Facebook Ads Guide | Learn How To Create Successful Facebook Ads

In this Facebook Ads Guide, I will explain everything you need to know about Facebook ads. This Facebook ads guide is perfect for anyone who wants to use Facebook ads to increase revenue, awareness, leads, or any other type of conversion for their business. Even if you have just started using Facebook ads, this guide will be helpful for you.

Are you looking to start using Facebook Ads for your business? If you are just starting as a beginner it may look a bit difficult. With a large audience size of more than 2.6 billion monthly active users around the world. You will be able to target anyone in the world which matches your target audience criteria.

At the end of this Facebook ads guide you will be able to run successful Facebook ads and promote your business/product more effectively. Let’s get started now.

Why Facebook Ads Work?

When you choose a social media platform like Facebook to advertise your business. The question which comes to your mind is: Will this platform work for me? The answer to this question lies in the fact that whether your target audience is on that platform or not. Facebook ads can work for any type of business, you can easily drive traffic to your blog using Facebook ads. Check my how to start a blog and make money online guide to learn about blogging.

Now, Facebook has more than 2.5 Billion monthly active users which are a huge audience size. This audience size is good but it is of no use if you don’t know how to use Facebook’s extensive targeting options. You can target people based on their location, gender, age, behaviors, like events, interests, and multiple other options. You can even upload your email list and Facebook will map it to their audience pool for you to target. 

You can target this audience based on your criteria which can be awareness, lead generation, sales, etc using the extensive ad creative options which help you to deliver the right message among your defined audience pool. This makes Facebook ads successful as conversions increase if you target the right people with the right set of ads. 

How do Facebook Ads Work?

In this part of my Facebook ads guide you will learn how Facebook ads work? Let us look into this now.

Facebook ads work in a simple way: You pay for showing ads for your products or services to your target audience on Facebook. Let us look into the Facebook ads working process in detail.

Facebook Ad Auction

Facebook ads follow an auction process. This auction runs every time when your ad is eligible to be shown to your target audience. When you create an ad on Facebook and choose your target audience. Your ads are shown on the basis of you winning the auction.

Suppose two advertisers are targeting the same person with a board and small criteria (all men who like scuba diving in Chicago and all people who like scuba diving in Chicago. The same person (in this case, a male who likes scuba diving and lives in Chicago) could come under the target audience defined by both advertisers. 

Now, your ads will enter into an auction. How will Facebook determine who wins the auction? To win the ad auction Facebook uses a combination of 3 major factors:

A. Bid: This is the amount you are willing to pay to Facebook for showing your ad to your target audience with your desired outcome

B. Estimated action rates: This is an estimate of whether or not a person converts/engages from a particular ad

C. Ad quality: This is measured from multiple factors like audience feedback (people viewing or hiding the ad), assessments of low-quality attributes in the ads like the amount of text in your ad image, sensationalized language, and engagement bait.

So, the more relevant and high quality your ads have the more are chances of you winning the ad auction. If you wind the ad auction your ads will be displayed based on your desired criteria.

Facebook Ads Overview

Before we learn how to run a Facebook Ad. We should know what are elements make a Facebook Ad. In this part of this Facebook ads guide, we will learn the structure of a Facebook ad. Facebook ads are broken down into three elements:

1. Campaigns: This contains all your assets.
2. Ad Sets: This contains your ads and the defined audience. If you are targeting a separate audience with different characteristics you will need a separate ad set for each.
3. Ads: These are the ads with your creatives to be shown to your target audience. Each ad set can hold a variety of ads that vary in copy, images, color, etc.

Types of Facebook Ads

Now let us look at what are the types of Facebook ads which we can use for advertising.

Image ads

These image ads are easy to create. You can boost an existing post with an image or just create an ad using a single image. You should keep in mind is the image should be relevant and ad copy should be interesting for viewers to click.

