[ Easy ] Facebook Ads Guide for Entrepreneurs

The Facebook Ads Guide that shows Entrepreneurs…

…how to set up highly converting ads for their business to get more clients…

You need to be able to communicate with your audience of business clients and to be able to capture their attention with your incredible business offer.  The best way to find them is using Facebook Ads to drive traffic back to your business blog.

I’m going to revert back to Principle #1 of the 3 most important principles you need to know to have any level of success getting more clients for your business, if you haven’t learned these 3 principles or need a refresher, click or tap to go to the complete offer guide or go straight to the 3 most important principles.

Principle #1: Increase the Number of Business Clients

You have to promote your business offer to the right client audience. The more communication you have with your current or potential business client, the greater number of sales opportunities you will lead them into. This is the only way you’re going to increase the number of business clients you can sell to.

This guide was put together because there are a lot of Ultimate Facebook Ad Guides, Step-by-Step Facebook Ad Guides, DIY Facebook Ad Guides, or general Facebook Ad Guides with the same tips, tricks, and secret strategies, but I couldn’t find any that were focused, specific, and informative enough, like this Facebook Ad Guide for Entrepreneurs, filled with do-it-yourself, step-by-step walkthroughs on how to create a new business offer ad campaign, how to edit an existing business offer ad campaign, and more importantly, how to setup your business offer ad campaigns for your own business.

This Facebook Ad Guide isn’t just for your business and getting more clients, it can effectively be used for any reason where you need the power of Facebook ads to reach your current and future clients.

Get Started with Your Facebook Ads for Entrepreneurs

Using Facebook Ads is a great way to reach your existing clients and find new ones by using the largest social network on the planet.  To get started, it’s easy, just login to your Facebook account and you can begin the process of getting more clients.

Navigate to Ad Accounts

Anyone that creates a Facebook account has access to setup ads to run across all of the Facebook network properties and partners.  As soon as you login, if you open up the settings menu, you will see the “Manage Ads” option, highlight and click or tap it to navigate to the Ad Accounts page.

Navigate to Ads Manager

Once your on the Ad Accounts page, you will then see a list of accounts that you can use to setup, edit, and monitor all of your ad campaigns.  Most users only have one ad account, so that account will show up on this page.  There are some users that setup multiple ad accounts or manage those of their clients, so those would be listed on this page as well.

Click or tap on the ad account of your choice to be taken to the Ads Manager.

Ads Manager

Your Facebook account will allow access to the Ads Manager, which is where you setup, edit, and monitor all of your ad campaigns.  In the Ads Manager, your going to notice multiple tabs:

• Account Overview:  Facebook puts together a snap shot of the results from all of your business ad campaigns, the demographic data of you client, and the breakdown of your objectives.
• Campaigns:  Your going to see a listing of your Active, Inactive, In Draft, and Pending business ad campaigns listed in default order of age, along with filters for organization and locating specific items.
• Ad Sets:  Your going to see a listing of your Active, Inactive, In Draft, and Pending business ad sets listed in default order of age, along with filters for organization and locating specific items.
• Ads:  Your going to see a listing of your Active, Inactive, In Draft, and Pending business ads listed in default order of age, along with filters for organization and locating specific items.

Navigate to Business Manager

If you manage multiple Facebook pages for your business that help to support your efforts to get clients, then the Business Manager is going to be where you can organize all of these assets, including your ad accounts.

Click or tap on the “Go to Business Manager” link located at the top of the page to be taken to the Business Manager.

Navigate to Ads Manager

From the Business Manager page, your going to see your list of ad accounts and pages that are associated with your Facebook account.  You will also see ad accounts and pages that have been entrusted to you, from other Facebook accounts.

Click or tap on the ad account of your choice to be taken to the Ads Manager.

Ads Manager

Whether you navigated to the Ads Manager from the Ad Account page or the Business Manager page, you will need to make sure that the correct account is being displayed in order to manage your chosen ad campaigns.  You can do this by expanding the drop down located at the top, where you will see a list of all of the ad account names and ids that are associated with your Facebook account.

Account Overview

On the Account Overview tab your going to find all the relevant information about your Facebook ad campaigns.  This information is grouped in sections to give you a basic overview of your ad campaign results and for your desired date range.  You can further manipulate the data in each section by choosing multiple actions to change the output.

Campaign Results

• Frequency:  The average number of times each client saw your ad.
• Unique Link Clicks:  The number of clients who performed a link click.
• Reach:  The number of clients who saw your ads at least once. Reach is different from impressions, which may include multiple views of your ads by the same client.
• Amount Spent:  The estimated total amount of money you’ve spent on your campaign, ad set, or ad during its schedule.

Demographics

• Age and Gender:  The data is going to be split between genders and broken up into client age groups.

Hour

• Time of Day:  At each hourly interval, you can see the actions that your client completed.

Location

• Country, Region, DMA:  View the concentration of your clients actions within your desired location type.

Account

• Business:  View the data results for each of your individual ad accounts.

List of Campaigns

On the Campaigns tab, your going to find general information about each of your Facebook ad campaigns.  There’s going to be a listing of all Active, Inactive, In Draft, and Pending ad campaigns, along with a basic overview of your results and for your desired date range.  The data for each ad campaign also consists of information that will help you to make strategic decisions, such as results, reach, impressions, and cost per result.

The information your going to see at the campaign level is important because you may have multiple ad campaigns running at the same time, testing several different objectives, such as client lead generation, business brand awareness, or client retargeting.

Navigate to Edit Campaign Window

If you didn’t finish creating your campaign using the Quick Creation or Guided Creation process, than the “Edit” link will take you to where you left off.  If you did finish the process of creating an ad campaign, than you will be able to make changes to the campaign.

Go to Finish Creating Your Facebook Business Ad Campaign, or go to Edit Your Facebook Business Ad Campaign.

List of Ad Sets

On the Ad Sets tab, your going to find specific information about each ad set that is associated with your selected Facebook ad campaign.  There’s going to be a listing of all Active, Inactive, In Draft, and Pending ad sets, along with a basic overview of your results and for your desired date range.  The data for each ad set also consists of information that will help you to make strategic decisions, such as results, reach, impressions, and cost per result.

The information your going to see at the ad set level is important because you may have multiple ad sets running at the same time, testing several different client audiences or demographic configurations.

