Solved: how to advertise on Facebook

Facebook is the social media network most used by small companies to reach their audiences. And it’s no surprise, as the platform has 2.93 billion monthly active users, who spend an average of 33 minutes on Facebook each visit. 

We know advertising on Facebook can seem a bit overwhelming to start with, so we’ve set out all the steps you need to take below, from making a business page on Facebook, to creating an ad account, and uploading your first advert. (You’ll also find plenty of tips to make advertising as easy and effective as possible.) 

How do ads work on Facebook?

Facebook ads are paid-for posts that you can use to catch the attention of prospective customers. These ads can be designed to target specific types of people (demographics), locations (geo-targeting), interests, income, political affiliations, and more.

These adverts appear throughout Facebook in user feeds and across different features like Marketplace and Messenger, and have a ‘sponsored’ label to clearly mark them as adverts. You can customise them to include CTA buttons and links, and other content that attracts user attention. 

Before you spend money on advertising, do check out our ultimate guide for creating a customer journey map to help you better understand your customers, drive engagement, and increase brand loyalty. 

How to make a business page on Facebook

If you’re going to advertise on Facebook, it’s worth creating a business page first. This is where your potential customers will land and is the public face of your company and brand. Follow these four easy steps to get your page up, running, and ready for growth:

1. Log into your personal Facebook account, as you will be your business page’s administrator. Once you’ve signed in, create a new page here and fill in all the relevant information about your brand in the left-hand panel.  
2. Next, add in your cover images and a profile photo to create a fresh and attractive space for people to visit. You can find out what sizes are best for social media images by reading our blog post. Once you’ve uploaded the images, Facebook lets you adjust them until you’re happy.
3. Create a username and get connected. Your username on Facebook should be your company name as this will become the URL of your business on the site. You can also use this step to connect your business to WhatsApp – follow the on-screen instructions to create a direct link between your Facebook page and your customers.
4. Add in all your business details so people can find you, get to know you, and understand more about what you do. Lots of information builds trust, so don’t leave this section blank. Go to ‘Set your page up for success’, click on ‘Provide info and preferences’, and then fill everything in. Also, use this opportunity to add your CTA or action button to give people an extra nudge to contact you.

How to create an ad account on Facebook

Now it’s time to dig into the basic steps of advertising on the platform. And the first one is to create your own ad account. Do this by going to Facebook Ads Manager by clicking here or by clicking on the icon in the top left-hand corner of your page. You automatically get an account with Facebook Ads Manager if you’ve set up a business page.

Note: Make sure you’re using your business page and not your personal page or you may end up advertising yourself…

Once you’ve selected Facebook Ads Manager, go to the ad account setup page, confirm your information, set up your payment method, and save your changes.

You’re ready to go.

How to advertise on Facebook (the quick read)

1. Click ‘Create’ in Facebook Ads Manager
2. Choose a campaign objective: awareness, consideration or conversion
3. Name your campaign
4. Set your budget 
5. Customise your audience 
6. Choose your ad placement, schedule and timings
7. Choose automatic or manual bidding
8. Create your ad

How to make a Facebook ad (the sure-fire way to do it right)

Want to go over each step in a bit more detail? The following steps will take you through creating a Facebook ad with ease:

1. Navigate to Facebook Ads Manager from your business page and then select ‘Create’
2. Choose a campaign objective. This can be:
   1. Awareness – this delivers good visibility for people on a small budget.
   2. Consideration – choose this option to build brand foundations and encourage people to find out more.
   3. Conversion – this encourages people to purchase your products and close the sales funnel
3. Name your campaign
4. Set your budget – this is the most you are prepared to spend and is broken down into Daily (how much you will spend in total each day) and Lifetime (the total spend in the ad’s lifetime)
5. Customise your audience using our smart tips on customer journeys and by ensuring you’re focusing on the right people
6. Choose your ad placement – will this go on Messenger, Instagram, or Facebook? Automatic placements are a good place to start if you’re new at this as the platform does all the optimising for you at the lowest price point
7. Choose your schedule and determine if you want your ad running constantly or only at specific times
8. Decide if you’re prepared to bid for your objectives as this will change how your ad is displayed and how much it costs. Facebook Ads Manager can set optimal bids for you, but manual bidding gives you more control
9. Choose if you would like standard delivery or accelerated delivery for your ads
10. Create your ad

Now you’ve done the hard part, it’s time to have fun with different types of Facebook ads.

