Ready to create your first Facebook Ad?
In this video, we walk you through:
- Setting up a new ad campaign in Meta Ads Manager
- Choosing the right objective and campaign type
- Understanding Facebook’s automated suggestions
- Customizing your ad targeting, including demographics, interests, and behaviors
- Selecting the best ad format and creative
- Budgeting and scheduling for optimal performance
- Advanced tips for audience targeting and exclusions
- Crafting engaging ad copy and headlines
- Setting up conversion tracking and URL parameters
Whether you’re promoting a small business, a large enterprise, or anything in between, this comprehensive tutorial will ensure you have the necessary foundation to create your first Facebook ad.
If you would like to get a comprehensive list of other simple but necessary Facebook Ads optimizations, then sign up to receive our Ultimate Facebook Ads Checklist.
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Video Transcription
0:05
Getting started with Facebook is pretty
0:07
easy um in terms of creating your
0:09
Facebook ad you’ll need to First select
0:11
your campaign type so let me go ahead
0:14
and share my screen really
0:16
quickly and go into meta ads
0:22
manager so creating your first ad and
0:25
we’ll just create a demo campaign here
0:29
um let’s just say that we want to drive
0:31
some leads for your business so we can
0:34
select leads as our campaign
0:39
objective and uh you know mea will
0:42
actually introduce some of
0:45
these suggestions whenever you go into
0:47
to launch your new campaign and you can
0:50
go into a manual setup if you would like
0:53
but we’ll just follow the prompts here
0:55
that Facebook guides us
0:58
through
1:02
and we can just say demo
1:05
campaign for this
1:10
case now here’s the different categories
1:14
for um your industry in terms of like
1:17
the ad
1:18
category and it’s not going to be
1:21
applicable to everybody um you know
1:23
there are certain industries that
1:25
restrict what your options might be when
1:27
you’re creating an ad so that includes
1:30
anyone in the credit industry um if
1:32
you’re trying to promote a job
1:35
opportunity that you’re you know you’re
1:37
hiring new people um there’s limitations
1:40
there for housing any kind of real
1:43
estate listings or homeowners insurance
1:46
mortgage loans things like that that’s
1:48
another sensitive uh industry and as far
1:51
as social issues political uh election
1:55
related advertising they will restrict
1:58
certain options for those advertisers as
2:00
well so and this doesn’t apply uh in
2:03
this particular case so we’ll just keep
2:05
going
2:06
here now the conversion location um So
2:11
Meta offers the ability to embed your
2:14
form directly within the Facebook ad so
2:17
if you wanted to test this then you can
2:19
select instant
2:20
forms um now there’s also Facebook
2:24
Messenger Instagram and phone
2:27
calls so just you know for the sake of
2:31
this example we’ll just say we want to
2:32
generate phone
2:34
calls you select the Facebook page that
2:37
this app would be associated
2:40
with and if you are you know if you are
2:43
a business manager account or if you
2:45
have
2:46
multiple um Facebook pages or ad
2:49
accounts that you are an admin of there
2:51
will be multiple options there so just
2:53
make sure that this is a relevant page
2:55
for the ad campaign you’re
2:58
creating and then you’ll set your daily
3:01
budget uh whatever your monthly budget
3:03
is just divide that by like 30.4 and
3:07
that’s a good average for what your
3:09
daily budget should be that kind of
3:11
gives you um a roundabout idea for
3:15
whether it’s 28 days in the month 30
3:17
days in the month or 31 days in the
3:18
month it kind of evens it out so that’s
3:20
probably the closest that you’ll get um
3:22
on your daily
3:23
budget and then your start date you can
3:27
actually set an end date so if you have
3:29
a tempor orary promotion that you um you
3:32
know you’re only offering for a limited
3:34
time and you don’t want to risk the
3:35
campaign uh continuing to run after the
3:39
uh permission has expired then you can
3:41
set an end date for your
3:45
campaign now budget scheduling this is a
3:48
new Option here you can schedule budget
3:50
increases in advance on certain days or
3:54
times if you’re anticipating um better
3:57
sales opportunities or Peak traffic or
3:59
any kind of other you know promotional
4:02
limited time offers you can do budget
4:05
scheduling to increase your budget for
4:07
certain days which is interesting so
4:10
especially useful around the holidays
4:12
for some advertisers I’m
4:14