Navigate to Edit Ad Set Window

If you didn’t finish creating your ad set using the Quick Creation or Guided Creation process, than the “Edit” link will take you to where you left off.  If you did finish the process of creating an ad set, than you will be able to make changes to the ad set.

Go to Finish Creating Your Facebook Business Ad Campaign, or go to Edit Your Facebook Business Ad Campaign Ad Set.

List of Ads

On the Ads tab, your going to find detailed information about each ad that is associated with your selected Facebook ad campaign and ad set.  There’s going to be a listing of all Active, Inactive, In Draft, and Pending Review ads, along with a basic overview of your results and for your desired date range.  The data for each ad also consists of information that will help you to make strategic decisions, such as results, reach, impressions, and cost per result.

The information your going to see at the ad level is important because you may have multiple ads running at the same time, testing several variants of your business offer, business blog landing page, or ads with different client messaging.

Navigate to Edit Ad Window

If you didn’t finish creating your ad using the Quick Creation or Guided Creation process, than the “Edit” link will take you to where you left off.  If you did finish the process of creating an ad, than you will be able to make changes to the ad.

Go to Finish Creating Your Facebook Business Ad Campaign, or go to Edit Your Facebook Business Ad Campaign Ad.

Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure

In order to effectively and efficiently manage the Facebook ad campaigns for your business that are going to get clients, your going to have to organize them in the best way possible.  Each of your business ad campaigns are made up of three parts: Campaign, Ad Set, and Ad.  All of these parts together are known as your ad campaign structure and its purpose is to help you to set your goal, identify your client audience, configure your ad delivery, and choose the right message to get more clients.  As long as you know what your trying to get your client to do, then each of these pieces can be configured in different ways to help you achieve that goal.

Segmentation and Organization of Your Business Ad Campaigns

It’s important that we go over how you can organize your ad campaigns based on a campaign-level client audience segmentation or ad set-level delivery configuration. The average business advertiser on Facebook isn’t going to have very many ad campaigns running at any one time. Most businesses will run ( 1 ) ad campaign to drive website traffic or conversions to their business blog, ( 1 ) retargeting ad campaign to get those client to return, and ( 2-3 ) seasonal ad campaigns.

So, using this example, you can choose to organize using a campaign-level client audience segmentation, where your client audience might be broken up, for example into ( 3 ) segments, so you would have ( 3 ) separate ad campaigns to accommodate for this. On the other hand, if you were to use an ad set-level delivery configuration method, you would distinguish between these ( 3 ) segments by creating ( 3 ) separate ad sets.

Using a campaign-level approach keeps your objectives, segmented client audiences, configurations, and ad messages confined, but your going to have to manage more ad campaigns. The alternative, using an ad set-level approach, your going to have separate ad sets for different client audience segments, plus individual configurations, so your going to have more to manage inside each ad campaign. Either approach will work for your business ad campaigns, and both will achieve your desired result to get clients, it really comes down to what’s your preference to start or continue with your Facebook advertising.

Campaign:  The Objective for Your Business Offer

When you setup your business offer ad campaign, you want to make sure you have a focus, to use an analogy, were going to refer to this as your destination.  Your going to choose your campaign objective, such as Brand Awareness, Website Traffic, or Conversions. If you want to get a better understanding of each of the campaign objectives, go to Guided Creation – Choose Your Campaign Objective.  The objective is important, because it’s the action that you want your client to perform and it’s that action that your going to use to measure whether your business offer ad campaign is working.  So, having this clear objective will allow you to better configure your ad set and ad.

To get started on setting up your campaign, go to Guided Creation – Setup Campaign.

Ad Set:  Ad Delivery Conditions For Your Client Audience

To continue with our analogy, if your business offer ad campaign is the destination, then your ad set is the road that leads you to that destination.  When you configure your ad set, your going to tell Facebook exactly how you want your ad to be delivered, where you want your ad to be delivered, and to which client audience you want your ad to be delivered to.  Aside from the various options you can choose to have your ad delivered, it’s your client audience that is the key, so, for a more detailed explanation of how to select and create a Saved Audience, go to Save Your Business Client Audience for Targeting, or how to create a Custom Audience. go to Retarget Your Business Client Using Custom Audiences, or how to create a Lookalike Audience, go to Expand Your Business Client Reach Using Lookalike Audiences.

To further help in organizing your business offer ad campaign, you can create multiple ad sets, each having separate ad delivery configurations, budgets, and client audiences.  This is important, because if you go back to what your objective is, or what your trying to get your client to do, then by using separate ad set configurations and client audiences, you can identify which is working better, which ultimately will save your business money.

With your campaign setup, you can get started on setting up your ad set, go to Guided Creation – Setup Ad Set.

Ad:  The Variant Message to Your Client Audience

Finally, using our analogy, with the objective being your destination and your ad set as the road to that destination, then your ad is the exit sign on that road leading directly to that destination. Part of your ad is contingent on your ad set configuration, so the type can consist of varying images, video, and text, of which is delivered to your client audience, with your message. How you choose to have your ad delivered to your client audience is just as important as the message your trying to send, because, while you want to get clients for your business, you still have to think about if it’s the right time and the right place.

Just like how you can have multiple ad sets to organize your ad delivery configurations and client audiences, you can have multiple ads with different creative elements and messages. So, your not confined to just one type of ad or a specific choice of design, and more importantly, a single message. You adjust your ad according to the ad delivery configuration and client audience of the ad set, further helping your business achieve your objective.

After you’ve setup your campaign and ad set, you can get started on setting up your ad, go to Guided Creation – Setup Ad.

Naming

Similar to organizing your business ad campaigns, ad sets, and ads, in order to identify which configuration and client audience is better at meeting your objective, choosing the right naming convention is just as important as your Facebook advertising increases to get more clients. Being able to immediately identify from which business offer ad campaign your results are coming from will help you to make informed decisions about their results. Having a standard that you follow will allow you to batch together similar objectives, configurations, and client audiences, but even if your just running a single or multiple ongoing business offer ad campaigns, it’s worth the effort to learn today and set the rule for tomorrow for a proper naming convention.

In general, you want to make sure you use a keyword, or multiple keywords, and not whole sentences in your naming convention. Use these keywords consistently, so that as you grow your business ad campaigns, they are easy to compare against each other when your looking at like business offers, objectives, and results. It’s your decision as to how you might want to separate these keywords, for instance you can use underscores, “_”, backslashes, “/”, pipes, “|”, or hyphens, “-“, this way you can easily read each name and come to a quick conclusion as to what it contains.

