Social Media Advertising: How to Create Facebook Ads

Growing your Facebook community organically isn’t as easy as it used to be. With as few as 16% of your followers seeing your post in their timelines (and declining), it has become imperative to create Facebook ads to build your base.

To the newbie, the first stab at creating Facebook ads can be intimidating, if not perplexing. But here’s an easy-to-follow guide to create Facebook ads for the first time.

Create Facebook Ads – and Grow Your Audience!

 

If you aren’t already, log into your personal Facebook account (you can’t run Facebook ads when using Facebook as  your business page).

Now, go to this address:  https://www.facebook.com/advertising/. Click on the green “Create an Ad” button.

From here you can create your Facebook ad.

Facebook will make you create an ad before you can set up the billing options. There are two basic types of ads that you can start  with: an ad that leads to your Facebook page or one that leads to your website.

Here, determining your primary objective is key. Do you want to get more page likes? Then set up an ad that leads to your Facebook page. Are you looking for clicks and conversions? Then create an ad that leads to a product or service on your website. We’re going to follow the example of a Facebook ad leading to a business page for more likes.

Once you choose “Page Likes” you will be prompted to choose a page to grow. The pages that you have admin rights for will be shown. Click the page you want to run ads for.

Your screen should now look similar to the screenshot below. You  have the option to upload up to six images. The recommended  size for “right column” ads is 100 pixels wide by 72 pixels tall, and for “news feed” ads it’s 600 pixels wide by 225 pixels tall. A news feed ad will show up in people’s timeline while a right column ad will show up on the right hand side on a person’s Facebook screen. You have the option to choose between the two, or create both with the same ad copy and imagery.

To attract your audiences, create eye-catching headlines and text for your ad. Ad text is limited to 25 characters for the headline and 90 characters for the body text. If you’re advertising a Page, app or event, the headline will automatically fill with the name of the page that you’re advertising, but take the time to create text that wows!

Scrolling to the bottom of the screen, you will see options to choose your targets. You can target just the right people by location, age, gender and specific interests.

Pro Tip: Do your best on the targets, but remember, you can change them at anytime! If you aren’t getting results in a couple days, simply change your targets. Let the data guide you! 

Highlighted below is where you determine the budget of your ad campaign. You have the option of running a campaign that is budgeted per day or as a lifetime ad (about a month). Once you select your preference,  double check the price. I can’t stress that enough, as Facebook will insert a recommended budget that will change after you make your selection.

Next, choose your campaign end date.  There are many ways to optimize campaign pricing. In our example below, our ad bid will be automatically optimized by Facebook.

After you fill out the credit card information, you will land at your Ad Manager account and you will see that your ad is in the Facebook approval phase as shown below. This process normally takes no more than a couple of hours, if not much less (Facebook wants that money!).

If you don’t like your ad at this point, you can delete or edit it at any time! The image below shows you how to delete the ad.

Side note: To get back to this page later, just click the “Manage Ads” link under the wrench widget on your Facebook homepage.

Now that you have your account set up and you’re in your “Manage Ads” dashboard, you have the ability to play with your settings. You can change these as you see fit. Just click “Settings” from the left sidebar.

You’ll see the section on the bottom that says “Permissions.” This is the area where you can add a user to your account so that they can help create and manage your Facebook ads. This is great for collaboration! By clicking the “Add a User” button, you will be prompted to add either a Facebook friend or an email address. When you add them by email address, you must add the email address that is associated with their Facebook account.

 

I hope this guide helps you create Facebook ads without frustration! If you run into any hiccups note them in the comments, or please send me an email at jessica@lightspandigital.com.