A guide to Facebook Ads: How to build an Ad Campaign

What are Facebook Ads?

Facebook Ads are paid posts created by Facebook Business account users to promote their products or services to targeted users. Facebook ads may appear in different sections across the app, examples are:

• In the feeds section
• In messenger
• In the stories
• A carousel or catalogue post
• Within Instagram app

Facebook ads have different features from normal posts so that users can be able to tell them apart. Normally, ads usually have a “Sponsored” tag and calls to action buttons or links like “Shop now”.‍

How much do Facebook ads costs?

Facebook has a system whereby businesses or users advertise by first setting a budget for each ad. Facebook will then bid on each ad in an attempt to spend within the budget and time set to get the best results, this is called an auction system. 

The budget a user or business sets does not necessarily amount to the final bill to be paid, Facebook will only charge according to the performance of the ad. This means the final bill could be less than the budget amount. Facebook will never go beyond the budget set. 

When setting a budget, one has two options. Facebook allows users to either set a  daily budget whereby they will choose to spend an average amount everyday or a  lifetime budget whereby the user chooses to spend an average amount over the entire lifetime of their ad campaign. 

‍How to build a Facebook Ads campaign

Are you planning to launch your first ad campaign? Here are 7 easy steps to get you started. As mentioned earlier, one of the requirements to creating an ad campaign on Facebook is to have a Facebook business page. If you are not familiar,  here are easy steps to create one . 

Facebook ads are created on Ads manager . This is an all-in-one tool for creating, managing and tracking ad campaigns on either your desktop or mobile device. 

Without further ado, here is the 7 steps process to creating Facebook ads:

‍

1. Log in and choose an objective

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

‍

‍

Choose a campaign from the following options, one that aligns fully to your goals. 

‍

‍

It is good to note that for Conversion objectives, users will pay per actions taken but as for Consideration or Awareness objectives, users will pay per impressions received.

After clicking any objective, the ads manager will give options to specify more as you go. 

‍

2. Give your Campaign a name

Name your Facebook ad campaign and indicate whether your ad fits into any special categories. 

‍

‍

3. Set Your budget and timings 

Below, you will name your ad set and choose which Page to promote.

Next, decide how much money you want to spend on your Facebook ad campaign by either choosing a daily or lifetime budget as explained earlier. Then, set the start and end dates if you want to schedule your ad in the future or choose to make it live right away.

4. Choose your target audience 

When building your target audience carefully consider their location, gender and age. Ads manager also has an option to add custom audiences, these can be people who have shown a great amount of interest in your products or services before. 

5. Choose your Facebook Ads placement 

Scroll down to choose where your ads will appear.  The simplest choice is to use Advantage+ Placements option. This option will automatically place your ads across Facebook and other affiliated apps like Messenger and Instagram.

Once you have more experience, you may wish to select Manual Placements. By choosing this option, you get complete control over where your Facebook ads appear. The more placements you select, the more opportunities you’ll have to reach your target audience.

6. Set Brand safety and cost controls

This option excludes any type of inappropriate content that may appear within your ad. 

7. Add in details of your ads

In this last section, you get to choose from the ads formats presented. This is dependent on the objectives you had chosen earlier. In this section, you are also required to add in images and a description. Use the preview tool to make sure everything is correctly put before hitting the publish button. 

And there you have it! 7 easy steps to building a Facebook ads campaign. After running your campaign, the work to gain leads for your business will have just begun. 

How do you manage leads from a marketing campaign? How do you turn your leads into paying clients or subscribers? Visit the Hello Duty blog page to read more about the next step : The  Lead Management Process .