Naming Your Business Offer Campaign

At the ad campaign level, the most important pieces of information that your going to want to add to your business offer ad campaign name are the following:

• Stage: Is this ad campaign a first exposure to your business offer, if so, you can use the keyword “First“. If this is a retargeted ad campaign, you can add the keyword “Retarget“.
• Version: Identify whether this is a “Post“, which is when you share content on your Facebook Page, or a “Paid Post“, which is when you pay to have your shared content boosted to your client audience, or a “Paid Ad“, which has the intended purpose of promoting your business offer.
• Theme: If this is a “Post” or “Paid Post“, you can use the name of the post ( i.e. The Business Solution You Need ), if this is a “Paid Ad“, you can use the theme of the ad campaign ( i.e. Get More Clients ).
• Objective: Use the objective that you have chosen for your ad campaign ( i.e. Website Traffic ).

So, for a paid post, your business boosted blog post ad campaign name would look like this:

First – Paid Post – The Business Solution You Need – Boost

So, for a paid ad, your business offer ad campaign name would look like this:

First – Paid Ad – Get More Clients – Website Traffic

Naming Your Business Offer Ad Set

At the ad set level, the most important pieces of information that your going to want to add to your business offer ad set name are the following:

• Platform:  Are you targeting a client audience of “Desktop“, “Mobile“, or “Desktop + Mobile” users?
• Format:  If your focusing on one particular ad format, then add it to be able to compare between different ad sets  ( i.e. Single Image, Carousel, Video )
• Audience:  Describe the client audience that your targeting.  ( i.e. Current Clients )
• Geography:  What geographical location are you targeting?  ( i.e. United States )
• Gender:  What gender type are you targeting?  ( i.e. Male + Female )
• Age:  What age group are you targeting? ( i.e. 18-35 )

So, for a Paid Post, your business boosted blog post ad set name would look like this:

Desktop + Mobile – Single Image – Current Clients – United States – Male + Female – 18-35

So, for a Paid Ad, your business offer ad set name would look like this:

Mobile – Video – Current Clients – United States – Male + Female – 35-55

Naming Your Business Offer Ad

At the ad level, the most important pieces of information that your going to want to add to your business offer ad name are the following:

• Theme:  You can repeat the ad campaign theme to help you when you compare ads across different ad campaigns or ad sets ( i.e. The Business Solution You Need, Get More Clients )
• Format:  Add the name of the ad format that you have chosen for your ad ( i.e. Single Image, Carousel, Video )
• Message:  Identify the message that your choosing ( i.e. I’m the Best Entrepreneur, Your Business Solutions Provider )

So, for a Paid Post, your business boosted blog post ad name would look like this:

The Business Solution You Need – Single Image – I’m the Best Entrepreneur

So, for a Paid Ad, your business offer ad name would look like this:

Get More Clients – Video – Your Business Solutions Provider

Setup Your Business Ad Campaign Tracking

Before you start spending money advertising on Facebook, you want to make sure that you can track the results of your business ad campaigns. If you fail to follow the basic standards of ad campaign tracking, then your not going to know if your reaching the objectives that you have set for your business offer ad campaigns. This could lead to a big problem, which is, your not going to be able to attribute any revenue that you generate back to a specific ad campaign configuration. The difference between a standard business offer ad campaign and one that is both, successful, and able to get clients, is the ability to scale that success. You can’t do this without gathering the right data and using it to make the right decisions.

Analytics Software

If your going to gather data from the results of your business offer ad campaigns, you’re going to need to be able to see that data in a report. This type of reporting is managed by analytics software that uses technology to acquire the data from your business blog, saves that data in a database, then finally gives you the ability to create reports that are modifiable to show you the information that you need to be able to make smart decisions.

There are a variety of analytics software that are available, but one of the most robust options, is Google Analytics. It’s a proven software package that you should be using for your business blog to track user behavior, but it also is able to keep track of your ad campaign data. The best part of Google Analytics, it’s Free, and it’s supported by Google and non-Google developers and experts.

Tracking Code ( Your Tag )

Tags have a dual meaning, depending upon who is asking, a tag can be considered as one of the elements, such as <body>, <p>, <li>, <blockquote>, used to direct a web browser on how to organize and draw a page from your business blog. Alternatively, Google Analytics uses a global site tag, or JavaScript snippet, that is installed on your business blog to communicate information about your client visit that can later be viewed in their reporting interface.  In our case, the tag or JavaScript snippet, is going to be your Google Analytics tracking code along with a tracking ID that is assigned to an account and property that is associated with your business blog.

Google Analytics Global Site Tag

Google Analytics offers a global site tag to be installed on your business so it can keep track of your clients.  This is important, because you want to be able to to keep track of the results of your Facebook ad campaigns, while also making informed decisions based on your client behaviors.

Your going to need to create a web property in Google Analytics to begin receiving, storing, and organizing specific information about your client visits to your business blog. A web property will let Google Analytics know that the information that it’s receiving for tracking is related specifically to businessdomain.com. When you create the web property, Google Analytics will generate a unique tracking id that is going to be used with your tag that will be installed on businessdomain.com. Since, Google Analytics allows you to create and manage multiple web properties, you need to make sure that the tag that your working with has the correct tracking id for your businessdomain.com blog.

Navigate to Google Analytics Website

To get started and get your Google Analytics tag, you need to navigate to analytics.google.com.  If you don’t have a Google Analytics account already, you can set it up there as well.

Google Analytics Home

Once your logged into Google Analytics, your going to see the home screen, which will show you a handful of data that your tag has retrieved and delivered back to the analytics servers.  Since this is more than likely your first time reaching this home screen, your probably going to see “0” throughout the data results.  But, if it’s not your first time or if you already have a tag installed on your business blog, your going to see your client visit results.  You also may be seeing an accumulated report on the home screen, which can consist of all of your web properties, so your going to want to click or tap next to “All Accounts” to open up the Google Analytics Suite window to choose your business blog property.

Choose Google Analytics Account, Property, and View

Once the Google Analytics Suite window has been opened, your going to be able to choose the default Analytics Account, Property, and View which will be used to populate the correct data into your reports.

