How to Do Facebook Ads

Running Facebook Ads can feel intimidating, but the platform is one of the most powerful tools available for reaching new customers and growing your business. This guide breaks it all down, step-by-step, from nailing the fundamentals to launching your first campaign. We'll show you exactly how to get started in Facebook Ads Manager and create ads that genuinely connect with your audience.

Before You Begin: Setting Up for Success

Jumping into Ads Manager without the right foundation is like trying to build a house without laying the groundwork. Before you spend a single dollar, let’s make sure your accounts are structured correctly. This initial setup only takes a few minutes but will save you hours of headaches down the road.

1. Create a Facebook Business Page

You can't run ads from a personal Facebook profile. All advertising is tied to a Business Page. If you don’t have one yet, it’s simple to set up. This page acts as your brand’s identity on Facebook, hosting your posts, community interactions, and, most importantly, your ads.

2. Set Up a Meta Business Suite (formerly Business Manager)

While you can run simple boosted posts directly from your page, the real power lies within Meta Business Suite. Think of it as the central command center for all your business activities on Facebook and Instagram. It's a separate entity from your personal profile and allows you to:

• Manage ad accounts, pages, and the people who work on them.
• Keep your personal profile separate from your work.
• Securely grant access to agencies or team members without sharing passwords.

Setting this up is free and provides a professional framework for all your marketing efforts.

3. Install the Meta Pixel

The Meta Pixel is a small piece of code you install on your website. Don’t let the word "code" scare you, most modern website builders (like Shopify, Squarespace, or WordPress) have simple integrations that let you add it with a quick copy-paste. Why is this so important? The Pixel is your data powerhouse. It tracks actions people take on your website after seeing your ad, like making a purchase, filling out a form, or adding an item to their cart. This data allows you to:

• Measure campaign effectiveness: See if your ads are actually leading to sales.
• Optimize for conversions: Facebook's algorithm can use this data to find more people likely to take the action you care about.
• Build retargeting audiences: Create ads specifically for people who have visited your site but didn't buy anything - these are often your highest-performing campaigns.

Skipping this step is like driving with your eyes closed. You might be moving, but you have no idea where you're going or what's working.

Understanding the Facebook Ad Campaign Structure

One of the most confusing parts for beginners is how campaigns are organized. Facebook uses a three-level hierarchy that, once you understand it, makes a lot of sense. Think of it like a nesting doll.

• The Campaign (The Outermost Doll): This is the highest level, where you set your single advertising objective. Your objective is your ultimate goal. Do you want more website traffic? More video views? More online sales? You decide on one goal for the entire campaign here.
• The Ad Set (The Middle Doll): Inside each campaign, you have one or more ad sets. This level is all about targeting. Here, you define who you want to see your ads, where you want them to appear (placements), how much you want to spend (budget), and for how long (schedule). You can have multiple ad sets within a single campaign to test different audiences or budgets.
• The Ad (The Innermost Doll): Inside each ad set are your actual ads - the images, videos, and text that people see. You can have multiple ads within an ad set, allowing you to test which creative resonates best. For example, you could test a video against a static image to see which one performs better with the same audience.

This structure gives you total control to test variables methodically. You can test two different audiences in two separate ad sets while keeping the ad creative the same, helping you pinpoint exactly what works best.

Step-by-Step: Creating Your First Facebook Ad Campaign

Now that the groundwork is laid, let's walk through creating a campaign inside Facebook Ads Manager.

Step 1: Choose Your Campaign Objective

When you click the green "Create" button in Ads Manager, the first thing you have to do is choose an objective. Facebook has simplified this into six primary outcomes:

• Awareness: Show your ads to people most likely to remember them. Great for new brands trying to get their name out there.
• Traffic: Send people to a destination, such as your website, a landing page, or a blog post. This is your go-to for driving clicks.
• Engagement: Get more messages, video views, post engagements (likes, comments, shares), or page likes. Perfect for building community and social proof.
• Leads: Collect contact information (like email addresses) from people interested in your business, directly through a form on Facebook.
• App Promotion: If you have an app, this helps you find new users who will install and use it.
• Sales: Find people likely to purchase your product or service. This objective relies heavily on Pixel data to optimize for conversions like "add to cart" or "purchase."

Beginner’s Tip: If you're an e-commerce store, your goal is ultimately Sales. If you're a service-based business or content creator, Traffic or Leads are great starting points.

