You’ve set your Facebook Business page up and now you’re ready to advertise buy don’t know where to start. While Facebook Ads can be daunting at first, it’s actually quite simple to set up effective campaigns.

Follow this helpful guide with step-by-step instructions on how to build your own Facebook Ads and track performance; before you know it you’ll be a marketing pro in no time.

Getting started

To begin, first login to the Facebook account that’s tied to your Facebook Business Page, and then proceed to your actual Facebook Business page. Within the navigation to the left, click on the option titled Ad Center.

If you’re new to Facebook ads, you will be greeted by a welcome prompt titled Get Started with a Recommendation for your First Ad. This will guide you through a questionnaire designed to help you set your ad goal, budget and target audience. Feel free to complete this questionnaire, although this article will provide you with the guidance needed to build ads on your own.

Create your ad

Next, click on the blue Create Ad button; this will open up the Promote page, where you have the option to set up Automated Ads, Choose a Goal, or Boost Existing Content. By default, Facebook should take you to the Choose a Goal option where you can create an ad from scratch.

Before you choose a goal option, think about what the objective is for your ad. Do you want to increase brand awareness or drive sales on your web site? These will help guide your campaign and also put you in the marketing mindset to analyze the performance against your goals.

Get more website visitors

The first goal option, Get More Website Visitors, is a great choice if you want to drive more traffic and engagement on your site. You’ll have an array of call-to-action buttons to choose from, like Learn More, Shop Now or Sign Up.

Get more leads

If you’re just starting out, getting more leads is crucial to drive momentum. This option allows you to create a lead capture form to retain and store contact information for marketing efforts like email campaigns.

Boost a post

When you make a post, generally only people who like and follow your page may see it. When you choose to boost a post, you’re essentially paying so more people see it. This is a great option for important posts like company updates.

Get more messages

When you want to interact with prospects and customers more, use the Get more messages option, as that will give onlookers an easy and inviting way to reach you directly.

Promote your page

When you’re just starting out on Facebook, it’s important to build your credibility, and a great way to do that is by promoting your page. This will drive people to like and follow your page and thus increase your street cred.

Get more calls

If you run a business that relies on calls to drive conversions, then this is one of your best options. Give onlookers a direct call-to-action to contact you for an easy transaction.

Promote your business locally

Grass roots marketing is key to building up your business locally. Promote your business locally allows you to set up ads that specifically target in your local area.

For the purposes of the next section, we will be using the Get More Website Visitors goal option to walk through the next steps to setting up your ad. Keep in mind that different goals will offer different options, but they all follow the same format to set up your creative, targeting and budget.

Choose your ad creative

Once you select your goal, you’ll be taken to the ad page where you can select your creative, targeting and budget. The first option you’ll see is to set up your ad creative.

Start by adding a one to two sentence description that you think will entice onlookers to click on your ad. Keep it short and concise, but try to bring out the personality of your brand and avoid sounding cliche or robotic. If you need inspiration, look at how your competitors ads are worded on Facebook or on Google, and don’t hesitate to ask other’s for their opinions.

Next, select the media or imagery that you want to display in your ad. You have the option to select a single image or video, or choose multiple images or videos to create a carousel. A carousel ad will allow onlookers to scroll through a series of media to get a good sense of your offerings.

The final step under Ad Creative is to select your call-to-action button. Click on the button label drop down to view a full menu of options based on the goal you selected. If you want onlookers to call, select Call Now. If you want them to learn more about your company through your website, select Learn More.

Beneath the button label is an option to input your Website URL. If you already set your website URL in your About Me section, then this will be preset, but you do have the option to change if you want to direct onlookers to a specific page.

Special ad category

Facebook recently rolled out a new ad feature, titled Special Ad Category. This is a policy-based feature specifically for ads about credit, employment, housing, social issues, elections or politics, and allows Facebook to protect consumers by ensuring these special ad types follow regulatory rules. We won’t dive into this feature here, but if your ad meets the above criteria, learn more about it here.

Choose your audience

Now you’ve reached the good stuff and what makes Facebook such an effective advertising tool; audience targeting. Facebook has massive amounts of data on its 2 billion+ users, from their demographic information like their gender or where they live, or their interests based on interactions on the platform.

Smart Audience

The first option you’ll see under Audience is Smart Audience, which essentially is algorithm-based targeting built by Facebook that will customize your audience to reach more people who may be interested in your business.

Smart Audience should already be auto-selected, with a gray box below titled Audience Details; click on the pencil icon to edit the details. The first option you see is Gender, where you can select all, men or women; you know your customer, so pick the right option that makes sense.