Google Analytics Web Site Data

Once your’ve chosen your Analytics Account, Property, and View option, your going to see at the top of the home screen, your website URL and the View, “All Web Site Data“, indicating your choice of data for your reports.

Navigate to Google Analytics Admin

Since our primary objective is to get your business blog specific tag, you need to navigate down to the “Admin” navigation option and click or tap on it to be taken to the Google Analytics Admin page.

Google Analytics Admin Account Options

If this is you first visit to the Admin page, then under the Account section, your going to need to create a new account, so click on the “Create Account” button to get started with that process.  Otherwise, if you’ve already created an account, you just need to make sure that your business blog website is chosen in the dropdown list of accounts.

Google Analytics Admin Property Options

On the same Admin page, your going to see the Property section, where you can edit all the options related to your specific property.  As with the Account section, if this is your first time, your going to need to create a new property, just click or tap on the “Create Property” button to get started with that process.  Otherwise, if you’ve already created a property, you just need to make sure that your business blog website is chosen in the dropdown list of properties.  Next, to get your tag, your going to need to click or tap on the “Tracking Info” option to see the rest of the navigation options.

Navigate to Google Analytics Property Tracking Code

With the “Tracking Info” option expanded, you need to click or tap on the “Tracking Code” option to be taken to the Tracking Code window.

Google Analytics Property Tracking ID

Your Google Analytics tag, or tracking code, has a specific tracking ID that is assigned to the property associated with your business blog.  As long as you made the right choices leading to the Tracking Code page, the tracking ID you see should be correct.

No Data Received Status for Google Analytics Tracking Code

If you haven’t installed your tracking code on your business blog, then your status message should read “No data received in the past 48 hours“.  This only indicates that Google Analytics has not retrieved any data.

Google Analytics Global Site Tag

The Website Tracking section of the Tracking Code page is going to contain your tag, or tracking code, which will also already have your tracking ID inputted into it.  If you click or tap anywhere in the box containing the tracking code, it will automatically highlight the entire snippet, you can then proceed to copy and paste it.

Google Analytics Global Site Tag Base Code

Your tracking code should look similar to the example below.  In both places where you see the words “YOUR_TRACKING_ID“, your actual tracking id would appear there.

Send Test Traffic to Google Analytics Tracking Code

After your tracking code has been installed on your business blog, it could take up to 24 hours to begin to see communication activity.  In the event that your tracking code has already been installed previously or if you just installed it, you can initiate a test communication.  You can start the test traffic process by clicking or tapping on the “Send test traffic” button.  The process consists of Google Analytics opening up a new browser window and navigating to your business blog domain.

Status for Test Traffic to Google Analytics Tracking Code

As soon as you have clicked or tapped on the “Send test traffic” button and the new browser window with your business blog has opened, your going to see a “Test traffic sent” success message.

Navigate to Google Analytics Real-Time Traffic Reports

As long as your tracking code is installed correctly on your business blog, you should see communication activity within a minute or not too long after.  If this is your first time checking the status, it is possible that you don’t have very much, if any, client visitors.  If that’s the case, then you should only see “1” active user, which is associated with the test browser window Google Analytics opened previously.  Just in case, you can also check the Real-Time traffic report that Google Analytics offers, to go there click or tap on the “real-time traffic reports” link.

Google Analytics Real-Time Traffic Report

Once your on the Google Analytics Real-Time traffic report, in the Overview section, your going to either see a single visit, which would be the open web browser  window, or you may see more then a single visit if you have a very active business blog.  To ensure that your tracking code is working correctly, just look under the Top Referrals section and you should see under the Source column a single visit from “analytics_test“.  This indicates that the test traffic that you initiated earlier, the web browser currently open with your business blog, was successful and your tracking code is working as it should be.

If your not using an analytics software to track your client behavior on your business blog, then Google Analytics is a very good option to get started with, and best of all it’s Free. Get Google Analytics.

So, moving forward, were going to use Google Analytics as the standard as we continue to go over ad campaign tracking for your business offer.

Tracking URL

The reason why most advertisers, and certainly a majority of businesses that advertise on Facebook, can track an objective that is reached, such as a website visit, email capture, or client conversion, is because they all use tracking URLs in their ads. Tracking URLs are just URLs that contain extra pieces of information at the end of them that specifically identify your Facebook ad campaign, ad set, and ad that initiated that result. In the most basic implementation, you can have a variable, such as “utm_source“, along with a parameter, such as “Facebook“, and manually add it to your URL, such as “businessdomain.com/page/?utm_source=Facebook“. In this example, Google Analytics will read everything after the “?” and consider it data that needs to be acquired, retained, and ready to be displayed in a Google Analytics report.

Assign Parameters to Variables

We already went over what is considered to be proper ad campaign structure for your business, if you need to go over it again, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure, it’s important that you really understand it. Your ad campaign structure is going to be used to populate data parameters into the standard variables that Google Analytics already uses to capture and then later use as output onto their reporting.

• Campaign Source:  Your campaign source is going to be the network originating your client to your business blog.  In the current case, that will be Facebook.  ( i.e. utm_source )
• Campaign Medium:  Your campaign medium is your way to decifer between varying types of inbound traffic, such as “CPC“, “Email“, “Display“.  But for our current case using Facebook as our inbound traffic source, well consider a “Post“, “Paid Post“, “Paid Ad” as our medium choices.  ( i.e. utm_medium )
• Campaign Name:  Your campaign name will help you to organize your inbound traffic according to the ad campaign that generated it.  In our case, you would use the Facebook ad campaign name, but you should use an underscore, “_”, in between each word, or a hyphen, “–“, in between sets of keywords, so you can easily read each ad campaign name in your reporting.  ( i.e. utm_campaign )
• Campaign Content:  Your campaign content allows you to distinguish between different ad types and their message.  In our case, you would use the Facebook ad name, but you should use an underscore, “_”, in between each word, or a hyphen, “–“, in between sets of keywords, so you can easily read each ad name in your reporting.  ( i.e. utm_content )
• Campaign Keyword:  Your campaign keyword is meant to allow you to identify which keyword originated your inbound traffic visit.  In our case, you would use the Facebook ad set name, but you should use an underscore, “_”, in between each word, or a hyphen, “–“, in between sets of keywords, so you can easily read each ad set name in your reporting.  ( i.e. utm_term )

Tracking URL Builder

Instead of trying to figure out where each variable and parameter goes in your campaign tracking URL, Google offers a really simple tool to do this job for you.  It’s still really important to understand how the campaign tracking URLs themselves work, but it’s still understandably confusing if your not at an intermediate or advanced level with your Facebook advertising for your business.

