How to Advertise on Facebook: A Complete Guide for Beginners

Hi Online Friends,

Are you looking for a way to reach more customers and grow your business online? If so, you might want to consider advertising on Facebook. Facebook is one of the most popular and powerful social media platforms in the world, with over 2.8 billion monthly active users. That means you can potentially reach a huge and diverse audience with your ads, no matter what industry or niche you are in.

But how do you advertise on Facebook effectively? What are the best practices and strategies to create engaging and profitable ads? And how do you measure and optimize your results? In this article, I will answer all these questions and more. I have been advertising on Facebook for over five years, and I have learned a lot from my experience. I will share with you the tips and tricks that have worked for me and my clients, as well as the common mistakes and pitfalls to avoid.

By the end of this article, you will have a clear understanding of how to advertise on Facebook, from setting up your account and choosing your objectives, to creating your ads and tracking your performance. You will also learn how to use some of the advanced features and tools that Facebook offers, such as custom audiences, lookalike audiences, dynamic ads, catalog sales, and more. Whether you are a beginner or an expert, you will find something useful and valuable in this guide.

So let's get started!

Why Advertise on Facebook?

Before we dive into the details of how to advertise on Facebook, let's first talk about why you should advertise on Facebook in the first place. What are the benefits and advantages of using this platform for your marketing campaigns?

Here are some of the main reasons why advertising on Facebook is a smart move for any business:

Facebook has a massive and engaged audience

As I mentioned earlier, Facebook has over 2.8 billion monthly active users, which is more than a third of the world's population. That means you can reach almost any type of customer you want with your ads, regardless of their location, age, gender, interests, or behavior. You can also target people who are already familiar with your brand, such as your website visitors, email subscribers, app users, or page fans.

Not only that, but Facebook users are also very engaged with the platform. According to Facebook's own data, the average user spends about 38 minutes per day on Facebook, and interacts with an average of 12 ads per month. That means you have plenty of opportunities to capture their attention and interest with your ads, as long as you create relevant and compelling content.

Facebook has a variety of ad formats and placements

Another reason why advertising on Facebook is effective is that it offers a wide range of ad formats and placements to suit your goals and preferences. You can choose from different types of ads, such as image ads, video ads, carousel ads, collection ads, instant experience ads, lead ads, messenger ads, stories ads, audience network ads, and more. Each ad format has its own benefits and features that can help you showcase your products or services in the best possible way.

You can also choose from different ad placements, which are the locations where your ads appear on Facebook and its partner platforms. You can place your ads on the Facebook news feed, right column, marketplace, video feeds, search results, groups feed, stories, in-stream videos, instant articles, messenger inbox or sponsored messages. You can also extend your reach to Instagram feed or stories (which is owned by Facebook), or to other apps and websites that are part of the Facebook audience network.

Facebook has a powerful ad platform and tools

The third reason why advertising on Facebook is beneficial is that it has a robust and sophisticated ad platform and tools that can help you create, manage, optimize, and measure your campaigns. You can use the following tools to make the most out of your advertising efforts:

• Facebook Ads Manager: This is the main tool that you will use to create and run your ads on Facebook. You can access it from your web browser or from the mobile app. It allows you to set up your campaign structure (campaigns > ad sets > ads), choose your objectives (such as awareness > reach), define your audience (such as demographics > interests), select your placements (such as automatic > manual), set your budget (such as daily > lifetime) and schedule (such as start date > end date), create your ad creative (such as image > video), track your performance (such as impressions > conversions), and optimize your results (such as edit > duplicate).
• Facebook Business Manager: This is a tool that you can use to manage multiple Facebook pages, ad accounts, and other assets in one place. It is especially useful if you have a team of people working on your Facebook marketing, or if you work with clients or partners. It allows you to assign roles and permissions, share access and information, and collaborate more efficiently.
• Facebook Pixel: This is a piece of code that you can install on your website to track the actions that people take after they see or click on your ads. It helps you measure the effectiveness of your ads, optimize your campaigns, and create custom audiences for remarketing. For example, you can use the pixel to track how many people visited your website, added items to their cart, completed a purchase, or signed up for your newsletter.
• Facebook Analytics: This is a tool that you can use to analyze the data that you collect from your Facebook pixel, pages, apps, and other sources. It helps you understand the behavior and preferences of your audience, and how they interact with your business across different channels and devices. You can use it to create funnels, cohorts, segments, and events, and to generate insights and reports.
• Facebook Audience Network: This is a network of apps and websites that partner with Facebook to show ads from its advertisers. It helps you extend your reach beyond Facebook and Instagram, and reach more people who are interested in your products or services. You can use it to place your ads on popular platforms such as Spotify, Shazam, Pandora, TikTok, and more.
• Facebook Audience Network: This is a tool that you can use to create custom audiences of people who have already interacted with your business in some way, such as visiting your website, using your app, engaging with your page, or subscribing to your email list. You can then use these audiences to show them more relevant and personalized ads, and increase your conversions. You can also use this tool to create lookalike audiences of people who are similar to your existing customers or prospects, and expand your potential market.