Text and objective specs for Facebook Image ads

• Headline: 25 characters
• Link description: 30 characters
• Body text: 125 characters
• Campaign objectives: All except video views

Below is an example of Image ad:

Video ads

Video ads are helpful if you want to show off your product, brand, or service using a video. These ads appear on Instagram, Facebook, Audience Network, and Messenger. 

Text and objective specs for Facebook Video ads

• Headline: 25 characters
• Link description: 30 characters
• Body text: 125 characters
• Campaign objectives: All except catalog sales

You can use video ads to:

• Tell your brand story
• Video ads of less than 15 seconds can capture audience attention and boost engagement
• Convey a clear, simple message such as visiting a website or buying a product

Below is an example of Video ad:

Carousel Ads

The carousel ads format lets you show 2 or more images/videos in a single ad. People who view your ad can scroll through the carousel cards by swiping on tablets or mobile phones. This type of ad can be used to showcase service offerings, real estate, events, and more.

Text and objective specs for Facebook Carousel ads

• Headline: 25 characters
• Link description: 20 characters
• Body text: 125 characters
• Campaign objectives: All except video views and engagement

Below is an example of Carousel ad:

Instant Experience Ads

Instant Experience Ads is a fullscreen experience that opens when anyone clicks on your ads on mobile device. These ads can be used to grab attention using the full effect of high-quality content. You can Create an Instant Experience to visually highlight your brand, products, or services.

Text and objective specs for Facebook Instant Experience Ads

• Text: Blocks of text up to 500 words each.
• Campaign objectives: All except lead generation, messages, and catalog sales

Below is an example of Instant Experience Ad:

Collection Ads

Collection Ads has an Instant Experience that makes it easier for people to discover, purchase, and browse your product and services from their mobile phone in a visual and immersive way. he created ad will feature 4 products under a hero image or video that opens into a full-screen Instant Experience when someone interacts with your ad. These ads are ideal for retail and travel brands. They can use these ads to show a video or image alongside your brand service or product.

Text and objective specs for Facebook Collection Ads

• Headline: 25 characters
• Link description: n/a
• Body text: 90 characters
• Campaign objectives: conversions, store traffic, traffic, catalog sales

Below is an example of Collection Ad:

How to create Facebook Ads?

So in this part of this Facebook Ads Guide, we will now learn how to create Facebook ads. You should have a Facebook business page to advertise on Facebook. If you don’t have it you need to create it first. Let us look into how to create a Facebook page for your brand. If you already have a Facebook page created for your business you can skip this section of this Facebook ads Guide.

We will divide this Facebook Ads Guide into two parts starting from Facebook page creation and then Facebook Ad campaign creation.

Facebook Ads Guide Part 1: How to Create a Facebook Business Page

Step 1: Sign up

In this step you need to visit: facebook.com/pages/create using your personal or your business admin provided Facebook account. You will see something like below:

Select the type of page you want to create: For personal branding, you can choose ‘Community or Public Figure’. If you are a business/brand you can choose the other option. For the purpose of this Facebook Guide, I assume you want to create a ‘Community or Public Figure’ page. However, the process of page creation is the same on both options.

On selecting this option we will see something like below. Here I have filled some basic details of my page like Page name (as per choice), and category (For category, type a word or two that describes your page type and Facebook will suggest some options). I am a blogger so I have chosen ‘Personal Blog’ as my category.

Step 2. Add Pictures

In the next steps, you will be asked to select a page and cover photo. I have placed my own photo in page pictures. Cover photo I have skipped as below:

You will see your Facebook page created as below:

Step 3: Create your username

Now click on the left side option in the above image which says: ‘Create Page @Username’. You can set your page username. It’s easier for people to find your Page in search when it has a unique username. Pages with usernames can also create custom URLs that let people quickly visit and message them. I have chosen a username = @achaltomardigital

Now you will see that your username is set. Also you can see that you get s URL which can be shared so that people can access your create page on Facebook:

Step 4: Add your business details

adding your business details is an essential step in this process of Facebook page creation. So you should do this as soon as possible. To add your business details you just need to click on: Top right corner button in your page interface which says “Edit Page Info”. This will lead you to the below interface. This is self-explanatory as you just need to add basic details like Page Description, Phone number, Add a few more Categories (this is optional), Location, website, email, hours of operation which you can fill as per your business.

