I’m a big fan of Facebook ads. Before Facebook, if you wanted to advertise the only option available for the most part was big budget, big business stuff. Think ads in magazines like Yoga Journal. The idea was to reach as many people as possible to try and reach the ones that mattered, or to influence the masses. Now, thanks to Facebook, you can simply laser in on who your dream customer is and target them specifically.

Another amazing part of marketing on Facebook is that there are no barriers to entry, budget-wise. You can set up an ad for 5$ a day, no problem. You can also stop it, pause it or change it at any time.

I know the ad manager can seem intimidating and it’s much easier to simply boost a post, but it really pays to get familiar with it because you have so many additional options (click here to read my post about Facebook boosts vs. Facebook ads). If you’re spending your hard-earned cash on ads, you’ll better make sure you get the most out of it, right?

In this post I want to show you how to set up your first Facebook ad. There are many more things you can do with Facebook ads like retargeting or video ads, but today I’m teaching you the basics so you can get started. So let’s dive right in.

Step #1 Write your ad copy

When you’re writing ad copy, I recommend starting with a question or a bold statement. Something that will grab attention instantly.

Another thing to keep in mind when it comes to Facebook ads is you want to keep it casual. Usually, people are on Facebook to be entertained. And if you can come up with some casual, really conversational copy, it tends to work best.

Put important details to the top so they don’t get cut off behind the read more link.

You can play with the length, too. I find that Facebook ads that are really long, in terms of copy, work really well. But other great marketeers use short copy that’s to the point. It’s best to experiment with what works for you and your audience.

Avoid discriminatory language. Don’t call out gender, age, race, or income or your ad won’t be approved. Also, avoid calling out users directly. For example, “Do you need to lose weight?” might not get approved by Facebook.

And finally, make sure to always include a call to action, the next step that you want people to make, for example, to learn more, buy now, or sign up.

Step #2 Create your ad images

Your images should be in the format 1200px x 628px. I recommend creating a template in Canva (*affiliate link) to design your images and download your images as PNGs. Facebook compresses your images quite strongly and I find that PNGs look better than JPGs.

When it comes to designing your images, pay attention to color. Color pops inside the news feed, which is where most of your ads will be placed. An image with a lot of white probably doesn’t work well as an ad, because it doesn’t stand out.

Be careful of too much text in your ad image. If you have too much text, Facebook won’t show your ad to as many people as you want them to show it to. You can test your image here with the Facebook image text check tool.

Here’s an example of an ad that worked really well for me. It’s an image where I look right at the camera and then I added a pink layer on top and added a headline and a button to get people to click.

#3 The Facebook Ad Manager

You need a Facebook page in order to have a Facebook ad account. When you have that, log into Facebook and go to http://facebook.com/ads/manage.

When you haven’t used the ad manager before you will be asked to set up your ad account with your business and payment details. You can also add more people to your ad account if you have someone to help you manage your ads.

Once you have set up your ad account, you will see the Ads Manager in your left navigation menu on your Facebook homepage.

In your ad manager you should see four tabs: Your account overview and then there are three levels of your Facebook ad creation, campaigns, ad sets, and ads.

The first thing you’re going to do is click the campaigns tab and then click the green create button.

Here switch to quick creation. This will open up a popup box and from here you’re going to set up your campaign.

First, choose a name for your campaign. This is only internal, meaning you’re going to be the only one that sees this information.

#4 Choose your campaign objective

The objectives that are most relevant for you will be traffic and conversion. Choose conversions when you want people to take action, like signing up for a workshop. If you’re promoting a yoga retreat, I’d recommend choosing traffic as an objective because people who look for yoga retreats mostly don’t sign up right away. They will search for offers, have a look at different retreats, maybe share it with a friend, bookmark the page and come back later or ask for more information before they actually book their space. By choosing traffic as an objective, I’m telling Facebook, hey, send me a lot of really quality traffic. Once they get there if they’re interested, they’ll get in touch for more information. It’s also simpler – to set up a conversion objective, you’ll need to install a Facebook pixel on your website first, I’ll cover that in one of my next articles.

#5 Set up your ad set

The ad set is about setting up your budget, targeting, and placement of the ad. Name the ad set based on who you’re targeting, for example, Women 30-35 UK. For traffic choose Website.

Ignore Dynamic Creative and move on to budget and schedule. You can set a daily budget or a lifetime budget. I recommend setting a daily budget and starting small, for example with 5$ or 10$. This allows you to test different ad sets and see what works best, and then you can deactivate the ad sets that are not performing so well and increase the daily budget for the ad sets that are working best.

Don’t forget to set an end date so your ads are not accidentally still running when your event is already over.

Next, you’re going to set up your targeting, what people you want to reach. You can define the location, age, gender, and language of your target audience and add things like demographics, interests, behaviors, or even job titles.

If you just choose “yoga”, the target group will be much too big, and you should narrow it down. Choose a style of yoga, an interest like yoga girl, or that they like a page like doyouyoga or yoga journal.

Next, click on edit placements and choose all devices. For your first ad keep it simple:  Choose Facebook feed and right column and ignore Instagram, audience network, and Messenger.

# 6 Set up your ad

The ad is all about the creative: the link, the ad copy, and the ad image.

Name your ad based on your image, for example, yoga Retreat Greece yoga class image. That way you know what image you used for this ad campaign.

Connect your ad to your Facebook page. If you have multiple Facebook pages, you’ll see a dropdown where you can select the page.

Upload your image and paste in your text, your link, your headline, and your news feed link description.

The text is above the actual ad image and the headline is right below the ad image. The display link is the URL that your audience is actually going to see.

Finally, choose your call-to-action button. I mostly use ‘learn more’.

#7 Publish your ad

Once your ad is set up via all three levels – campaign, ad set, and ad – it’s time to publish your ad.

After you’ve sent it to Facebook, they’re going to review your ad and will start it, or they send you a message when it’s been rejected.

You can pause or stop your campaign at any time. I recommend waiting for at least 24 hours before making any changes, this gives the Facebook algorithm a little time to optimize your ad delivery and give you the best results.

And that’s it, you did it! We went through the entire step-by-step process of setting up your Facebook ad inside the Ads Manager. I know that was a lot to cover, so well done!