How to Place a Facebook Ad

Thinking about running Facebook ads but not sure where to start? You’re in the right place. Setting up your first ad can feel intimidating with all the buttons and options, but the process is more straightforward than it looks. This guide will walk you through creating and launching your first Facebook ad campaign, step-by-step, without any confusing jargon.

Before You Begin: The Groundwork

Jumping straight into Ads Manager without a plan is like going on a road trip without a map. A little preparation will save you time and money. Before you create a single ad, make sure you have these four things sorted out.

1. A Facebook Business Page

You can't run ads from a personal profile. All Facebook advertising is tied to a Business Page. If you don’t have one yet, it only takes a few minutes to set up. Just go to facebook.com/pages/create/, choose your page type, fill in your business information, and add a profile picture and cover photo. Your Page represents your business on Facebook, so make it look professional.

2. A Clear Goal

What do you want this ad to achieve? Don't just say "make money." Be specific. Are you trying to:

• Get more people to visit your website?
• Generate leads for your service business?
• Sell a specific product?
• Increase awareness for your new brand?
• Promote an event?

Your goal will determine every decision you make when setting up your campaign, from the objective you choose to the call-to-action button you use. Knowing your destination upfront is the most important step.

3. Your Target Audience

Who are you trying to reach? The power of Facebook Ads lies in its targeting capabilities. Firing an ad out to "everyone" is a waste of money. Instead, think about the specific person who would be most interested in your offer. Consider:

• Demographics: Age, gender, location, language.
• Interests: Hobbies, pages they like, topics they follow (e.g., "digital marketing," "organic gardening," "Taylor Swift").
• Behaviors: Purchase behaviors, device usage, life events (e.g., "Recently Moved," "Engaged Shoppers").

Create a simple "customer persona" or a profile of your ideal customer. This will make the audience selection process much easier later on.

4. Your Ad Creative and Copy

This is what people will actually see. Your ad creative is the visual component – an image, a set of images in a carousel, or a video. Your ad copy is the text that goes with it. Get these ready in advance:

• Visuals: Make sure your images or videos are high-quality and eye-catching. A blurry photo or a shaky video won't stop anyone's scroll.
• Copy: Write a clear and concise headline, a main text description, and a call-to-action (CTA). Your copy should grab attention, explain your offer, and tell people exactly what you want them to do next (e.g., "Shop Now," "Learn More," "Sign Up").

Getting Started with Facebook Ads Manager

Facebook Ads Manager is your command center for creating, managing, and analyzing your ads. You can find it by going to facebook.com/adsmanager or looking for it in the menu on your Facebook home page.

When you first open it, you might feel a bit overwhelmed. Don't worry. The structure is simple once you understand the hierarchy:

• Campaigns: The highest level. This is where you set your advertising objective (your main goal).
• Ad Sets: These live inside a Campaign. This is where you define your targeting (audience), budget, schedule, and placements (where your ads appear).
• Ads: These live inside an Ad Set. This is the actual creative – the images, videos, and text that your audience sees.

Ready? Let's build your first campaign.

Step-by-Step: How to Create Your Facebook Ad Campaign

In Ads Manager, click the green "+ Create" button to start a new campaign. This will take you through the three-level creation process.

Level 1: The Campaign

First, you need to choose your campaign objective. This tells Facebook what you want to achieve, which helps its algorithm optimize your ad delivery for that specific outcome. The options are grouped into categories, but here are the most common ones for beginners:

• Traffic: Best if your goal is to send people to your website, blog post, or a specific landing page. Facebook will show your ad to people most likely to click on the link.
• Engagement: Ideal for getting more likes, comments, shares on a post, or for getting more Page likes. It’s great for building social proof.
• Leads: Use this if you want to collect contact information like email addresses. You can create an on-Facebook form that people can fill out without leaving the app.
• Sales: This is for you if your goal is direct e-commerce sales. Facebook will use its data to find people who are most likely to make a purchase. Note: This objective works best when you have the Meta Pixel installed on your website.

Choose the objective that best matches the goal you defined earlier. For this example, let's select Traffic.

After selecting your objective, you can name your Campaign, Ad Set, and Ad. Giving them clear, descriptive names will help you stay organized, especially as you run more campaigns over time (e.g., "July 2024 - Website Traffic - Blog Readers").

Level 2: The Ad Set (Targeting, Budget, and Placements)

This is where you tell Facebook who to show your ads to, how much you want to spend, and where the ads should appear. Let's break it down.