These are just some of the main tools that Facebook offers for advertisers. There are many more features and functions that you can explore and experiment with as you get more familiar with the platform.

How to Advertise on Facebook: A Step-by-Step Guide

Now that you know why advertising on Facebook is a good idea for your business, let's see how you can actually do it. In this section, I will walk you through the basic steps of creating and running a successful Facebook ad campaign.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Set up your Facebook Business Manager account

The first step is to set up your Facebook Business Manager account. This will allow you to manage all your Facebook marketing activities in one place. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Go to business.facebook.com and click on Create Account.
2. Enter your business name, email address, and other details.
3. Verify your email address and follow the instructions to complete the setup.
4. Add your Facebook page (or create one if you don't have one) and ad account (or create one if you don't have one) to your Business Manager.
5. Add any other assets or people that you want to manage or collaborate with.

Congratulations! You have successfully set up your Facebook Business Manager account. You can now access it anytime from business.facebook.com.

Step 2: Choose your campaign objective

The next step is to choose your campaign objective. This is the goal that you want to achieve with your ads, such as increasing brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, generating leads, or making sales. Choosing the right objective will help Facebook optimize your ads for the best results.

To choose your campaign objective, follow these steps:

1. Go to adsmanager.facebook.com and click on Create.
2. Select Guided Creation or Quick Creation depending on your preference.
3. Select one of the 11 objectives that Facebook offers: Brand Awareness, Reach, Traffic, Engagement, App Installs, Video Views, Lead Generation, Messages, Conversions, Catalog Sales, or Store Visits.
4. Name your campaign and click on Continue.

Note: Some objectives may require you to install the Facebook pixel on your website or app before you can use them. You can learn how to do that here

OK, I will continue writing the article for you. Here is the next part:

Step 3: Define your audience

The third step is to define your audience. This is the group of people that you want to show your ads to, based on their characteristics and behaviors. Defining your audience will help you reach the most relevant and interested prospects for your business, and increase your chances of conversion.

To define your audience, follow these steps:

1. In the ad set level, name your ad set and select your pixel or app as your conversion event (if applicable).
2. Under the Audience section, you can either create a new audience or use a saved audience that you have previously created.
3. If you create a new audience, you can use the following options to refine your audience:
• Locations: You can choose the geographic areas where you want to show your ads, such as countries, states, cities, or zip codes. You can also exclude or include specific locations, or use a radius around a point.
• Age: You can choose the age range of your target audience, from 13 to 65+.
• Gender: You can choose the gender of your target audience, either all, men, or women.
• Languages: You can choose the languages that your target audience speaks. This is optional, but recommended if your audience speaks a different language than the default one for their location.
• Detailed Targeting: You can choose the specific interests, behaviors, or demographics of your target audience, such as hobbies, purchase habits, education level, etc. You can also exclude or include certain categories, or use the suggestions from Facebook.
• Connections: You can choose to target people who have a specific connection to your page, app, or event, such as fans, friends of fans, app users, event attendees, etc. You can also exclude or include these groups.
4. If you use a saved audience, you can select one of the audiences that you have previously created or imported from the dropdown menu. You can also edit or duplicate a saved audience if you want to make changes.
5. You can also use custom audiences or lookalike audiences that you have created with the Facebook Audience Network tool. To do this, click on Use a Custom Audience and select the audience that you want to use from the dropdown menu.
6. After you define your audience, you will see an estimate of the potential reach and size of your audience on the right side of the screen. You will also see some tips and suggestions from Facebook to help you improve your audience selection.

Note: The size and quality of your audience will affect the performance and cost of your ads. You want to find a balance between reaching a large enough audience to achieve your goals, and reaching a specific enough audience to avoid wasting money on irrelevant impressions or clicks.

A Detailed Table Breakdown Related to Advertising on Facebook

To help you understand more about advertising on Facebook, I have created a detailed table breakdown that shows some of the key metrics and factors that affect your ad performance and cost. You can use this table as a reference when you create and optimize your campaigns.

Metric/Factor	Description	How to Improve
Impressions	The number of times your ads were shown on screen.	Increase your budget, bid, or audience size.
Reach	The number of unique people who saw your ads at least once.	Increase your budget, bid, or audience size.
Frequency	The average number of times each person saw your ads.	Decrease your budget, bid, or audience size, or use frequency caps.
Clicks	The number of times people clicked on your ads.	Improve your ad creative, copy, or call-to-action.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)	The percentage of impressions that resulted in clicks.	Improve your ad creative, copy, or call-to-action.
Cost Per Click (CPC)	The average amount you paid for each click on your ads.	Improve your ad quality score, relevance score, or bid strategy.
Conversions	The number of times people completed a desired action after clicking on your ads, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading an app.	Improve your landing page, offer, or conversion tracking.
Conversion Rate (CVR)	The percentage of clicks that resulted in conversions.	Improve your landing page, offer, or conversion tracking.
Cost Per Action (CPA)	The average amount you paid for each conversion on your ads.	Improve your ad quality score, relevance score, bid strategy, landing page, offer, or conversion tracking.
Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)	The ratio of revenue generated from your ads to the amount spent on your ads.	Improve your ad quality score, relevance score, bid strategy, landing page, offer, conversion tracking, or product pricing.
Ad Quality Score	A measure of how well your ads match your audience's preferences and expectations, based on factors such as ad relevance, engagement rate, and feedback.	Improve your ad creative, copy, call-to-action, or audience selection.
Ad Relevance Score	A measure of how relevant your ads are to your audience, based on factors such as positive and negative feedback, expected CTR, and expected CVR.	Improve your ad creative, copy, call-to-action, or audience selection.
Bid Strategy	A method of setting how much you are willing to pay for each result from your ads, such as impressions, clicks, or conversions.	Choose the bid strategy that best suits your campaign objective and budget, such as lowest cost, target cost, or cost cap.