Step 2: Define Your Audience in the Ad Set

This is where your market research pays off. In the Ad Set settings, you define exactly who will see your ad. Facebook gives you a few powerful ways to do this:

Core Audiences

This is targeting based on criteria you select. You can build an audience using a combination of:

• Location: Target by country, state, city, zip code, or even a radius around a specific address. A local coffee shop might target people within a five-mile radius.
• Demographics: Age, gender, language, and more.
• Interests: This is a powerful one. Target people based on their interests, activities, and the pages they’ve liked on Facebook. For example, if you sell high-end running shoes, you can target people interested in "marathons," "trail running," and brands like Runners World.
• Behaviors: Target based on purchase behavior, device usage, and other tracked activities. For example, you can target people whom Facebook identifies as "Engaged Shoppers."

Custom Audiences

This is where you can target people who have already interacted with your business. These are often called "warm" audiences and tend to perform very well. You can create audiences of people who have:

• Visited your website (requires the Pixel).
• Engaged with your Instagram or Facebook Page.
• Subscribed to your email list (you can upload a customer list of emails and phone numbers).
• Watched one of your videos.

Retargeting website visitors who added an item to their cart but didn't buy is a classic and highly effective Custom Audience strategy.

Step 3: Set Your Placements, Budget, and Schedule

Once you’ve defined your audience, you need to tell Facebook where to show your ads and how much to spend.

• Placements: This refers to where your ads will appear across Meta’s network, including the Facebook news feed, Instagram Reels, Messenger, and more. For Beginners: Select "Advantage+ placements" (formerly Automatic Placements). This lets Facebook's algorithm place your ads where it thinks they will perform best, which is usually the most effective approach to start.
• Budget: You can set a daily budget (the approximate amount you'll spend each day) or a lifetime budget (the maximum you'll spend for the entire duration of the campaign). Starting with a small daily budget, like $10 or $20, is a great way to gather data without a huge financial commitment.
• Schedule: You can set a start and end date, or let your campaign run continuously until you manually turn it off. For your first few campaigns, it's wise to set an end date so you don't forget about them.

Step 4: Design Your Ad Creative

This is the final step: creating the visual ad itself. A great ad has three components: captivating visuals, compelling copy, and a clear call-to-action.

• Format: You can choose from a single image or video, a carousel (multiple scrollable images or videos), or a collection (a mobile-only fullscreen experience). Video is dominant, especially vertical video for Instagram Reels and Stories placements. Keep your videos short, engaging, and designed to capture attention in the first three seconds.
• Copy: Your ad text should speak directly to your target audience. Your Primary Text should focus on the benefit to the customer, not just the features of your product. The Headline should be short, punchy, and attention-grabbing.
• Call-to-Action (CTA): Facebook provides a button for your ads. Be sure to pick one that matches your goal. If you want people to buy something, use "Shop Now." If you want them to sign up, use "Sign Up" or "Learn More."

Once you've built your ad, you can preview how it will look on different placements, hit "Publish," and your campaign will go into review. Once approved, it will start showing to your target audience!

Beyond the Launch: Monitoring and Testing

Launching a campaign is not the final step. The best advertisers constantly monitor performance and test new things. Inside Ads Manager, pay attention to a few key metrics:

• CTR (Click-through Rate): The percentage of people who saw your ad and clicked on it. A higher CTR often indicates that your creative is engaging.
• CPC (Cost Per Click): How much you are paying, on average, for each click.
• CPA (Cost Per Action): How much it costs to get someone to take your desired action (like making a purchase or filling out a lead form). This is often the most important metric.

Don't be afraid to test. Create another ad set targeting a different interest, or duplicate an ad and simply change the headline. Small, iterative changes are how you find what truly works and turn your Facebook ad campaigns into a predictable growth machine.

Final Thoughts

Getting started with Facebook Ads simply requires breaking the process down into manageable steps. By establishing your foundation, understanding the campaign structure, and methodically building your campaign from the objective down to the creative, you can transform Facebook Ads from a confusing expense into a powerful asset for your business.

While a solid paid strategy brings new people to your doorstep, managing the increased comments, messages, and followers is where those connections deepen. For us, a successful social presence is built on a combination of paid reach and organic engagement. To help manage all the new interactions while scheduling our daily organic content, we built Postbase. It gathers every single comment and DM from all your platforms into one beautiful inbox, so you can actually keep up with the conversation your ads create and build real relationships.