Step 5. Choose settings for your Facebook Page

Now, if you click on the “settings’ button on your page top right position. You will see a settings panel like below. Here you can do multiple things like publish/unpublish’ the page created. I suggest you choose the option under ‘Visitor Posts”: Review posts by other people before they are published to the Page. This way you can review what other posts on your page and prevent unwanted content on your page.

That’s it, your Facebook page is ready to be used in your Facebook ads. Let us look how to use your Facebook page to run the Facebook ads.

Facebook Ads Guide Part 2: How to Create Facebook Ad Campaign

Now in this part of my Facebook Ads Guide, I will show you how to create a Facebook Ad campaign. I am using my already created Facebook page: AchalTomarBlog to show you how to create Facebook Ads Campaigns.

Step 1. Choose your objective

Log into Facebook and Go to Facebook Ads Manager and select the Campaigns tab, then click Create to get started with a new Facebook ad campaign.

Next step Facebook will ask you to choose your marketing objective as you can see below:

Facebook offers 11 marketing objectives based on what you want your Facebook ad to achieve. Here’s is a brief description of that each objective means:

• Brand awareness: Increase awareness for your brand by reaching people who are more likely to be interested in it
• Reach: Show your ad to the maximum number of people
• Traffic: Drive traffic to a destination such as a website, app or Messenger conversation
• Engagement: Reach more post engagements, event responses, Page likes, or offer claims
• App installs: Get more people to install your app
• Video views: Get more people to watch your videos
• Lead generation: Get more sales leads, such as email addresses, from people interested in your business or brand
• Messages: Encourage people to send messages to your business on Facebook Messenger.
• Conversions: Get people to take a specific action on your website (like subscribe to your list or buy your product) on your website, app, or in Messenger.
• Catalog sales: Create ads that automatically show items from your catalog based on your target audience.
• Store traffic: Drive visits to your brick-and-mortar stores by showing ads to people who are nearby.

For this post I will use the Engagement option as my campaign objective.

Step 2. Give name to your Campaign

Now, when you click on the ‘Engagement’ option you can scroll down and choose whether to set up an A/B test on turn on budget optimization. These options are useful when you have multiple ad sets, but for now, we will keep the default setting of turned off.

For the Engagement objective, we can choose to focus on post engagement, page likes, or event responses. For this Facebook Guide we will choose Page Likes and name campaign as ‘AchalTomar Page Likes Campaign’ as you can see below:

Step 3. Set up your Facebook ad account

If you already have a Facebook Ad account. You will see this button that says “Click that to move on to the next step”. However, if you are new to Facebook advertising you will see a button to “Set Up Ad Account”

Click on it and you will be asked to enter some basic information to create your Facebook ad account. Enter your country, time zone, and click continue.

Step 4: Choose your target audience

Now, on the next step when we click on Continue. We need to provide a name for our Ad Set. I have chosen the name as ‘AchalTomar Page Likes Ad Set’. Also, you need to select the Facebook page you have created already.

Scroll down to start building the target audience for your Facebook ads. Choosing your target audience is the most important part of your Facebook Ads Campaign. You can start by selecting the location, age, gender, and language. As you make these selections the indicator on the right-hand side of your screen will change its size.

You can also see an estimated number of Page likes. These estimates will give an idea of how many Page like can be achieved if you choose this audience set.

Points to remember when choosing your Facebook Ads Audience:

• Audience size depends on the country you are targeting. For instance, audience size in the US will be much larger than that in Australia due to the difference in their market sizes. So, you must choose one Ad Set to target a particular country if you are targeting multiple countries in your Facebook Ads campaign
• Choose the Age group which matches your target audience. Don’t be tempted to target a wide age group. It is better to narrow down your audience age group to a size that matters most for your business. For example, for an e-commerce company selling ‘Scuba Diving Equipments’. It is better to target a younger audience (age: 25-50) who are more interested in adventure sports also having the buying power, rather than targeting the whole 18-65+ age group
• Use detailed targeting and connections, as I have explained below to narrow down your Facebook audience further

Scroll down, further and you can see two option of detailed targeting and connections:

Detailed targeting: Use detailed targeting to include or exclude people based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. You can narrow down your audience here.