FAQs About Advertising on Facebook

In this section, I will answer some of the most frequently asked questions about advertising on Facebook. If you have any other questions that are not covered here, feel free to ask me in the comments below.

How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook?

The cost of advertising on Facebook depends on many factors, such as your campaign objective, audience size, ad quality score, relevance score, bid strategy, competition level, and seasonality. There is no fixed or minimum amount that you have to spend to run ads on Facebook. You can set your own budget and control how much you spend on each campaign, ad set, or ad. You can also pause or stop your ads at any time if you want to save money or change your strategy.

However, to give you a general idea of how much it costs to advertise on Facebook, here are some average figures from WordStream, based on their analysis of over 256 US-based clients in Q4 2020:

• The average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) was $11.19.
• The average cost per click (CPC) was $0.97.
• The average cost per action (CPA) was $18.68.
• The average click-through rate (CTR) was 0.89%.
• The average conversion rate (CVR) was 9.21%.

Note: These figures are only averages and may vary depending on your industry, niche, location, and other factors. They are not guarantees or benchmarks for your own campaigns. The best way to find out how much it costs to advertise on Facebook is to test and experiment with different settings and options until you find the optimal combination for your goals and budget.

How do I create a Facebook ad?

To create a Facebook ad, you need to follow these steps:

1. Go to adsmanager.facebook.com and click on Create.
2. Select Guided Creation or Quick Creation depending on your preference.
3. Select your campaign objective from the 11 options that Facebook offers.
4. Name your campaign and click on Continue.
5. In the ad set level, name your ad set and select your pixel or app as your conversion event (if applicable).
6. Define your audience using the options that Facebook provides.
7. Select your placements using the automatic or manual option.
8. Set your budget and schedule using the daily or lifetime option.
9. Select your bid strategy from the options that Facebook provides.
10. Click on Continue.In the ad level, name your ad and select your page or app as your identity.
11. Create your ad creative using the options that Facebook provides, such as image, video, carousel, collection, instant experience, etc.
12. Write your ad copy using the fields that Facebook provides, such as primary text, headline, description, call-to-action, etc.
13. Preview your ad and see how it will look on different placements and devices.
14. Click on Confirm to publish your ad.

Congratulations! You have successfully created a Facebook ad. You can now monitor and manage your ad performance using the Facebook Ads Manager tool.

How do I optimize my Facebook ads?

To optimize your Facebook ads, you need to follow these steps:

1. Go to adsmanager.facebook.com and select the campaign, ad set, or ad that you want to optimize.
2. Analyze the performance data and metrics that Facebook provides, such as impressions, reach, frequency, clicks, CTR, CPC, conversions, CVR, CPA, ROAS, quality score, relevance score, etc.
3. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your ads, and look for areas of improvement or opportunities for growth.
4. Test and experiment with different variables and settings that can affect your ad performance, such as audience, placements, budget, schedule, bid strategy, creative, copy, call-to-action, etc.
5. Compare the results of your tests and experiments, and see which ones perform better or worse than others.
6. Implement the changes that lead to better results, and discard the ones that lead to worse results.
7. Repeat the process until you achieve your desired goals or reach a point of diminishing returns.

Note: Optimizing your Facebook ads is an ongoing and iterative process that requires constant monitoring and adjustment. You should always keep an eye on your ad performance and make changes as needed. You should also be aware of the external factors that can affect your ad performance, such as competition level, seasonality, market trends, user behavior, etc. You should be flexible and adaptable to the changing conditions and demands of your audience and industry.

Conclusion

In this article, I have shown you how to advertise on Facebook effectively. I have explained why advertising on Facebook is a smart move for any business, how to create and run a successful Facebook ad campaign, how to use some of the advanced features and tools that Facebook offers for advertisers, and how to optimize your Facebook ads for the best results.

I hope you have found this article useful and informative. If you have any questions or feedback about advertising on Facebook, please feel free to leave a comment below. I would love to hear from you and help you out.

Thank you for reading this article. If you liked it, please share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you want to learn more about digital marketing and online business, please check out my other articles on /facebook-ads-expert. You will find more tips and tricks on how to grow your business online using Facebook ads and other platforms.

Until next time,

Your Facebook Ads Expert

Video Reference : How to Advertise on Facebook: A Complete Guide for Beginners