Your going to need your URL, and the information that we just went over:  Campaign Source, Campaign Medium, Campaign Name, Campaign Content, Content Keyword.  The amount of information that you pass through your ad campaign URL is dependent upon you and your need to capture it along with your client visit to your business blog.  Just remember, the more information you have about your ad campaigns, the better your decisions will be when managing them.  Go to the Google Campaign URL Builder.

Quick Creation

After you get the hang of setting up Facebook ad campaigns for your business, your going to want to adhere to strict rules for organizing those campaigns.  In order to speed up the campaign creation process, you can use the Quick Creation tool that allows you to setup campaigns, ad sets, and ads with the most basic of information, and at a later time, finish adding the important details.

This comes in handy when you have a handful of ad campaigns to create, but you don’t want to go through the entire creation process, before continuing with the next one.  Also, you might not have all the ad assets ready, so just having the framework of your ad campaigns completed will save you time when your ready to complete the creation process for each of them.

But, if you like to start and finish each of your ad campaigns, one at a time, and also have a guided process that helps you along the way, then go to Guided Facebook Business Ad Campaign Creation.

Navigate to Quick Creation

From the Ads Manager, you can navigate to the Quick Creation process by clicking on the “Create” button located just under the “Account Overview” tab.  You’ll find that there are several other ways to start the Quick Creation process as you start using more of the Ads Manager functions, but this is the readily available method.

Start Creating Your Campaign

To begin, your only required to provide a small amount of information to setup your ad campaign.  Simply, because this process is meant for a user that wants to setup a framework of campaigns, such as multiple versions testing different configurations, but later adding the important details.  It’s a great tool to just get started if your not yet familiar with the Ads Manager interface, the many different options, or you don’t have all the details that are needed to get your campaign running.

Choose Your Campaign Objective

The Campaign Objective is going to be your marketing goal, that’s the reason why you want to run a Facebook ad.  It’s important to have a focused goal that meets the end result that you want to achieve.  The general category objectives are: awareness, engagement, and conversion.

If you want to get a better understanding of each of the Campaign Objectives, go to Guided Creation – Choose Your Campaign Objective.

Add Your Campaign Details

Whether your setting up a single campaign or multiple, the Quick Creation process allows you to add the basic details, such as the campaign name, ad set name, and ad name.

Always remember, if your going to create and manage multiple ad campaigns, you definitely need to make sure that you name your ad campaigns, ad sets, and ads according to the objective, audience, and variant of your choice.  As you expand your ad campaigns, your going to notice that good ad campaign structure will help you to keep track of your results.

To get a refresher on how to properly structure and name your ad campaigns according to your choice of objective, audience, and variant, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure.

As soon as your done, just click or tap on the “Save to Draft” button.  The ad campaign won’t be live, instead your going to see it listed in the “Campaign” section of your Ads Manager with a “Draft” status.

To finish creating your ad campaign, go to Edit Your Facebook Business Ad Campaign.

Guided Creation

Sometimes, you just want to make sure that your Facebook business ad campaigns are being setup without any errors and save yourself any agony when they go live, so a guided creation process is going to be perfect for you.

The Guided Creation process takes you step-by-step in setting up your ad campaign, ad set, and ad so that you can get going with your communication with each of your current or potential business clients.

Each option encourages you to put together a better ad campaign that meets your objective in reaching the right client, at the right time, and with the right message.

Navigate to Guided Creation

If you suddenly change your mind, for instance, you want a better step-by-step process for setting up your Facebook ad campaign, just click or tap on the “Switch to Guided Creation” button.  Your going to be taken directly into the Guided Creation process.

Setup Campaign

This is the start of setting up your ad campaign, so your going to have to make a lot of decisions about the organization, configuration, and objectives that Facebook will use to deliver your ad.  The objective that you choose for your ad campaign is dependent on what you expect your client audience to do.

You ad campaign will consist of an ad set, which you will use to set the configuration of your ad delivery, and the ad itself, which you will use to identify your message to your client audience.  You can have an ad campaign that is very complex or very simple, with a straight forward objective.  Your in control of how you want to set it up and publish it.

Choose Your Campaign Objective

Your ad campaign objective is going to help you to focus on what you’re trying to achieve from your client.  Each objective is going to act as a guide for your ad campaign in general, your ad set, or ad in order to increase your results and allow you to continue to use it as a method for getting more clients.

Use Ads to Get Your Client‘s Attention

Your business is alway open and ready to service your clients, but if they’re not aware of it, you could be missing out on an opportunity.  You can keep your awareness alive through the brand and reach objectives.

Brand Awareness

• With a good branding campaign, your business name is going to be in front of your clients exactly when they’re most attentive and likely to take notice of your ad.

Reach

• Smart ad campaigns will use the best tools to reach new clients, even when you think they’re out of your general reach.  Using the reach objective to expand outside of your location is a good way to grow your business.

Video Views

• Images are great but video tells a much better story about your business.  Use it to keep that storytelling progressing into a new or repeat client.

Use Ads to Get Your Clients to Respond

Your clients certainly know you, but keep in touch with them to encourage more visits to your business blog.  Plus, you have a business offer, you need to let them know about it.

App Installs

• Your clients have apps all over their phones and tablets, why not yours too?  Get them to install your business app.

Traffic:  Website Clicks

• Your business blog has a lot of content, but your clients might not know it’s there.  So, get them to your content using ads that are geared towards website clicks.

Traffic:  App Engagement

• So, your clients installed your app on their phone or tablet, now what?  Well, lead them to a specific spot in your app, such as a new feature or seek a special response.

Lead Generation

• Qualified leads will drive growth for your business.  So, an ad with a lead generation objective is going to give you more opportunities to present your business offer using your client‘s Facebook contact information.

Engagement:  Page Posts

• Interacting with your clients is important, so sharing a post on your business blog is a great way to keep that relationship alive.  With an ad using an engagement objective that is specifically for pages posts, only those clients that are most likely to respond will see it.