Locations

The next section is titled Locations, and allows you to target potential customers in specific towns or regions across the globe. For small businesses, it’s best to target locally where you offer your service to get the best bang for your buck.

Once you input the location(s) where you want the ad to appear, set your mileage range using the slide roll tool under the map. Again, you want to limit the mileage to the area you actually offer your services; if you only offer services within 10-15 miles from your business location, set that as your mileage radius. If you’re looking for more brand awareness in the region, expand your mileage radius.

Detailed Targeting

The third section is where Facebook’s secret sauce comes into play in detailed targeting. Here you can select specific targeting criteria to showcase your ad. Keep in mind, if your mileage radius is already narrow, applying specific detailed targeting will limit your reach. If you’re just starting off and looking for more broad exposure, then hold off on using detailed targeting.

Demographics

The first targeting option you’ll see is demographics, where you can target based on education, employment, household and lifestyle details.

Interests

The second targeting option is Interests, where you can reach specific audiences by looking at their interests, activities, the Pages they have liked and closely related topics.

Behaviors

The third targeting option is Behaviors, which allows you to target people based on purchase behaviors or intents, device usage and more.

Advanced targeting

Beneath the Detailed Targeting section you should see a note that says For advanced targeting features, go to Ads Manager. This will take you to the audience section of Ads Manager, where you’ll be able to create custom audiences and lookalike or lead audiences by using your own customer data from your CRM.

Custom audience

The first audience option you’ll see us Custom Audience, which allows you to upload a list of your own internal sources, like customer emails, or from Facebook sources, and save to target in your ad campaigns.

Facebook then matches your customer info (email or phone number) to who is on their platform to allow you to target them directly. One important note is you want to cast a wide net when using this option, as the Facebook match rate tends to be small. As a result, you’ll only want to use this option if you have lists in the 5k+ range.

Lookalike audience

The second audience option is Lookalike Audience, which allows you to use a custom audience that you created as a lead generator to find new prospects with similar behaviors. Facebook allows you to increase or decrease the lookalike audience size based on how narrow or broad you want the audience to be.

Saved audience

The third audience option is Saved Audience, which as the title suggests, allows you to create and save your most commonly used targeting audiences to easily use in future ads. This is an ideal option when you only want your marketing staff to use pre-set audiences.

Special ad audience

The final audience option is Special Ad Option, which is only available for ads in the Special Ad Category, such as credit, employment and housing ads. This option uses existing information about your most valuable customers to help you reach people who have similar online behavior; however, your audience information must comply with the local regulations.

People you choose through targeting

The other audience targeting option besides Smart Audience is to simply use the People you choose through targeting, which essentially gives you the same options as Smart Audience without Facebook’s customization. Simply click this option, select the pencil icon and edit the targeting criteria how you’d like.

Create new audiences

You can also create new audiences, which is simply just a quick and easy way to create a Saved Audience as we discussed before.

Choose your duration

Now that you’ve created your ad, the next step is to set how long you want the ad to run. You either have the option to run the ad continuously with a daily budget, or set a day limit. We recommend setting a day limit early on so you can properly measure your performance and make adjustments as you start to get the hang of it. Start with a five day ad, see how it performs and adjust from there.

Set your daily budget

Once you choose your duration, now you’re ready to set your daily budget. Facebook allows you to set your budget as low as $1; we recommend starting with $2-$5 per day to generate enough reach and engagement. As you start to become more acclimated to Facebook Ads and measure the attribution, then you can decide how much your willing to invest.

The finishing touches

The final step is to do one last review of your ad. Proof read your copy, verify the creative looks clear, verify your targeting criteria, duration, budget and payment information. You should see a summary of your Estimated Daily Results at the bottom or to the left of the ad page. Once you’re comfortable with your ad set up, hit the blue Promote Now button.

Now your ad is in review by Facebook’s team, to ensure it meets their rules. This review period generally takes an hour or two, and once approved your ad is live!

View Results

Once your ad is live, you should receive a notification telling you so. Go back to the Ad Center to follow your ad’s progress, where you can see how many people your ad has reached, actions generated and how much was spent.

Click the View Results button on your ad to see a full viewpoint of your ad’s performance, including the ad’s engagement (reach, clicks, cost) and audience details like age and placements. The more knowledge you start to gain about which ads resonate the best with your target audience, the better your marketing will become.

In Conclusion

Setting up Facebook Ads is pretty simple, and once you get the hang of it you’ll really be able to take advantage of the targeting tools and evolve your marketing over time. Look at what your competitors are doing, but craft ads that help make your business stand out with a strong brand voice. Facebook Ads offer your small business great exposure at a low cost, and if you’re not using it yet, get started and watch your sales grow.