Connections: You can target or exclude people who have an existing connection with your Facebook Page, event, or app. For example, if you want to reach a new audience you would select “Exclude people who like your Page.” If you want to promote an offer to your existing audience. You can select “People who like your Page” to reach people who already like your brand page.

For example, as I am promoting my Facebook page: AchalTomarBlog I will choose my target audience as below:

• Age – 25-55 (I found many people who read my blog on withing this age group)
• Location – India
• Detailed targeting: I have included people who have interests in Blog, digital marketing, online marketing, search engine optimization. (This I have chosen because my blog is all about digital marketing, blogging and all of of these topics which are related to online marketing and search engine optimization)
• Connections: I have excluded people who already like my page to prevent ads from showing to them again

Pro Tip on Choosing Your Facebook Audience – Use Facebook Audience Insights Tool

If you are not sure about what type of Audience you should target for your Facebook Ads. There is an awesome tool that will help you decide on your target audience called Facebook Audience Insights. You can access this tool by going to https://www.facebook.com/ads/audience-insights

So, once you are in this tool, select “everyone on Facebook” to target Facebook inbuilt audience. You can see what audience you can target. For this let’s take an example of my own blog business. Suppose, I want to generate sales for one of my SEO course e-book in the United States. I know these people should be interested in “Digital Marketing”. Let’s choose my audience on Facebook.

Now, I will run this on https://www.facebook.com/ads/audience-insights and see what I get from Facebook.

This is the first tab in Facebook Audience Insights called “Demographic tab”. The gray bars are the averages for all Facebook users in that demographic and the blue bars represent your chosen audience. As you can see in the image above (I have only selected interest “Digital Marketing”. Facebook will show the most likely demographics for this interest. I can see most of my demographic is:

• Age – 25-54
• Education Level – College Graduates
• Relationship Status – Single and Married

Next up is job titles, quite a few are in sales, administrative services, or management all a good fit for digital marketing. However, we can choose to narrow down our audience or select all job titles as we are bothered about people interested in digital marketing who can learn SEO.

Now, I will check the ‘Activity’ tab to see what devices this audience is most likely to use and how active they are on Facebook. Finally, we can see that this audience is much more active on Facebook than the average person and they tend to have both a desktop/laptop and a mobile phone, as we’d expect. However, mobile usage is more than a desktop.

You can dig on other tabs as well like Page Likes, Location. I will not be using them as my course is a digital one. So I have got an idea of my target audience which is below:

• Age: 25-54
• Education: College Graduates
• Job Titles: IT, Sales, Management (As my Course is SEO)
• Interests: Digital Marketing
• Relationship Status – Single and Married
• Device – Both Desktop and Mobile (Focus should be more on mobile)

Step 5. Choose your Facebook ad placements

Now you need to choose where your ads will appear. For newbies I recommend to use Automatic Placements. This will allow Facebook to automatically show your ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network when they are likely to show results.

Once you get some experience of running Facebook ads. You can choose to show your ads on specific locations. Your options for Facebook ad placements are below:

• Device type: Mobile, desktop, or both.
• Platform: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or Audience Network
• Placements: Feeds, messages, Stories, in-stream (for videos), in-article, and apps and sites (external to Facebook).
• Specific mobile devices and operating systems: Feature phones, iOS, Android, or all devices.

Step 6. Set your Facebook ad budget and schedule

This is the time to decide how much money you want to spend on your Facebook ad campaign. You have the option to choose a daily or lifetime budget. You can pause the ads anytime you want, schedule your ads on future data, or make it live right away.

