs and after testing get a cost per click of less than $1, thereby making Facebook advertising affordable.

Having access to Facebook Insights and Meta Pixel is another plus for marketers and business owners. With the help of these tools, it is easier to measure the effectiveness of launched campaigns in the advertising cabinet and optimize them.

Ways to create ads on Facebook

There are several ways to run an ad on a social network:

1. Through the “Promote post” button under the post
   
2. In the Facebook Ads Manager (FAM) account
   With the help of the Facebook Ads Manager advertising cabinet, you can launch high-quality advertising, setting it up to be very targeted at potential customers. For basic business needs, Ads Manager is sufficient.
   Setting up through this tool is suitable for you at any frequency of launching advertising campaigns, as well as if you are planning to set up advertising on your own for the first time. We will consider this tool in more detail below.
3. Running ads in Facebook Business Manager
   The Facebook Business Manager office is suitable for those who are already familiar with advertising settings, and if there is a need to organize the work of several specialists, that is, to delegate some or all processes.
   This Facebook tool also differs from the previous one in that it allows you to connect several payment options, collect data from several pixels, and run campaigns for different clients at the same time.

In order to correctly determine which method of advertising launch to choose, carefully analyze the features of the advertising campaign you plan to set up.

Facebook Ads Manager office: features and capabilities

With the help of this tool, it is possible to adjust the AC on Facebook and Instagram. SMM specialists or marketers can create and launch ads in the advertising cabinet for selected audiences and analyze the results obtained for the selected period and in real time in the Ads Manager cabinet.

Entrepreneurs receive from hired specialists or do their own analysis of advertising campaigns and redistribute, increase or decrease the budget for promotion. In this way, it is possible to optimize costs and more effectively achieve the goals of the AC.

Main features of Facebook Ads Manager

Everything you need to launch and run an effective advertising campaign is laid out in an intuitive way, so anyone can figure it out. Let’s see what actions are available in the FAM cabinet.

Overview of the functionality of the advertising cabinet

There are three tabs in the cabinet:

• Here we create new advertising campaigns and choose all the main metrics for them. We also set the parameters by which we will then evaluate the result.
• Ad sets. In each advertising campaign, you need to create ad groups, and it is in this tab that we work with them: add, edit or copy existing ones, as well as analyze performance.
• In the section there are directly ads that belong to a certain group.

It is important to remember that the changes you make in the first tab – campaigns – will affect all elements of the campaign selected for changes.

Let’s consider the important sections that are definitely worth tracking:

• Dates it is worth including because in the future it is useful for analytics to compare certain time intervals, and not just to see the results in real time.
• Columns with selectable metrics to track; the most popular are “Performance and clicks”, “Interaction”, “Impression”. The setting of metrics in the advertising cabinet depends on the needs of the business.
• Distribution allows you to choose the categories by which the results will be segmented, for example, time of posting, age and country of TA, location and platform for ads, other.
• Reports or “Advertising reporting” allow you to create and export reports in tabular format, view the performance of advertising materials or try out match patterns.

These are the main sections that are usually monitored when working with ads in the Ads Manager cabinet, but there are many more.

Types of advertising on Facebook

Today, there are 7 popular types of ads that you can create on Facebook. Of course, each type has its own characteristics and is used in certain cases.

Let’s consider each in more detail.

1. Advertisements with an image

Such advertising on Facebook is considered classic. A picture or photo with an added text description is familiar to every user, therefore it attracts attention, increasing the recognition of the brand and products. Image ads are allowed to run on Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger.

These types of ads are important to create if you sell visually appealing products. When high-quality photos from the photo shoot appear – we make bright posts and stories and get a wow effect from the launch of advertising.

Remember that according to the rules of advertising on Facebook, the text on the image can occupy no more than 20% of the entire area. Otherwise, the ads in the advertising cabinet will simply be blocked.

Be responsible for the selection of photos and text to avoid draining the budget and losing the attention of potential customers.

2. Advertising in video format

Video ads on Facebook are a good alternative to the first type. In addition, due to its dynamism, it attracts even more attention of users.

The video, the duration of which should be about 15 seconds, helps the company to show its product in detail and explain why the customer needs it, what its advantages are. High-quality voiceover, trending music, and special effects are additionally applied to the video.

Short advertising in video format is more effective, but to create it requires more time, effort, creative thinking and investment to create.

3. Advertising with a gallery or carousel

The basis of such advertising is the creation of a circular gallery consisting of photos or videos. The maximum number of visual content in the gallery is 10 pieces.