sure uh we’ll just keep it standard for
4:17
now um now on the ad scheduling uh we we
4:21
generally will launch the ad schedule to
4:24
run all the time initially and then
4:27
reassess the data after you know run for
4:30
two or three weeks just to see what are
4:32
the peak times and what are the best
4:34
converting times and then kind of narrow
4:36
that down to make the best use of your
4:37
budget um so we can leave that
4:42
here and with audience targeting um
4:47
there’s Advantage Plus audiences so this
4:51
is kind of like optimized audience
4:53
expansion with through Google ads it’s
4:56
very similar um Facebook has the option
4:59
as well well that they can automatically
5:01
find the best audience for you for your
5:04
ads and tailor your ads to them using
5:07
the different assets that you have
5:09
plugged in for your ad copy whether it’s
5:12
different um creative or headlines or
5:14
descriptions and it branches outside of
5:18
your target audience to potentially find
5:20
more relevant people that may uh find
5:24
your ads useful so this can help but it
5:28
can also hurt your campaign so you know
5:30
just want to be very strategic about um
5:33
the using the Advantage Plus feature in
5:36
uh in Facebook ads uh because if you
5:39
have super specific targeting um for
5:42
example if you only want to reach ages
5:44
30 to 50 and you want only homeowners
5:47
and you want only people that are
5:49
interested in certain Publications or
5:51
have liked certain Facebook pages or you
5:54
know if it’s really specific like that
5:56
then I would not use the Advantage Plus
5:58
audience feature on Facebook uh because
6:00
it could potentially throw in irrelevant
6:03
people in the in the targeting and you
6:05
don’t want to do that but if it’s more
6:07
like Broad in nature then you you would
6:09
probably be safe to go ahead and turn
6:11
that
6:12
on um so for now we’ll just leave this
6:15
without the Advantage Plus audience um
6:18
and then here is where you can create a
6:20
new audience or you can select um a
6:23
saved audience for targeting so here
6:26
you’ll see a list of save saved
6:28
audiences that you used in the past um
6:31
but if you’re a brand new Advertiser
6:33
it’s more than likely you won’t have a
6:35
saved audience just yet uh so we can go
6:37
through creating a new one really
6:39
quickly um now we don’t have you know
6:42
you probably won’t have custom audiences
6:44
either if you’re brand new to uh meta
6:46
ads but this is some of the custom um
6:51
options available here or these are some
6:54
of the custom
6:55
options uh so you know once you’ve run
6:58
your campaigns for for a while you will
7:00
be able to create some custom audiences
7:02
for example if anyone ever sent you a
7:05
message to the messenger app from your
7:07
ads in the past 180 days for example
7:11
then you could retarget those people um
7:14
but for now we’ll just kind of leave
7:16
this a little bit broad we’re not going
7:17
to go into any custom audiences let’s
7:20
just say you want to Target people um
7:23
not in the United States but let’s just
7:25
say you want to Target people only in
7:27
the state of Florida oh let’s go ahead
7:30
and pull that
7:33
up and you can start
7:37
there and if you have certain age groups
7:40
that would be uh that would make more
7:43
sense to see your ads like for instance
7:44
if you only want to Target people that
7:47
are age 30 and up then you can do that
7:51
um let’s just say that maybe women
7:54
resonate with your ad copy better or
7:56
maybe women are your target audience
7:58
then you can select women to see the ads
8:01
here and now here is where it gets
8:03
really granual as far as your interests
8:06
that you can select from um and the
8:09
demographics too so Facebook will give
8:13
you options here in a list and you can
8:17
browse through these uh although it
8:19
would take you quite a bit of time
8:20
because there are so many options here
8:23
so let’s just say if you were to um if
8:27
you were to be promoting like for
8:28
instance bathfitter so if you want to
8:30
only target older women and you want to
8:33
Target
8:35
homeowners then you would type homeowner
8:38
in
8:40
here and this would be demographics so
8:43
it’s not in
8:50
there maybe I was too
8:56
specific so here’s small business owners
8:59
and you know now that I’m in here I
9:02
don’t know why it’s not letting me
9:04
Target
9:07
homeowners oh goodness let me go into
9:10
the demographics
9:13
so you can Target recently moved people
9:17
um you can also Target people
9:20
that are even in longdistance
9:24
relationships so that can get really
9:25
granual there um but we’ll just say uh