You can also set cost control (By setting a cost control, you’re telling Facebook which results to spend budget on). In our case, we are running the Facebook ad for increasing page likes so I will set the cost control as shown in the image below.

As, you can see I my daily budget is Rs.500 (my billing currency is INR, you will see as per your preferred currency at the time of account creation). I have chosen to set Cost Control as Rs. 10 for each page like so Facebook will aim to get the most Page likes and for the average cost to be no more than ₹10.00 using the cost cap bid strategy.

Now as you scroll down, you can choose on ‘When you get Charged’. For my campaign, I have chosen ‘Impression’ (An impression is counted as the number of times an instance of an ad is on screen for the first time). You can choose ‘Page Like’ as per this condition of Facebook (Ad accounts owned by businesses new to Facebook Products can choose this option to pay for ads after several weeks of following our policies.)

Now, after making these selections click continue.

Step 7. Create your Facebook ad

Now, let’s actually create the Facebook Ad after all this hard work. For my Facebook ad this is about increasing my page likes. So I will create an ad like the one below:

Now, this ad has my picture, a piece of text to what you can expect when you like this page. This ad shows clearly that I “Help you learn Digital Marketing and Blogging” so this a clear message. I don’t recommend being too fancy while you are creating your Facebook ads. The magic lies in being simple with a clear message.

Now, to create the above ad. I named it as “AchalTomar Page Likes Ad” as you can see below:

This ad is of format which is ‘Single Image or Video’. If you scroll down you will get the option to add text, photo, and more details to your ad like below. As you can see in the image below you will also see ‘Best Practices for images’ at the top right corner. This will show you the recommended image type, resolution, aspect ratio needed for your ads image. Make sure you are using the image as per the guidelines listed here.

This is it now you just need to confirm the changes as below and your Facebook ad will be up and running after you add a payment method ‘debit/credit card’ and after an approval. Once you ads are running you will get reports of clicks, page likes, conversions as per the ad objective set by you.

Tips for Creating Successful Facebook Ads

Narrow down your Audience Targeting

While it may be tempting to target a large audience in your Facebook ads. It is better to refine you’re targeting a specific audience. You can target to people who are from age 25-45 that live in the U.S. and are interested in travel to advertise your travel business rather than targeting all people in U.S

Write Different Facebook Ads Sets for Different Products

Suppose you are a clothing retailer. You sell men’s and women’s apparel such as activewear, shoes, t-shirts, baby products, etc. It is better, in this case, to separate your ad sets for different types of products you are targeting.

Use only one Call-to-Action

Successful Facebook ads should have a clear goal. Your objective can be lead generation, sell a product, brand awareness. You ad should have a clear call-to-action. It can be something like Learn More, Shop Now, Download, Get Offer etc. This gives an idea on customers where to click o what action to take.

Use the Facebook Pixel

The Facebook Pixel is a small piece of code that you can put on your website. This helps you to track conversions, Remarket to people who viewed a particular product on your site/visited your site within a timeframe, and much more.

Facebook pixel works in this way: When a visitor visits your websites and takes an action like buying/viewing a product. This pixel gets triggered and reports this action. This way you be able to target this visitor again using the Facebook ads. For this tutorial, I have not used this pixel, because this ad is a page like an ad which does not focus on my website visits. But you must use this on your website while you are doing Facebook marketing. This way to will has Remarketing data available for your ads.

Facebook Ads Guide Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve completed this Facebook Ads guide. Now you are ready to create your Facebook Ads campaign and begin promoting your product/service on Facebook.

You can promote any type of blog/website on Facebook. For example, you can increase traffic your food blog and promote E-books, fitness products, health diet products on Facebook using it. The magic lies in selecting the correct audience for Facebook ads. Also, you need to test a lot. Don’t depend on guesswork and test and see it something you want to change actually works.

Frequently Asked Questions

I hope this article has helped you in learning about Facebook Ads. Now, it’s time you follow my Facebook Ads Guide and create your first successful Facebook ad campaign.