The advantage of this type of advertising is the ability to attach a separate link to each photo/video and talk about, for example, a series of products within one category on the site. The user can click on the link, immediately go to the product page and buy it. Such a mini-catalog greatly simplifies the buyer’s journey.

4. Advertising with Instant Experience

Not quite usual, but an interesting type of advertising, when clicking on an ad opens a full-screen ad. In this way, a person will be fully focused on the displayed advertisement for a short time and, if the product is already of interest to the user, the goal in the form of brand promotion or sales can be achieved faster. In this format, it is also relevant to tell stories about the company.

5. Advertising with a selection of goods

It can be said that this is a continuation or a branch of advertising from Instant Experience. The themed cover product selection acts as a guide from the Instant Experience layout to the products.

6. Advertising in Stories

Stories have been popular among Facebook and Instagram users for years. However, it is worth knowing your target audience perfectly and launching ads in this format if potential customers view stories more often than the feed with posts.

Importantly! We focus on visuals, because there is simply no room for writing selling texts in Stories.

The main requirement is to create a photo creative or video in a vertical format with an aspect ratio of 9:16. Most of all, short videos with a clear image and sound hold attention.

You can launch ads in stories on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger by creating one ad in the ad cabinet and choosing several places for display at once. To get more interaction (if this is the goal of the launch), we add interactive stickers, polls and other elements to stories.

7. Promotion in Messenger

Usually, Facebook Messenger is used for communication like any other messengers, for example, Viber or Telegram. But there is also an opportunity to launch advertising. It is displayed at the bottom of the screen under the chats and will certainly attract the attention of those who actively communicate with their friends on Facebook.

By clicking on such an ad, the user immediately gets into a chat with the company. Promotion in Messenger will be useful for small companies and will bring customers to those whose business is tied to a certain location.

Creating ads through Ads Manager: step-by-step instructions

First of all, you need to go to Ads Manager site, create an advertising account and add a company business page.

We find the “Create” button in the office, click it and see the following:

Next, step by step, we perform the actions suggested by the advertising office.

We choose entire companies

To do this correctly, we take into account the general strategy of business promotion and choose from the options offered by Facebook.

• recognition – allows showing advertising to those who are more likely to remember it; suitable for reaching TA, increasing brand awareness, stimulating video views and informing users about the location of the establishment;
• traffic – helps direct people to the site, application, Instagram profile or Facebook event; suitable for increasing link clicks, landing page views, Instagram profile visits, encouraging communication initiation on Messenger, Instagram or WhatsApp, encouraging potential customers to call your company;
• interaction – the goal is to get more messages, purchases via messages, video views, post interactions, page likes and event responses; suitable for stimulating the initiation of communication on Messenger, Instagram or WhatsApp, increasing video views, interactions with posts, conversions (i.e. content views, calls to the company and other targeted actions);
• lead – helps to get leads for a company or brand; suitable for finding people who are interested in a product and ready to leave their contact details in instant forms, Messenger or Instagram, increasing conversions (to encourage people to share their contact information, fill out a registration form, submit an application or perform another action on your site or app), stimulation of calls to the company;
• app promotion – to find people who will install the application and continue to use it; suitable for encouraging customers to install the app and encourage them to purchase or take other actions in your app;
• sales – for direct search of potential buyers of your goods or services; the goal is to increase conversions (adding products to the cart, direct purchases, signing up, etc.), encouraging potential customers to buy through the catalog, purchasing products through Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp, and encouraging calls to your company to purchase products.

Having analyzed the goals in detail, let’s move on.

For example, select the “Traffic” goal and see the following:

In the list, click on “manual setting”, write the name of the advertising campaign in the window, and if your topic is not in the special advertising categories and you are launching advertising for the first time, click “Next”.

But there are additional options on this account page – enable Advantage+ campaign budget and A/B testing. We’ll talk about Advantage+ below, and A/B testing is worth turning on if you already have some experience running ads.

Let’s go further and choose the place of the conversion event, the performance goal, the budget and schedule for displaying ads, the parameters of the target audience, and the places of placement. Additionally, you can enable the “Dynamic creative” feature, which is suitable for those new to creating ads.

Conversions

The conversion destination is where you will drive traffic. You can choose:

• website;
• application (if available);
• messages in Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp;
• to your Instagram profile;
• phone number to encourage people to call your business.

Performance goals are only available for the site and messaging apps (Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp). These include increased landing page views, clicks, reach, impressions and maximum conversions. We choose depending on the promotion strategy.

Advertising budget and schedule

Facebook provides great opportunities for budget allocation so that the advertiser does not spend money anywhere.