9:29
maybe Better Homes and Gardens is
9:32
another is another potential uh interest
9:35
of your target market so you can select
9:39
that and then let’s just
9:42
say maybe they want um to contact
9:47
General
9:49
Contractors you know or interested in
9:51
general contracting work work titles you
9:54
know there’s just a lot of of options in
9:56
here so um feel free to play around with
9:58
the targeting and behaviors you can also
10:02
exclude people with certain behaviors if
10:04
you if you know that that is not your
10:06
target audience then you can add
10:07
exclusions here as well now be careful
10:10
because the advantage detailed targeting
10:13
here’s another option where Facebook
10:15
wants to or meta wants to
10:17
expand and target people beyond your
10:20
detail targeting and they say it will
10:22
improve performance uh but like I said
10:26
if you want to be super specific then I
10:29
do not suggest enabling that um and then
10:32
you can save this audience but for the
10:34
case here I’m not going to save it since
10:36
it’s a
10:37
demonstration um and then click next and
10:40
this will take you to your
10:42
adet um so you
10:45
can you can actually rename your adset
10:49
whatever you want um and if you have
10:51
like different targeting options
10:53
selected for different adets then you
10:56
might want to name this one you know
11:01
women and my keyboard is not
11:05
working women
11:08
age 30 and up demo campaign and we’ll
11:12
just take the date
11:19
out and then here you can you can
11:22
actually promote an existing post if you
11:24
have one that’s that’s worthy of being
11:26
an ad as well then you can use an
11:28
existing post on your Facebook page for
11:30
this too uh but for now we’ll just
11:32
create this ad and then you have an
11:35
option of doing a single image or a
11:36
video or you can do Carousel format
11:40
which is two or more images that are
11:43
scrolling and you can include videos
11:45
here as well um so we generally
11:47
recommend doing one image or one video
11:51
um but if you choose to go with a
11:53
slideshow uh you can you can use that
11:56
format as well just uh be sure to to
11:59
plan ahead and kind of have an idea of
12:01
where you’re going with that ad um
12:04
slideshows are good for telling a story
12:06
or showing a sequence of steps if you
12:09
want to show people how to um you know
12:11
use your product or service that’s great
12:13
for that but you’ll want to make sure
12:16
that um you’ve got you know the proper
12:19
settings depending on what your goal is
12:21
for the ad so in this case we’ll just
12:23
keep it at single
12:26
image and you can add media here as as
12:29
well so there are images you can choose
12:31
from that are already in your account um
12:34
or you can upload an
12:37
image so you can upload directly from
12:40
your computer you can
12:43
also go into your account so it’ll show
12:46
you your account images that you already
12:48
have and Facebook will also recommend
12:51
certain images that are already in your
12:53
account um if if that’s
12:57
possible and we canect actually just
12:59
select this one for
13:07
now so this is saying that we’re going
13:10
to do all
13:11
placements which is fine in most cases
13:15
but if your if your creative is not
13:17
optimized for all placements you’ll want
13:19
to be careful about this um for instance
13:23
a square image or a landscape um image
13:28
like a 16 by9 ratio those would not look
13:32
very good in a reel like a video reel or
13:36
a story um like being shown in between
13:39
people’s stories or uh you know there
13:42
there’s just certain cases where you
13:44
don’t want to include all placements
13:46
especially if you just don’t have a
13:48
broad range of different formats for
13:50
your creative that you’ll be using um
13:52
and then if that’s the
13:54
case you can
13:57
um hold on so of course Facebook wants
14:01
to give me an error on the telephone
14:04
number oh well we haven’t even entered
14:06
the phone number in here
14:08
yet it’s getting ahead of me
14:12
so here’s where you enter in your
14:14
primary text um you can do up to five
14:18
primary text options this is what’s
14:20
going to show as if it were a Facebook
14:23
post it’ll show up above the image or
14:26
video as like a description and then you
14:29
have the option to do headlines you can
14:32
write um short headlines and then you
14:36
can do up to five of those and Facebook
14:38
can figure out which of those per will
14:40
perform
14:41
best there are different descriptions
14:44
here so um you can add up to five
14:48
