A "How To" Guide to Facebook Ads

This isn’t a usual “How To” guide for Facebook ads.

If you’re expecting an “A to Z Guide” to setting up your first campaign, this post is not that (although I do have a mammoth post coming up soon that will interest you) . However, over the the last 2 months I’ve been keeping a track of all the “How To” queries I see coming up in my search console impression data, and I thought it may be useful to put the ones that have cropped up a lot over October and November together in one compendium post.

As such, there isn’t a real “structure” to this post, per se; rather, it’s just a collection of questions and answers. I hope you find it useful.

Real “How To” Questions about Facebook Ads, from Real People (The November 2018 Edition)

Question 1: How to create facebook ads account?

For the purposes of this answer, I’m going to suggest that (if you haven’t already) you set up a Business Manager account prior to creating your Facebook Ads account. Here’s how you can do that:

Setting up Facebook Business Manager Account

1. 1. Go to Business Manager Overview.
   2. Click Create Account.
   3. Enter your business name.
   4. Enter your business email.

You’ll then be redirected to your newly created Business Manager, where you’ll be able to add assets like your Facebook page (that you’ll be advertising from) and your new ad account.

From there, your first step will be to add your Facebook page to your business manager account.

To add a Facebook Page:

1. Go to Business Manager Settings.
2. Under the People and Assets tab, select “Pages”
3. Click on “Add New Page”
4. Select one of the 3 options: “Claim a Page” (if you have a pre-existing page you manage), “Request Access to a Page” (if you’re going to be advertising on behalf of someone else) or “Create a New Page” (if you don’t have one already!)
5. If you choose to request access or claim a Page, enter the Facebook page name or URL

From there, you’re then going to add an account to your Business Manager.

To add an advertising account to your Business Manager:

1. Open your Business Manager Settings.
2. Under the People and Assets tab, click on “Ad Accounts”
3. On the right side of the page, select “Add New Ad Accounts”
4. Choose one of the 3 options: “Claim Ad Account” (if you have one set up already… but if that was the case, you wouldn’t be searching this in the first place!), “Request Access to an Ad Account” (if you are advertising on behalf of someone else and want to use their account) or “Create a New Ad Account” (which is what you’ll want if you were searching for this in the first place!)
5. If you choose to request access or claim an ad account, enter the ad account ID. (Learn where to find the account ID)

After that you’ll want to complete you ad account details.

To update your Facebook ad account details and payment info:

1. Navigate your Business Manager menu and click on “Ad Account Settings”
2. Fill in all the blanks by entering your company’s name, address, and other relevant information.
3. Navigate to the “Billing & Payment Methods” in the Business Manager menu.
4. Click on the green “Add Payment Method” button
5. Choose the method you want to add
6. Fill in your information
7. Click on “Continue”

Aaaaand… you’re done.

Question 2: How to contact Facebook about ads?

This one is fairly simple. Go to Facebook’s support page here. Depending on the time and day of week, you’ll either find an email option or a live chat option on the page. Live chat is great, and the support team are usually very helpful.

Question 3: How to track facebook ads in google analytics

I found this one interesting when it cropped up, because the process here is the same as any other channel:

1. Use a URL builder to create parameters. There are many of these online, but you can use Google’s own version here. It has step-by-step instructions on how to use it.
2. You input the destination URL (where you want your ad to click through to), and then define things like “source” and “medium”. You can type in “facebook” for source, and this will then record in your analytics.
3. Generate the new URL for your ad and input it into the ad creative.
4. Track performance in Google Analytics, by clicking on “Acquisitions” > “All Traffic” > “Source/Medium”. Your Facebook results will show up there, which you can further segment by campaign name etc.

Question 4: How to A/B test facebook ads

Facebook makes this super simple from the get-go.