Engagement:  Event Responses

• Events are great way to maintain a consistent connection with your clients, and stay in their hearts and minds.  Seeking an event response using ads helps you to better plan for your  event.

Engagement:  Offers

• Special promotions will help to bolster your business.  Giving your clients one time or scheduled discount windows will help in encouraging repeat visits.

Video Views

• Video isn’t just for reaching out to your clients, it can also be used to create a response, such as interest in your business offer.  Use a series of videos to create an episodic experience that educates and encourages the end result your looking for.

Messages

• The most organic method for building up your business and increasing your number of clients is using the messages ad objective.  Ads try to get your clients to start talking to you about your business, the message objective is the actual start of a conversation, without the attention grabbing or life interruptions.

Use Ads to Get Your Clients to Do Something

Your business has a built up following of clients, so you have a great starting point to ask them to do something. This is where you can be creative in thinking about what you want your result to be and your clients can follow through to get that done.

Conversions:  Websites

• You might have several actions that you want your clients to perform on your business blog, so, with the conversion objective for websites, your ads are going to be optimized for those actions.  That’s important to make sure your reaching the right client audience for the right actions.

Conversions:  Apps

• Get your clients to do something in your app that they installed on their phone or tablet.  You might have special actions that help to encourage communication, education, or even a call-to-action.

Set the Traffic Campaign Objective

The most versatile of the campaign objectives is the “Traffic” option.  For the standard business, setting up an ad campaign with the “Traffic” campaign objective allows for a very easy and straightforward result, which is to get your clients to visit your business blog.

Create Your Campaign

Before you start, you should have a good understanding of how to properly structure and name your ad campaigns according to your choice of objective, audience, and variant, to go over it again, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure.

Your going to choose your ad campaign naming convention according to how you intend to be handling the ongoing management.  As soon as you’re ready, enter in the ad campaign name and click or tap on the “Continue” button.

Setup Ad Set

The ad set gives you the ability to segment the configurations that your ads are going to use for delivery to achieve your objectives.  Ad sets are great for organization, they give you the ability to expand your successful choices and weed out your failures.

Name Your Ad Set

As your Facebook ad campaigns begin to progress in scale and success, you ad sets are going to be increasing in number to help you determine the best combination of audience configurations, such as demographics, interests, and behaviors.  This process is going to require that you maintain some degree of organization to keep track of all the different configurations, so you can achieve maximum efficiency out of your ad spend.

If your still not sure how to properly structure and name your ad set according to your choice of objective, audience, and variant, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure.

Where available, your objective choice is going to have a subset option which will further emphasize your intention.  In this example with the “Traffic” objective, you would then choose where you want your traffic to go, the most common choice is going to be “Website”, but there are also “App” and “Messenger” options as well.

If you think your not quite ready to make a firm objective choice, just go back to where we went over each of them in detail, go to Guided Creation – Choose Your Objective.

Audience

Facebook affords you an incredible opportunity to find and communicate with your clients.  The tools you have at your disposal, such as audience selection using demographics, interests and behaviors, which gives you the ability to target your ad campaigns only to the Facebook users that are your current clients and others that can be your future clients.  This saves your business money and gives you a greater opportunity to continue advertising.

Creating a new audience at this stage of the Guided Creation process allows for the ability to use very specific demographic, interest, and behavior combinations, plus including and excluding existing audiences that were previously saved, created, or acquired.  For a more detailed explanation of how to select and create a Saved Audience, go to Save Your Business Client Audience for Targeting, or how to create a Custom Audience. go to Retarget Your Business Client Using Custom Audiences, or how to create a Lookalike Audience, go to Expand Your Business Client Reach Using Lookalike Audiences.

Create a New Audience

During the Guided Creation process you can create and save a new audience that includes a configuration that meets the objective of your ad campaign.  Each choice you make or option you choose further expands or narrows the client audience that will be seeing your ad.

Custom Audiences

Your going to broaden the client audience that your targeting by including a Saved Audience, Custom Audience, or Lookalike Audience.  You will also be narrowing your client audience by excluding a Saved Audience, Custom Audience, or Lookalike Audience.

• INCLUDE:  Clients who are in at least one of the Saved Audiences, Custom Audiences, or Lookalike Audiences.
• EXCLUDE:  Clients who are in at least one of the Saved Audiences, Custom Audiences, or Lookalike Audiences.

Locations

You can limit your client audience within the confines of a specific area, such as global regions, countries, states/regions, cities, postal codes, addresses or Designated Market Areas ( DMAs ).  You further have the option of defining your client‘s past and present living status.

• Everyone in this location:  Clients whose home or most recent location is within the selected area.
• People who live in this location:  Clients whose home is within the selected area.
• People recently in this location:  Clients whose most recent location is within the selected area.
• People traveling in this location:  Clients whose most recent location is within the selected area but whose home is more than 125 mi/200 km away.

Age

• Minimum / Maximum:  Select the minimum and maximum age of your client audience who will find your ad relevant.

Gender

• Choose “All” unless you only want your ads to be shown to either men or women within your client audience.

Languages

• Leave this blank unless your client audience you are targeting uses a language that is not common to the location you have chosen above.

Use a Saved Audience

If you already created a Saved Audience with all of your specific configurations and demographic, interest, and behavior choices, then your going to see it in the “Use a Saved Audience” dropdown.

To learn how to create a Saved Audience, go to Save Your Business Client Audience for Targeting.

Detailed Targeting

Detailed Targeting allows you to expand and narrow your client audience with specific combinations that best match their profile.  This gives you the ability to allow or disallow, at a very granular level, similar characteristics that meet the objective of your ad campaign.

Define your audience by including or excluding demographics, interests and behaviors.

• INCLUDE:  Adding demographic, interest and behavior details will expand your client audience to include more people.
• EXCLUDE:  Choose new demographic, interest and behavior details to exclude people from your client audience.  As you continue to add new details, your client audience will decrease in size.

Suggested Interests

As soon as you enter keyword details into the text box, you will be presented with exact or similar options to choose from.  This allows you to easily build your client audience with combinations that you might not have otherwise considered.

Browse for Demographics, Interests, or Behaviors

For more precise details to build your client audience, you can browse for a specific demographic, interest, or behavior.  This helps when you have a specific combination of details you want to your client audience to be based on.

Connection Type

Some in your client audience may already have a direct connection to your business, this could be through a Page like, app installation, or event.

