How to Create a Facebook Ad

Are you advertising on Facebook yet? Facebook advertising is a great way to market to your audience. Already have a Facebook business page? Create some ads to draw people to your page that you've worked hard on to create.  

Why Advertise on Facebook

Facebook is continually updating its advertising platform to make sure it’s giving advertisers everything they need to create a successful campaign.

Unlike other pay-per-click platforms, Facebook allows you to target people by interests as well as demographics. 

Audience

There's 500 million Facebook users and half of them log in every day. Imagine the all the possibilities!

The distinguishing feature of Facebook advertising is the ability to target people by interests. You can target people who like running and expand that by targeting people who like Runner's World. 

Tools

Facebook recently revamped their analytics dashboard, which is a great improvement in my book. You can now easily monitor whom your ad is reaching, how much of your target audience is seeing your ad, and see it's effectiveness over time. 

The budget management tools are also relatively easy to use. Facebook gives you a suggested bid within to bid per ad to help it remain competitive. Fall below this and you may see a sharp dip in impressions. 

The new dashboard also allows you to see all of your campaigns' daily budgets in one place and how much each has spent that day and for all time. 

How to Create a Facebook Ad

You can create a Facebook in just three steps. Granted, each step has a bit of detail to it, so here is how to set up your Facebook ad: 

1. Design Your Ad

First, start by selecting where you want to take people once they've clicked on your ad. I'll be describing how to set up an ad when it's directed to an external URL. Select this option if you'd like to take people to your website. Place the destination URL of your webpage into the URL box. If you'd like to track your ads in analytics, append your tracking tags here.  

Next, come up with an exciting title that fits into the 25-character limit. The body has a 135-character limit, in which you can say a lot, surprisingly. Finally, upload your image. 

2. Targeting

Facebook is interest-based targeting at its core, but you can also narrow your audience by location and connections. 

Location

Select the locations you want to target. Note that the U.S. is selected by default, but you can add more countries. A whopping 70% of Facebook users are located outside the U.S.!

Demographics 

The first part of the demographic targeting is fairly basic. Select the age and sex of the audience you'd like to target. Advanced demographics come later. 

Likes and Interests

Next to the ad image, the likes and interests targeting is the most important part of creating your ad. You don't want too many people to see it and not click, as this will affect your click through rates, and ultimately what you pay per click. 

There's two types of interest targeting- precise and topic. Precise interests target things people have expressed an interest in via their profiles and activities on Facebook. You can get really creative with the precise targeting option.

Facebook very recently added the option of broad category targeting. Your potential reach will be much greater than if you were to use precise targeting. You can only get as specific as saying you want to target people who've expressed an interest in cooking. You can't say to target those who like Julia Childs, for instance. We have yet to see results from this new option, but I'm assuming you'll have to be diligent in monitoring your click through rates and adjusting your ad accordingly. 

Connections

In the connections box you can target anyone, or select advanced connection targeting. Select “anyone” to target anyone on Facebook that matches the criteria you’ve input in the previous steps.  Advanced connection targeting can only be used if you are an administrator of a page.

Advanced Demographics

The advanced demographics give you the opportunity to target people on their birthdays, the type of relationship their in, education, and workplace. The image below shows the default settings. 

So how do you know how many people your ad will reach? Each time you enter a targeting criteria, the estimated reach box on the right of your screen will change numbers.

3. Campaigns, Pricing, Scheduling

After your ad is created, you’ll ad it to a campaign or create a new one. You can choose to have your ad start today or you can choose your own start and end date.

Pricing

You can pay either per thousand impressions or per click. If you’re aiming to build brand awareness, select CPM (cost per thousand impressions). Select CPC if you want to drive traffic to your site. Facebook provides a suggested bid that tells you how much o bid to ensure your ad remains competitive. Bid at least within this range to ensure impressions.

 Launching Your Facebook Ad

Once you’ve completed all of these steps, hit “review” and double check that everything is correct. Then click “place order” and send your ad into the approval process. Facebook reviews each ad to make sure it’s inline with their policies before sending it live. Your ad will usually be live within a couple hours, depending on their queue. And you're set!

Want to learn more on how to create a Facebook ad? Check out our YouTube video and see the slide deck on SlideShare 

Have you followed all of these steps but still need help? We offer Facebook advertising set up and management services to help you create a successful ad campaign. Contact us today for more information.