1. In Ads Manager, choose the marketing objective for your campaign.
2. Select Create Split Test.
3. Click Continue.
4. In the Variable section, choose the variable you want to test. You can test one variable at a time.
5. Make additional choices based on the variable you’re going to test:
   • If you choose audience as your variable: Under the audience section, select a saved audience or create a new one for each ad set.
   • If you choose delivery optimization as your variable: Under the delivery optimization section, select your delivery and bid strategies for each ad set.
   • If you choose placements as your variable: Under the placements section, select whether you would like automatic placements or choose your placements to customize where ads are shown.
   • If you choose creative as your variable: Finish setting up your ad set and click Continue. Set up different versions of your ad at the ad level.
   • If you choose product set as your variable: Choose the product sets you want to test (up to 5) and then make your selection for audience.
6. In the Budget & Schedule section, choose a budget.
7. In the Split sub-section, choose if you want your budget to be split evenly (Even Split) or unevenly (Weighted Split) between the ad sets you’re testing. If you choose a weighted split, you also have to choose what percentage of your budget you want assigned to each ad set.
8. Choose a duration for your test. It must be between 1 and 30 days. Your test can start today or at a future date you set.
9. Click Continue once you’ve finished setting up your ad sets.
10. Set up your ads and place your order.

Your test will start on the date you specified. When it’s over, you’ll get an email and notification with the results.

Question 5: How to target facebook ads by employer

Ah… looking to lure away prospective staff, are you? Well, after a brief hiatus in this targeting, Facebook has made this easy again. Per their latest announcement:

We’re excited to share that new interest segments to reach professional audiences that are now available in our ads interfaces. Additionally, we’ll also be doing a phased rollout of a number of reinstating targeting options for Job titles, Employers, Field of Study and Education.

You can find these segments under:

• Page Admins: Behaviors targeting > Digital activities > Facebook page admins
• Employer Targeting: Demographics > Work > Employers
• Job Title Targeting: Demographics > Work > Job Titles
• School Targeting: Demographics > Education > Schools
• Field of Study Targeting: Demographics > Education > Field of Study

Question 6: How to estimate Facebook Ads budget?

This one is a bit of a “how long is a piece of string” question, but the short answer to the process here is to:

1. Determine your revenue goal
2. Determine your average order value
3. This gives you your needed number of sales
4. Estimate your expected conversion rate from visitors to sales
5. This will tell you how many visitors you need
6. Estimate your average cost per click based on your industry
7. This will tell you the budget required to get the desired number of clicks

This is of course, very simplified and is not substitute for testing. With that said, I’ve provided a simple Google docs spreadsheet that contains a Ad spend calculator here… give it a crack yourself!

Question 7: How to manage comments on a Facebook ad?

This is a really important consideration, but so often a step that is ignored. Once your ad is out in the Facebook ether, you have to make sure you are monitoring and managing comments on the ad itself! Not only could you be responding to and amplifying positive comments, but if the responses go the other way, you’ll need to stay on top of negative comments to ensure that your prospective customers aren’t being turned off!

Here’s how you do that:

1. Go to your Ads Manager.
2. Click the All Campaigns dropdown, and then select All Ads.
3. Click on the name of the ad you’d like to preview. You should now see a preview of your ad on the right side.
4. Click the eye symol. This opens the Ad Preview
5. Click View post permalink with comments.

Question 8: How to create facebook carousel ads

1. Go to Ads Manager.
2. Click the + Create button to open Guided Creation.
3. Choose an objective that supports carousel. The only objectives you can’t use are engagement and video views.
4. At the ad level, choose Carousel as your ad format.
5. (Optional) If you don’t want your ad’s carousel cards ordered based on their performance, click to uncheck the box next to Automatically show the best performing cards first.
6. Click the numbered boxes to upload your image and fill in the details of the first card. You can also add specific URLs and descriptions for each image.
7. Repeat the step above with each box until finished.
8. Click Confirm.

Question 9: How to keep social proof on Facebook ads/reuse previous ads and keep likes

Nice question, anonymous reader! Social proof is an important factor in reducing CPMs and increasing likely exposure of your ad. Here’s how you do it:

1. In business manager, choose “Page Posts” from the drop down
2. Find the post or ad that you are looking to reuse
3. Copy the ID showing in the ID column
4. Go back to ad creation process as you normally would
5. Here’s where the process changes. Click the “Use Existing Post” tab, instead of “Create New Ad”
6. Paste your post ID in the input field and click submit