Pay attention! In the general settings, you need to immediately choose the currency with which you plan to pay with Facebook (hryvnias, dollars, or another). Once the advertisement is launched, it will no longer be possible to change it.

Choose the optimal costs that will be distributed over a certain period (costs per day or the entire period of AC). Also, determine the date and time of the start of the campaign and optimize other display parameters depending on the goal of the AC.

If you chose to pay for clicks, then you should take into account that the price depends on the price of the click you specified, the assessment of the relevance of the RK system and the frequency of user interaction with the advertisement. The rates are set manually or automatically, and the second option usually works better and is more economical.

Another interesting feature is ad scheduling, where you can choose when Facebook will show your ad, using either the viewer’s time zone or your ad account’s time zone. But there is a nuance – planning is available only when working with budgets for the entire term.

Parameters of the target audience

This is the same selection of users to whom advertising will be shown.

• The “Location” item is the geolocation of your potential customers. If you have an exclusively local business, choose a city or even a district where you can get a service or buy a product.
• We specify the minimum age of the audience and optionally the language that will be used to show ads to people using a language that is not common in the selected regions.
• In the “Advantage+ Audience” section, select the minimum and maximum age of the target audience, gender and go to the details, choosing demographic data, interests and behavioral factors. It is quite easy to choose them – just start entering the necessary data and the social network will prompt you with the available settings.

Setting all parameters of the target audience should be done according to the table prepared in advance with its description. After that, you can add personalized and lookalike audiences, which Facebook itself helps you create.

Importantly! When setting up targeting, there is a function of narrowing the audience. It should definitely be used for more targeted advertising and budget savings.

Places of accommodation

By default, Facebook recommends choosing Advantage+ placements to get the most out of your budget and show your ads to more people.

You can leave it as it is, but you have carefully prepared for creating an ad and you know exactly what you want to get from it, so click on “Manual placements” and configure.

We choose:

• display devices (mobile, computer or both);
• platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, Messenger);
• placements (Feeds, Stories and Video Reels, In-stream Ads for Videos and Reels, Search Results, Messages, Apps and Sites).

It is very convenient that Facebook clearly shows how the ad of each selected type will look and gives hints about the image format and video duration.

Consider that very often all existing options (devices, platforms, placements) are selected in the settings, so it is worth turning off unnecessary ones.

Facebook ad settings

After choosing the company’s identification methods, namely Facebook and Instagram pages, we proceed to the direct creation of an ad in the advertising cabinet.

We choose the source of advertising material, which can be either materials uploaded manually or media files from the catalog selected automatically.

Next is the format. To choose from:

• flexible, when Facebook will show ads in the format it predicts will bring the best results;
• one image or video (or a slideshow with several images);
• Carousel ads (when there are 2 or more scrollable images or videos);
• collection (creating a group of objects that open in full-screen mode on mobile devices).

We add prepared advertising materials: images (up to 10 pieces) or video, main text, title and description of the ad.

You need to create an interesting creative advertisement that will attract attention and encourage you to stop for a look – a bright non-standard picture, photo or video and the right text that sells. Otherwise, all the tuning efforts may be in vain.

The next step is to select the text on the button under the advertisement, that is, the call to action. For example, “Order”, “Contact us”, “More details”, etc. We add the destination – for example, the website address, and we get an ad ready for publication.

In the right part of the cabinet, we can see a preview of the created advertisement. We check whether everything turned out as planned and press the “Publish” button. After successful moderation, it will either be started immediately or at the time you choose in the settings.

Automatic optimization in Ads Manager

This is a very convenient function in the Facebook advertising cabinet, which simplifies the creation and management of campaigns. This optimization is called “Advantage+” and can be applied to campaign budget, target audience, ad placement. The point is that the allocation of the budget, selection of the audience and places of placement is carried out automatically by the system to achieve better results.

Setting up ads through Facebook Business Manager

We have dealt with Ads Manager, so let’s move on to creating ads using Business Manager on Facebook.

Let’s go to Business Manager page and create a business account. In the future, after all the settings, you will appoint specialists from this office and give them access to manage ads or pages.

After registration, we link the page on which you will launch advertising. This must be done in order to link the profile of the advertising cabinet and the business account on Facebook. After that, we add other specialists through the “Invite people” button and immediately provide the required level of access. The one who created the account has the most rights, he is the administrator.

Payment settings

To add payment methods in the account, click “Payment settings” and go to Ads Manager, where in the “Bills and payments” tab on the left, select “Payment methods” and add your payment method. It can be a debit or credit card VISA, MasterCard, AMEX, etc.

Data is added once, and the budget will be debited from the card automatically. You only need to edit something if the card expires or there are any payment problems.