Types of Facebook ads

There are several different types of Facebook ad: 

Image – this is the simplest type of ad that lets you use an image to promote your products and services. You can use illustrations, photographs, design – whatever takes your digital fancy. And, if you have an existing post that you love, you can simply boost it and turn it into an ad in just a click or three. 

Video – you can use a video to promote your brand and your products. This is a great choice if you have a product that shines in a demo, or services that need a more visual explanation. You can create videos up to 240 minutes long (yes, four-hour videos are allowed), but it’s probably better to stick to short and engaging videos instead.

Carousel – this lets you display up to 10 images or a video in one ad with each image getting its own link. It’s a very captivating way of getting users involved in your products and telling an engaging story about your business.

Slideshow – This combines all your images into a slideshow that’s easy to make and fun to watch. It’s a good choice if you’ve got lots of images but limited experience making ads or videos.

Messenger – you can use the Messenger app as a way of directly connecting with your target market.

Instant – these ads use a carousel format to display images and allow full customer interaction. You can use several images and videos to create a really powerful ad, and Facebook templates make it easy to get started.

Collection – these are mobile shopping experiences that let users browse your products and purchase directly from the ad. 

Lead – these are designed for mobile devices so people can send you their contact info quickly and easily while on the move. They’re perfect for signing people up, getting them connected to your newsletters, and building a community.

Stories – this is a mix of everything blended into one easy format that’s optimised for mobile and quickly captures audience attention. These ads are growing in popularity as they offer you a lot more space to be creative and have fun with special effects and filters.

How to use Facebook Ads Manager

Facebook Ads Manager is designed to make your life so much easier. It’s smart with clever tools that turn ad creation into an experience – one that will generate leads and hopefully grow your business.

Facebook Ads Manager includes the following sections:

• Summary – this shows you how much you’ve spent, the performance of your ads, and other key metrics that help you refine your ads as you grow more accustomed to the platform. You can even turn on auto-generated recommendations to boost your posts 
• All Ads – this allows you to go into each advert you’re running to assess its metrics and spend. It’s a useful tool if you’ve got more than one advert running at once. You can pause or delete ads in this section
• Audiences – this shows you the audiences you’ve selected and allows you to make changes based on ad performance
• Automated Ads – you will only see this section if you’ve created automated ads as it will show you your results. This is a recommended starting point if you want to get started with Facebook ads without getting too technical

How much do Facebook ads cost?

Facebook ads are smart, so they’re targeted to appear in front of users based on your selection of demographics, income, and other profile information. Once you’ve created an ad, you then set a budget for it and bid for each click or for each set of a thousand impressions that your ad receives.

It’s a good idea to start with a low budget amount of around $5 a day until you get the hang of it, or until you see how well people are responding to your ads. The highest bids don’t automatically get priority anymore. So even if you’re not spending as much as the big guns, you’ll still get audience attention.

The auction is based on the four factors of ad rank, advertiser bid, estimated action rates, and ad relevance and quality.

How to add managers and run Facebook ads for clients

Want to run ads for someone else? To use Facebook Ads Manager, you need to be an admin, an editor, or an advertiser. To do this, you need to ask the page owner to give you the relevant permission. 

Facebook offers very clear guidelines on how to manage your Facebook roles so you can share the burden and, when your business grows, allow other people to take on your ads.

Next steps

Now, you can explore Facebook ads and the opportunities they offer your business knowing exactly what you need to do. If you want help, try our smart tools and support designed especially for small businesses, and take a look at our case studies to see how other companies have grown with us.

Vamp is an official Meta partner. Find out how Vamp can transform your Facebook ads into creative experiences that catch customers and transform your business. Ready to take the next step? Here’s how to get started with Vamp for free.