Choose a Connection Type

Expand the “Add a connection type” button to view the options for “Facebook Pages“, “Apps“, “Events“, and “Advanced Combinations“.

You can expand or narrow your client audience by adding or removing clients that have liked your Page, used your app, or responded to your event, for instance, you might want to only reach those that have expressed that specific interest.  Another narrowing tactic would be to reach beyond your clients and include only their friends.

Facebook Pages

• People who like your page
• Friends of people who like your page
• Exclude people who like your page

Apps

• People who used your app
• Friends of people who used your app
• Exclude people who used your app

Events

• People who responded to your event
• Exclude people who already responded to your event

Save Your Audience

You have the option to save your client audience, for your convenience, so you can use it again at a later time.

Placements

To reach your clients, you can run your ads across Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger, plus you have control to target mobile device types, specific devices, and desktops.

The power of reach at your fingertips isn’t just confined to your client‘s Facebook profile, so your ad campaign can be setup to have a very fluid communication that can occur in many different places and under very specific conditions.  All of which are chosen for the best interest of your business.

Automatic Placements

The easiest way to get started is going to be to allow Facebook to automatically place your ads.  Facebook will determine the best place and time for the ad to be placed in front of your client and will achieve the objective that you set for your ad campaign.  Choose the default Automatic Placements option to allow Facebook to do this for you.

Facebook knows more about the different placements then you do, so you don’t have to figure that out for yourself.  They also know more about your clients, so you don’t have to try to determine which of those placements would work best to reach them.

Edit Placements

If you want to control where your ads are going to reach your clients and how those ads are going to be seen, your going to want to choose the Edit Placements option.

By choosing any combination of device type, platform, or specific mobile device, you can create a very customized ad campaign that takes into consideration the time, place, and intent of your client and uses a suitable ad to meet that intent.

Device Types

You can choose a specific Device Type to reach your clients, whether it be mobile or desktop, you might know that either or both will produce the best result for your ad campaign.

Choose a Device Type

You have the option of choosing both device types, which are, “Mobile Only” and “Desktop Only“, or just one.  Each gives you the ability to expand or narrow your client audience and both contain their own characteristics for inferring client behavior, such as “Mobile Only” implies round-the-clock access and “Desktop Only” implies reach is limited to just office hours.

You might find that an ad campaign with a brand awareness objective will work better for a client audience where you choose a “Mobile Only” device type.  In this case, your taking into consideration that your client is seeing the ad and their mobile device limits their ability to consume content and respond to your call-to-action.

The alternative is choosing a “Desktop Only” device type, which statistically has a lower usage rate than mobile among Facebook users, except in an office environment.  Your clients might be more receptive to your ads if they had a larger platform to consume your content or if your call-to-action and the proceeding process was built for a desktop environment.

Choose Your Platforms

Your clients access Facebook in different ways, and their reach expands beyond the news feed, where most of them were spending a lot of their time.  Now, your reach starts with Facebook, continues with Instagram and Messenger, and out into an Audience Network of partners that allow for a succession of your ads to reach your clients at different places and for different intents.

So, each of these options have their own benefits and the variables are going to be your clients usage behaviors, your ad campaign configuration, how your business blog is setup to receive inbound interest, and how your business offer is consumed. None of these options are proven, until you see the results.  Each of them can be turned on or off when your ad campaign is running, according to whether your meeting your objective goals.

Specific Mobile Devices and Operating Systems

To give you more control over your reach of your client audience, you can further target them by Specific Mobile Devices and Operating Systems, or the operating system of their mobile devices, such as “iOS“, “Android“, or “Feature Phones“, the specific device type, such as smartphone and tablet, and the specific device model, such as “iPhone” or “Galaxy“.

Choose a Specific Mobile Device

Your only going to be able to choose a combination of “Android“, “iOS“, and “Feature Phones“, with the “All Mobile Devices” option or either one individually.

All Mobile Devices Chosen

The default option for Specific Mobile Devices is, “All Mobile Devices“.  With this choice, your going to let Facebook deliver your ad to all the mobile devices that are available within your client audience, with the only restriction being what Facebook determines as optimum delivery for the objective you have chosen.

If you choose a specific operating system to narrow your client audience, you’re going to see expanded options that are associated with your choice.  Your not going to know, without fail, which is better to achieve your ad campaign objective.  The best process is going to be to infer and test, where you create ad sets that isolate each of your choices and you keep track of the results.

Android Devices Only Chosen

If your interested in segmenting your client audience to reach only those that are Android device users, then your option for Specific Mobile Devices is, “Android Devices Only“.  Your also given several further options to choose that are specific to only Android devices, such as:

• Included Devices:  You can further target your client audience by choosing an Android category, such as “smartphones” and “tablets“, or specific models by entering their names into the text box.
• Excluded Devices:  You can also target your client audience by choosing an Android category that you don’t want to be considered, such as “smartphones” and “tablets“, or specific models by entering their names into the text box.
• OS Versions:  You can choose to target your client audience by choosing more granular options, such as Android operating system versions.

iOS Devices Only Chosen

If your interested in segmenting your client audience to reach only those that are iOS device users, then your option for Specific Mobile Devices is, “iOS Devices Only“.  Your also given several further options to choose that are specific to only iOS devices, such as:

• Included Devices:  You can further target your client audience by choosing an iOS category, such as “iPads“, “iPods“, and “iPhones“, or specific models by entering their names into the text box.
• Excluded Devices:  You can also target your client audience by choosing an iOS category that you don’t want to be considered, such as “iPads“, “iPods“, and “iPhones“, or specific models by entering their names into the text box.
• OS Versions:  You can choose to target your client audience by choosing more granular options, such as iOS operating system versions.

Exclude Content and Publishers

The brand you have built for your business is important, so you don’t want your ads to be running in an environment where the content could give your clients the wrong impression.  Using the Exclude Content and Publishers option, you have the control to create block lists and exclude categories which you deem inappropriate for your ads to appear.

Choose Exclude Content and Publishers Options

Your block lists are going to stop your ads from showing up where the content is inappropriate according to your choices of publishers or specific websites and apps.

You can further exclude your ads from content that falls in the categories that you choose and have determined to be inappropriate.  These are considered general restrictions and often can’t be completely accurate, but they do serve as a fail safe when used in conjunction with excluded content.

