How to Run a Facebook Ad

Running your first Facebook ad doesn't have to be complicated, but it's easy to feel overwhelmed by all the options inside Meta’s Ads Manager. This guide will walk you through setting up and launching a successful Facebook ad campaign from start to finish. We'll cover everything from the basic campaign structure to building your audience and designing an ad that gets results.

Before You Get Started: The Essentials

Before you dive into creating ads, you need a few things in place. Taking care of these prerequisites first will make the entire process much smoother.

1. A Facebook Business Page

You can't run ads from a personal Facebook profile. Ads must be linked to a business page. If you don't have one, creating it is your first step. Make sure your page is filled out completely with a profile picture, cover photo, description, and contact information. This builds credibility when users see your ad and click through to your page.

2. Access to Meta Ads Manager

Meta Ads Manager is the control center for all your advertising activity on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. You can typically access it by going to facebook.com/adsmanager. If you've never used it before, you may need to complete a brief setup process to confirm your account details and payment method.

3. A Clear Goal

What do you want to achieve with this ad? Don't start spending money without knowing what success looks like. Your goal could be anything from getting more website traffic, generating leads for your sales team, or driving online sales. A clear objective will guide every decision you make during the campaign setup.

4. Your Target Audience

Who are you trying to reach? The more specific you are, the better. Think beyond basic demographics like age and gender. Consider their interests, behaviors, and what problems your product or service solves for them. For example, instead of "women aged 25-45," a more refined audience might be "women aged 25-45 in Toronto who are interested in yoga and sustainable fashion."

5. Ad Creative and Copy

Finally, you need the ad itself. This includes:

• Visuals: A high-quality image or video that grabs attention.
• Copy: The text for your ad, including a headline and primary description. Your copy should speak directly to your target audience and include a clear call-to-action (CTA).

Have these ready before you start building the campaign so you can easily plug them in.

Understanding Facebook's Campaign Structure

Facebook organizes its ads into a clear hierarchy with three levels. Understanding this structure is fundamental to running effective campaigns.

Think of it like a Russian nesting doll:

• Campaign: The outermost layer. This is where you set the overall advertising objective or goal, like "Sales" or "Traffic."
• Ad Set: The middle layer, living inside a campaign. This is where you define your audience, budget, schedule, auction bidding, and placement (i.e., where your ads will appear). You can have multiple Ad Sets within a single Campaign, each targeting a different audience.
• Ad: The innermost layer, living inside an ad set. This is the actual creative - the image, video, and text copy - that people see. You can have multiple ads within an ad set, allowing you to test which creative resonates best with your audience.

For example, you could have a "Summer Sale" Campaign. Inside it, you could have two Ad Sets: one targeting past website visitors and another targeting a new audience based on interests. Then, inside each of those Ad Sets, you might have two different Ads: one with a product photo and another with a short video.

How to Run a Facebook Ad: a Step-by-Step Guide

With the prep work done and the campaign structure understood, you're ready to build your first campaign. Log in to Meta Ads Manager and click the green "+ Create" button to get started.

Step 1: Choose Your Campaign Objective

Facebook will ask you to choose a campaign objective first. This tells Meta’s algorithm what you're trying to achieve, so it can optimize your campaign to get you the best results. The options are grouped into categories:

• Awareness: Best for getting your brand in front of as many people as possible. Good for top-of-funnel goals.
• Traffic: Aims to send people to a specific destination, like your website, blog post, or app.
• Engagement: Encourages people to interact with your post (likes, comments, shares), page, or event.
• Leads: Helps you collect information from potential customers, often through an on-platform form or by starting a Messenger conversation.
• App Promotion: Designed to get more people to install and use your mobile app.
• Sales: Focused on driving conversions, like product purchases or service bookings on your website. For this to work effectively, you'll need the Meta Pixel installed on your site to track actions.

Choose the objective that most closely matches the goal you defined earlier.

Step 2: Define Your Ad Set Details

After selecting your objective, you’ll move to the Ad Set level. This is where you'll make some of the most important decisions for your campaign.