Traffic and Conversion

Because we chose the "Traffic" objective, Facebook asks where you want to drive traffic. In most cases, you'll select Website and then, later, input the specific URL.

Budget and Schedule

Here you set your spending limits. You have two options for your budget:

• Daily Budget: You set an average amount to spend each day. Facebook will try to hit this average over time, spending a bit more on high-opportunity days and less on others. This is great for ongoing, "evergreen" campaigns.
• Lifetime Budget: You set a total amount to spend over a specific period. You must set an end date for this. Facebook will pace your spending across the entire flight. This is good for promotions that have a clear start and end, like a holiday sale.

For your first campaign, a small daily budget (even $5 or $10) is a great way to start testing without much risk. You can also set a start and end date for your campaign.

Audience

This is the fun part. Using the customer persona you made earlier, you'll build your audience here. You can target based on:

• Location: Target people in countries, states, cities, or even a radius around a specific address.
• Age & Gender: Select the age range and gender of your target audience.
• Detailed Targeting: This is where you can add interests, behaviors, and demographics. Start typing in keywords related to your ideal customer. For example, if you sell high-end coffee beans, you might target people interested in "Starbucks," "Whole Foods Market," and "espresso." Facebook will even give you suggestions based on what you enter.

As you add targeting criteria, look at the "Audience Definition" widget on the right. It estimates your potential reach. You generally want this to be "Broad" enough to give Facebook room to optimize, but not so large that your ad is irrelevant to most people seeing it.

Placements

Placements are where your ads will appear across Meta’s apps and services. This includes the Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed, Instagram Stories, Messenger, and more.

• Advantage+ Placements (Recommended): This is the default setting, which lets Facebook automatically show your ads across all its available placements where they are most likely to perform best. For beginners, this is a great option.
• Manual Placements: This gives you full control. You can uncheck places you don't want your ad to appear. For example, you might decide to only run ads on Instagram Stories.

Unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise, stick with Advantage+ Placements to start.

Level 3: The Ad (Your Creative)

Finally, we get to build the ad itself. This is what your audience will see in their feed.

Format

Choose the format for your ad. Common choices include:

• Single Image or Video: The simplest and most common format.
• Carousel: A scrollable ad with two or more images or videos, each with its own headline, description, and link. Great for showcasing multiple products or features.
• Collection: An immersive, mobile-only format that opens into a full-screen experience when someone taps on it. Best for e-commerce brands with a catalog.

Ad Creative

This is where you'll upload your media (image or video) and write your ad copy.

• Media: Upload the image or video you prepared earlier. Facebook provides recommended sizes and specs, so be sure to check those for the best results.
• Primary Text: This is the main text that appears above your image or video. Make this engaging and provide context.
• Headline: A short, punchy sentence that appears below the visual, next to your CTA button.
• Description: A smaller bit of text that appears just below the headline (optional). You can use this to add extra details or create a sense of urgency.

As you fill in these fields, the ad preview on the right will update in real-time, showing you exactly how your ad will look on different placements.

Destination

Since our goal is to drive website traffic, you need to add the website URL you want to send people to. Double-check that this link works correctly!

Call to Action (CTA)

This is the button at the bottom of your ad that tells people what to do. Choose the one that best fits your goal. Options include "Learn More," "Shop Now," "Sign Up," "Contact Us," and many others. A relevant CTA can significantly improve your click-through rate.

Publishing Your Ad

Once you’ve configured everything at the Campaign, Ad Set, and Ad levels, take a moment to review everything. Click the green "Publish" button at the bottom right. Your ad will then be sent to Meta for review.

The review process is usually quick (sometimes minutes, sometimes a few hours) and checks to ensure your ad complies with Facebook’s Advertising Policies. Once approved, your ad will go live and start delivering according to the schedule you set. Congratulations, you've placed your first Facebook ad!

Final Thoughts

Creating your first Facebook ad is a huge step. By starting with a clear goal, a defined audience, and having your creative ready, you can move through Ads Manager methodically and launch your campaign with confidence. The real learning begins once your ad is live and you start seeing how people respond to it.

This is where analyzing performance becomes so important, but it often involves the painful process of downloading CSVs from Facebook Ads and trying to stitch them together with data from Google Analytics or Shopify. We built Graphed to eliminate that exact headache. You can connect your Facebook Ads account, along with all your other marketing and sales platforms, and build real-time performance dashboards just by asking questions in plain English - like "show me my Facebook ad spend vs. campaign revenue for this month." It turns hours of manual reporting into a 30-second conversation, so you can focus on making better decisions, not wrangling spreadsheets.