Here’s How to Create an Ad on Facebook With Step-by-step Instructions

First things first, before you can create an ad on Facebook, you’ll want to create a Facebook Ads Manager account (if you have a business page).

If you’re not sure if you have an account, try to log into Facebook Ads Manager.

Step 1: Choose a Campaign Objective

Facebook gives you options to select from the following goals.

If you’re unsure how to choose the right Facebook ad objective for your goals, check out Amy Bishop’s article.

For the purposes of this article, I selected traffic as my goal.

Step 2: Name Your Campaign

After you select your campaign objective, you want to name your campaign along with the ad set and ad.

Step 3: Complete Campaign Details

After you name your campaign, Facebook will give you more campaign details to complete.

Here’s a quick breakdown of each:

Special ad categories: If your ad relates to credit, employment, house, social issues, elections, or politics, you must select this option. Due to restraints of certain countries, there are different steps Facebook must follow to be legally compliant.

Campaign spending limit: Similar to budget optimization, campaign spending limit stops delivering your ad once that limit is reached. Facebook will send you a notification to let you know the limit has been reached so you’ll have the option to keep it running if you’d like.

A/B tests: Facebook allows ad managers to test creatives, audience, and placement to uncover the best performing campaign. If you select this option, Facebook will automatically make this the A of the A/B test.

Campaign budget optimization: This allows you to set a budget at a campaign level. In the past, Facebook only allowed users to set this at an ad set level so it caused a lot of complications when allocating budgets to different audiences. I’d recommend using this if you’re starting a campaign in a learning phase, or easing your campaign management, or if you’re targeting to get more conversions or a lower cost-perad. If you’re targeting a super niche audience, you may want to avoid this.

Step 4: Choose Budget, Schedule, Audience, and Delivery

This is my favorite step of creating Facebook ads. It’s where the research and the data begin to come together.

First, you can choose where you want to drive traffic.

Then, you can toggle dynamic creative on if you want Facebook to automatically generate variations depending on the audience most likely to engage.

You’ll want to pair this with automatic placements that I’ll cover below.

These are my new favorite ad sets from Facebook. Wordstream saw 60% more conversions after using dynamic creative ads in just 30 days.

You can also use this to rotate in an offer style ad feature. This allows you to send automatic reminders, discount codes, and more.

Swish used this to promote a 50% off discount at 7-Eleven stores and saw an increase of 66% of offline sales.

Next, you can choose your budget and schedule.

Followed by audience creation.

Until you get down to the placements, optimization, and delivery at the bottom.

One element you’ll want to remember to check is how you get charged for these Facebook ads.

Facebook is tricky and hides this all the way at the bottom.

Step 5: Choose Ad Format

You’re on the final stretch! On the last page of the Facebook ad set-up, you have the option to select your format of how you’d like to structure your ad for users.

This is where ad type knowledge from above comes in handy.

Step 6: Upload Creatives

Now, you can upload your media, add ad copy, and a landing page URL.

Step 7: Select Languages

If you’re a global company or a local company targeting other dialects, you will want to add your own transcripts to your ads.

Step 8: Set Up Tracking and URL Parameters

This last step is the most important step. You want to always track your data and select a URL parameter to understand how your ads are converting and what’s motivating users to click.

Facebook Advertising Is Just Getting Started

Due to the growing lawsuits aimed at Facebook ads and Apple’s stance on security, Facebook is going to look for more ways to generate revenue.

Keep your eyes peeled for Facebook Group ads. Facebook has been silently testing these since late 2019. And, their $10 million Super Bowl ad was dedicated to Facebook Groups. I smell a new ad type baking in the oven.