descriptions and this will show like as
14:51
an overlay to your video or image kind
14:53
of next to the call to action button in
14:56
this case we’re promoting phone calls in
14:57
this campaign so you can put a little
15:00
description say call for free
15:04
consultation and I guess I’ll just go
15:06
ahead and plug some
15:19
in and they already have some variations
15:22
in here for me to select from um so you
15:27
can just plug in a couple of those if
15:29
you’d like now again if you’re a new
15:31
Advertiser it may not have these options
15:33
for you to select from um but we can
15:37
do save time and money with
15:43
bter that’s just an example there and
15:46
then you can say call for a
15:49
free design
15:54
consultation and then here is where you
15:56
would put your phone number and this
15:59
case we would want to use bath fitter’s
16:01
phone number but I can just put you know
16:04
for the sake of
16:09
demoing now in this tracking section you
16:12
can select all of the relevant events
16:16
that you want to track um and this is
16:19
just um based off of you already having
16:21
some conversion tracking set up in your
16:24
in your ad account and that you’ve
16:25
already created your Facebook ads
16:26
account um and gotten this all
16:28
provisioned so you can track events in
16:30
your CRM uh in your website or on your
16:33
app and we might want to track website
16:36
events here as as if people may go to
16:39
the landing page and call from the
16:41
landing page rather than calling
16:42
directly from the ad so we would want to
16:43
track
16:46
that all right and if you want to put in
16:49
url parameters to track um like UTM
16:53
parameters for example then you can
16:56
build that out directly in Facebook book
16:59
and it gives you um just a quick form
17:02
here where you can select the
17:06
campaign you can do um you know medium
17:11
which a lot of people will just put
17:13
social since this is a social media
17:16
platform and your campaign
17:19
name so if you go in here and do you
17:22
know the dynamic campaign name uh data
17:25
variable for your campaign so it’ll be
17:28
set to the names provided for your
17:31
campaign adset or ad when they’re first
17:33
published so they’ll continue using
17:35
those names as the parameter during
17:38
replacement now you can edit the URL and
17:41
the campaign adset or ad names but the
17:44
parameters will always refer back to the
17:47
original name so that’s a big one here
17:50
um if you do change the campaign name
17:54
and edit it edit that once you’ve
17:56
officially launched then
17:58
what you’ll see in ga4 for example
18:01
whenever you um go back to your
18:03
reporting it will keep the original
18:06
campaign name that you initially
18:08
assigned that campaign rather than
18:11
change with you as you continue updating
18:13
the campaign name so just be careful
18:16
about using this if you plan to make a
18:18
lot of edits or if you have multiple
18:20
people working in the account it might
18:22
get confusing if you’ve run this
18:24
particular campaign for a long time and
18:26
it’s changed names over that course of
18:29
time now the campaign content um you can
18:32
set Dynamic parameters here as well then
18:36
you could potentially do the ad name in
18:40
this case but then again you’re going to
18:42
run into the same thing so if you change
18:44
the name of the ad then it’ll only
18:46
retain the original name of the ad as
18:48
you um progress through that campaign
18:52
and run it for the the whole stent of
18:54
time that you plan on doing that so if
18:57
you’re gonna track something you might
18:59
just want to say sales ad
19:04
December you know just this is just an
19:07
example December
19:10
2023 and you can get really specific
19:12
here if you want to track different
19:15
content um like if you have a video you
19:17
might want to put the name of the video
19:19
in into the content campaign content
19:22
field and you can add more parameters
19:24
here as well but you’ll see down here as
19:26
you fill this out that the UTM source
19:28
and and um medium campaign and content
19:32
Fields have been filled out and you can
19:34
click apply
19:37
there and it’s going to continue
19:39
prompting you uh and warning you that if
19:41
you change it it will not change it so
19:44
if you go to publish then you’ll see
19:48
your
19:51
ad and we can just
19:54
um I was going to allow you to see the
19:57
preview here but Facebook is not giving
19:59
that preview to me but then you can
20:01
click publish and then you’re all set
20:03
and you can edit this and come back in
20:05
and and edit your settings at any time