Audience Targeting

This is where you define exactly who will see your ads. You can use a combination of factors:

• Location: Target by country, region, city, or even a specific address radius.
• Demographics: Refine by age, gender, and language.
• Detailed Targeting: This is the powerful part. You can target people based on their interests (e.g., pages they’ve liked), behaviors (e.g., purchase activity), and more detailed demographic information (e.g., job titles, life events). Play around and see what’s available.
• Custom Audiences: This is more advanced, but you can also create audiences based on your own data, such as an email list, people who have visited your website, or users who have engaged with your Facebook page.

Budget & Schedule

Here you'll tell Facebook how much you want to spend and for how long. You have two primary options:

• Daily Budget: Facebook will aim to spend this amount on average each day. It’s flexible and good for ongoing campaigns.
• Lifetime Budget: You set a total budget for the entire duration of the ad set. Facebook will pace the spending over your chosen start and end dates.

Begin with a budget you're comfortable with. You can spend as little as a few dollars per day. You can also set a start and end date for your ad set to run, which is a good practice to avoid accidentally overspending.

Placements

Placements are where your ads will appear across Meta’s family of apps and services. You have two options:

• Advantage+ Placements (Recommended): This allows Facebook’s algorithm to automatically show your ads across all available placements (Facebook Feed, Instagram Stories, Messenger, etc.) where they are most likely to perform well. This is the best option for most advertisers.
• Manual Placements: You can hand-pick exactly where you want your ads to show. You might use this if you have a video that’s specifically designed for Instagram Reels, for example, and don't want it appearing elsewhere.

Step 3: Design Your Ad Creative

Now for the fun part: creating the ad that users will see. In this final Ad level, you’ll confirm your identity (the Facebook page your ad is from), and set up the ad format and creative.

1. Ad Format

Choose the format that best suits your message:

• Single Image or Video: The most common ad format. Simple and effective.
• Carousel: Showcase up to 10 images or videos in a single ad, each with its own link. Great for e-commerce, showing multiple products, or telling a multi-part story.
• Collection: An immersive mobile experience where users can browse multiple products after clicking the ad.

2. Ad Creative

This section is where you upload your media (images/videos) and write your ad copy.

• Media: Upload the image or video you prepared earlier. Make sure it's high-quality and formatted for mobile screens, as that's where most people will see it.
• Primary Text: This is the main text that appears above your image or video. Keep it engaging and concise.
• Headline: A short, punchy line of text that appears beside or below your creative. This is your chance to grab their attention.
• Description: A brief supplemental text that may appear below the headline. You can use this to add extra context or social proof.

3. Destination and Call-to-Action

Where do you want to send people after they click your ad? Enter the website URL in the Destination field. Then, select a Call-to-Action (CTA) button. Choose one that aligns with your goal, like "Learn More," "Shop Now," "Sign Up," or "Contact Us."

Step 4: Publish and Monitor

Once you’re happy with everything, hit the green "Publish" button. Your ad will go into a review process, where Meta checks to make sure it complies with their advertising policies. This usually takes anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.

After it's approved and live, don't just set it and forget it. Check in on your campaign in Ads Manager every day or two. Pay attention to a few basic metrics:

• Amount Spent: Keep an eye on your budget.
• Reach: The number of unique people who have seen your ad.
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage of people who saw your ad and clicked on it. A higher CTR often means your creative is resonating.
• Cost per Result: How much it’s costing you to achieve your objective (e.g., cost per link click or cost per purchase). This is perhaps the most important metric for judging campaign success.

Facebook advertising involves a lot of learning and testing. Your first campaign might not be a massive success, and that’s okay. The key is to launch, monitor, and learn what works for your business and your audience.

Final Thoughts

This walkthrough covers the entire process of launching a Facebook ad campaign - from essential prep work and understanding the core structure to building your ad and monitoring its performance. With this foundation, you have everything you need to start experimenting and finding what works for your business.

Once your ads are running, analyzing their performance alongside your other marketing efforts can be time-consuming. Instead of manually exporting reports from Facebook and cross-referencing them with data in Google Analytics or Shopify, we built Graphed to connect all your data sources automatically. You can ask simple questions in plain English, like "Show me my Facebook ad spend vs. my Shopify revenue last month," and get a real-time dashboard instantly, giving you a clear view of your return on ad spend without having to wrestle with spreadsheets.