How to make and run an ad

Next, we configure the ad itself and launch it. To do this, go to the “All settings” tab in the left column, and then find Ads Manager in the list, where we do all the actions described above in the step-by-step instructions.

Basic rules for advertising on Facebook

It often happens that not very experienced target specialists start creating advertising campaigns, work for a long time on campaigns, ad groups and all other settings. They launch it – and all advertising work stops. And all because the created AC simply did not pass Facebook moderation.

This happens because the social network has rules and certain restrictions, according to which you need to create ads in the advertising cabinet. There are many restrictions and you can familiarize yourself with all of them in detail at official page.

One of the most important things is to know that advertising is strictly prohibited:

• goods for adults (18+);
• alcohol;
• body parts and human biological fluids;
• devices that facilitate or encourage the transmission of digital content in an unauthorized manner or interfere with the functionality of electronic devices;
• purchase or sale of documents, currency and financial instruments;
• gambling;
• materials or substances dangerous to life and health;
• human trafficking, prostitution, escort or intimate services in any form;
• food additives;
• vacancies (advertisements in trade products must not advertise vacancies);
• land on the territory of ecological reserves, animals or animal body parts;
• medical goods and goods for health;
• news, jokes or other content that does not offer any goods for sale;
• prescription goods, drugs and accessories for their use;
• recalled products;
• services;
• goods with sexual positioning;
• stolen goods;
• subscriptions and digital goods;
• tobacco products and accessories for their use;
• cosmetic products that were used;
• auto parts and accessories;
• weapons, ammunition and explosives.

Also, Facebook will not allow advertising that violates community standards, has signs of discrimination, content that violates the intellectual property rights of any third party (including copyright or trademark), contains products and offers that are misleading, calls for violence or incite hatred.

Restricted content includes event passes or tickets, gift cards and vouchers, and services for adopting homeless animals.

These are general rules and some of the list is allowed to be advertised depending on the display location and local laws.

How to create an effective Facebook ad

There are practical tips that should be taken into account when creating an ad in the advertising cabinet.

1. The optimal format for the video is 9:16, that is, the shooting should be carried out in a vertical position. For photos, it can be 9:16 or 4:5. This aspect ratio allows the advertisement to occupy almost the entire smartphone screen, and the user to comfortably view the content.
2. The text on the image should occupy a maximum of 20% of the entire area, but it is better to either reduce its amount as much as possible, or not add it at all.
3. It is better to entrust the creation of the text to a specialist in order to get a short but understandable text that was clear and fully described the product.
4. If you have professional photos of your products, use the “carousel” to give the potential customer the best possible idea of ​​the product.
5. If you choose between static and dynamic advertising, choose the second one. Video advertising or a picture with moving elements will always win, because it attracts more attention.
6. Connect the call-to-action button offered by the Facebook advertising cabinet. There are quite a lot of options, so you will definitely be able to choose.
7. Analyze your competitors’ ads with the Ad Library to make your offer stand out from the crowd.

Advertising price

In fact, it is impossible to say exactly how much Facebook advertising costs.

In order to control the budget and adjust the prices, you need to monitor the following factors:

• show time – the total amount you will have to pay depends on the month, day of the week and, if you choose this option in the settings, even the hours of the show;
• bidding strategy – you indicate in the bid the price you are willing to pay for certain actions with advertising; there is an opportunity to choose the price per click, impressions, reaction or other;
• place of display of advertising – the price of display varies depending on the device on which it will be displayed – smartphones or computers;
• target audience – the more popular your product and the greater the competition for TA, the higher the price will be;
• sphere of activity – for different spheres – different average price; for example, for the insurance sector, a normal cost of $2-3 per target action, and for household items and clothing – about $0.5.

In addition, the professionalism of the hired target specialist plays a big role. The more experience and knowledge he has, the lower the price of advertising he will be able to make with the help of competent settings.

To summarize

Facebook advertising is an effective tool for promoting many products. It is convenient and effective, because it allows you to make point adjustments that bring many new customers. And also bring back customers who have forgotten about you with the help of retargeting.

The functionality of the advertising cabinet includes the ability to automatically collect TAs and create similar and personalized audiences, which expands the audience for displaying ads. The comfort of work is additionally ensured by the ability to see the effectiveness of campaigns and quickly edit if indicators that do not give the desired results appear.

Running an ad through Facebook is definitely worth a try. But remember: if you want to get the most from advertising and don’t have time to deal with creation and analytics in detail, it’s better to entrust the management of campaigns experienced targetologists.

Vitalyi Kotov

Head of PPC department

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Olha Tyshchenko

Editor

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