‍To get started with Facebook advertising you will have to create an account or be admin on an existing page, choose your objective and set your budget. Follow these steps and you are on the way to creating your first Facebook Ad.

Using paid advertising, especially through Facebook as a platform is a good way to reach and impact your audience. With its over 2.9 billion active users, Facebook is the most popular social media platform for creating advertisements. But the question is, how does it work and how do you get started? 

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How to set up a Facebook Advertising campaign

The first step is to decide what you are aiming to achieve with your advertising, who  you want to reach and what you want to say to that audience. The second step is to start creating your campaign and advertisement. Follow these steps and you will be one step closer to your goal.

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Step 1: Create an account

The most important step in setting up your Facebook Advertising is to create an account. When you sign up for Facebook you get an Ad account ID which you can view in Ads Manager. 

To be able to use Facebook Ads Manager you will need a verified payment method and a Facebook page. You can also be an admin, editor or advertiser on someone else’s page to use Ads Manager. 

Step 2: Choose an objective

Now you have created an account and it is time to create an ad. To do so you click on the green button that says Create Ad in Facebook Ads Manager. Facebook will then take you to a page where you will choose a campaign objective. An objective is what approach you have for your campaign and what you aim to achieve. Do you aim to boost awareness for your brand? Then you can choose to increase brand awareness and show your ad to individuals who are more likely to remember it or increase your reach and show your ad to the maximum number of individuals. Is your aim to make individuals consider your brand when buying a product or after the advertisement research your brand more? Then the objective Consideration is for you. Here you can send the viewers to a landing page off Facebook, receive more likes, comments and shares, as well as improved lead generation. Is your goal of the campaign conversions then choosing the conversion objective is perfect for you. It increases engagement on websites, increases web traffic and increases product sales.

Below are Facebook’s eleven objectives:

1. Brand Awareness
2. Reach
3. Traffic
4. Engagement
5. App Installs
6. Video Views
7. Lead Generation
8. Messages
9. Conversions
10. Catalog Sales
11. Store Traffic

After you have chosen an objective you will be asked to give your campaign a name. For future references you should name your campaign something recognizable so anyone in the backend looking at the ad will understand what it is about, preferably what objective is chosen. 

Step 3: Budget

You have your aim and objective, now it is time to set what budget your campaign will have. Facebook gives you the option to choose if you want to set your budget per day or choose a total amount spent for your campaign. Also called Daily or Lifetime.

• Daily: When choosing a daily budget you decide what your ad spend will be each day. From this budget Facebook will find the right place and time to show your ad to the public to make sure your money is spent well. Once your daily budget has reached its roof, the advertisement will stop running that day and pick back up the next day. 
• Lifetime: In contrast to the daily budget, a life budget is the ad spend for the whole campaign. Facebook will then spend the budget based on the advertisements performance. When the budget runs out, so does the campaign. 

Step 4: Targeting your audience

With Facebook advertising, or Meta in general, you can target your audience more accurately with specific parameters. This is based on Facebook being such an old platform and having collected a lot of data from their users over time. One of the most important steps in Facebook advertising is asking yourself who your audience is and how you can reach out to them. When creating your Facebook Ad you can specify just like any other advertising platform on demographics (gender, location and age) but on Facebook you also have the option to target lifestyle options. These lifestyles options can for example be interesting, online behaviors and educational backgrounds. Through the targeting you will also be able to retarget individuals who already have interacted with your business. 

Step 5: Ad Placement

Where your advertisement is placed impacts how it will appear to your audience and how you reach your goal. Facebook themselves recommend that you use automatic placement based on the objective that you have chosen. This enables Facebook to optimize the placements to reach the best possible results based on your chosen aim for the campaign for the least average cost. 

If you would like to chose the placements by yourself, Facebook offers the following:

• Feed
• Stories and Reels
• In-Stream
• Reels Overlay
• Search
• Messages
• In-Article
• Apps and Sites

Step 6: Visuals and Copy

When you have done all the basics and everything that you will be able to measure later it is time to write your copy and include your chosen videos or images. But did you know that you also can use one of your existing posts? That is called boosted posts and includes a post from your Facebook page. But if you have a new business account it can be easier to create a new ad. The first thing you have to do then is to select a format. Based on what objective you have chosen previously, Facebook will recommend what format that will fit your objective best. 

Below are some of Facebook’s Ad formats: 

• Photo Ads
• Video Ads
• Carousel Ads
• Stories Ads
• Playable Ads

When you have chosen your format of choice you can add your visuals and copy. 

Step 7: Publish your ad

Now that you have chosen your objective, budget, targeting, ad placement and content, it is time to publish your advertisement. It is as easy as clicking the “Publish” button at the bottom right corner of your page. Once you have submitted your ad, Facebook will take some time to review it and make sure it does not go against their rules and guidelines. Don't worry, it often just takes up to 24 hours, so your ad will be up and running in no time. As soon as it's finished and ready to go live, you will get a confirmation email from Facebook.

We at Blue Hands Digital specialize in setting up Facebook Ads and other kinds of performance marketing. If this all seems to be difficult or if you just need a helping hand to get started, do not hesitate to reach out! Together we will take your business to the next level or perhaps to new target audiences.