Budget & Schedule

Choosing the right budget can be difficult for some Entrepreneurs, mainly because if you don’t know how to properly setup your ad campaigns, ad sets, or ads, and your not actively monitoring them, you could lose a substantial amount of money very quickly.  So, before we get into how to setup your budgets and schedules, were going to first cover the best practices for choosing the right budget amount, budget type, and schedule for the objective and campaign configuration you have chosen.

Before you continue with getting a better understanding of how to setup a good budget and schedule for your ad campaign, you need to make sure you understand how to properly structure and name your ad campaigns according to your choice of objective, audience, and variant, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure.

First, you need to ask yourself these questions about your objective:

• Branding:  Are you trying to get the attention of your client?

If your objective falls under the branding category, your return on your budget investment is going to be minimal, if any at all, and indirect, meaning it supports to maintain your business in the minds of your clients.  Branding also supports your objectives that fall under the engagement and response category as well, further reinforcing those goals.  So, you may not see a direct return, it certainly does help in other ways.

The suggestion for a suitable budget amount is going to be determined by what your overall advertising strategy will be for your business.  Don’t spend much, or any at all, on branding if you don’t have a reasonable business blog or business offer in place.  Since branding doesn’t have a direct return on your budget investment, you shouldn’t be focused on it.

But, if you must, make sure it’s a small percentage of your overall budget, between 5-10%, unless you have a robust ad campaign with multiple objectives, in that case test increased budget amounts for each objective.

• Engagement:  Are you trying to get your client to learn, follow, or explore something?

You should only be focused on objectives that have a positive return on your budget investment for your business.  Now, with objectives that fall under the engagement category, you don’t have a direct return, but you do have a goal that is directed at getting you that return.  For instance, with a content ad, you may want to encourage likes on your post or visits to your business blog.  You may passively be building up your authority or you may be actively building up an email list.  Both of these goals serve to ultimately cause a conversion for your business offer, which is a return on your budget investment.

Your budget amount is going to have to take into consideration what value you place on your engagement.  Each like on a post can lead to an acquired email address, which will produce a conversion of your business offer.  So, the objectives that fall under the engagement category have an indirect influence on your conversions, but your budget has a direct influence on those engagements.

You can start your ad campaigns with an engagement objective and a daily budget of $5 per day per ad set that is active.  This budget amount doesn’t cost much to give you optimization data and results to make configuration changes if needed.

You do need to give your ad campaigns and your clients time to run and respond, so a preferable time to allow this would be between 5-7 days.  As you begin seeing positive results, you can increase the budgets by 25%, then waiting the preferred time of 5-7 days and repeating the process.  If at any time you see negative results, decrease the budget amounts or consider pausing the ad set until you have figured out what the problem is, then return back to the budget scaling process.

• Response:  Are you trying to get your client to respond to a call-to-action?

Before we continue, if you already have your business blog ready for inbound traffic, specifically your landing pages are optimized, and your business offer is primed for conversions, than your ready to support these objectives that fall under the response category.  But, if your not ready, click or tap to go to the total blog guide or go to the complete offer guide.

Now, the objectives that fall under the response category have the specific goal of providing you with a return on your budget investment.  Their intended purpose is to support the opportunity of getting an ad in front of your client to encourage a response for your business offer.  A conversion from an ad with a direct response has a direct effect on your return on your budget investment.

Since there is a direct correlation between your budget amount and conversions, the amount you spend is easier to determine.  What isn’t easy is trying to determine how much of your ads with the objectives that fall under the branding and engagement category factored into those results.  This is where a combination of all of these objectives, including an optimized business blog, and effective ad strategy create a sales funnel that slowly encourages the desired result from your client.

With all this said, if you have a robust ad campaign, business blog, business offer, and sales funnel process for converting your client, than any budget will be considered reasonable as long as the conversions and value is greater than the budget investment.

What is a good starting point?  You can use the $5 a day strategy that we went over previously, making adjustments to your configuration, as needed, and producing positive results.  Then every 5-7 days increasing the budget by 25%, and repeating this process until you see negative results.  At this point, as long as you’re seeing positive results, your budget is only limited by your desire for revenue growth and your return on your budget investment.

So, there isn’t a predetermined, perfect daily budget, there is only a set number of elements that you need to have setup and functioning properly before you can consider working with a larger daily budget

Choose Your Budget Type

You have the option of choosing between a “Daily Budget” and a “Lifetime Budget” for your Budget Type, both have their advantages, and some Budget & Schedule option choices are only available depending upon which budget type you choose.

Daily Budget

Choosing “Daily Budget” as your Budget Type, your going to spend the average amount you have indicated you are willing to spend on a specific ad set per day. Also, you need to understand that your “Daily Budget” choice pertains to one ad set, and not all in total, so your going to need to indicate the specific amount for each individual ad set.

Lifetime Budget

Choosing the “Lifetime Budget” as your Budget Type, your going to spend the amount you indicate over the lifetime of an ad set.  Facebook will spread the amount over the period of time that you choose.

Set Your Schedule to Run Continuously with a Daily Budget

With the choice of Daily Budget as your Budget Type, for your available options, you can choose between “Run my ad set continuously starting today” or “Set a start and end date”.  If you choose “Run my ad set continuously starting today”, your ads will begin running as soon as they are approved and your ad campaign and ad set are published.  Your Daily Budget restriction will be in effect every day that your ad set is active.

Set Your Scheduled Start and End Date for Date Range 

with a Daily Budget

With the choice of Daily Budget as your Budget Type, as your schedule options, if you choose “Set a start and end date”, your ads will begin running on the start date and time that you choose, and for the duration up to the end date and time that you choose. Your Daily Budget restriction will be in effect each day that your ad campaign is active.

Choose Lifetime Budget for Budget Type with Start and End Date

With the choice of Lifetime Budget as your Budget Type, you only have the schedule option with a start and end date.   Your ads will begin running on the start date and time that you choose, and for the duration up to the end date and time that you choose. Your Lifetime Budget restriction will be split equally across each day that your ad campaign is active.

Optimization & Delivery

You should understand how Facebook does such a great job of matching your client audience with your ads.  Facebook uses an algorithm to determine the best time, place, and client to see your ad.  This is called optimization, mainly because, as your ad campaign remains active, Facebook is accumulating data that it uses to complete this task.

Part of the optimization processes Facebook uses is relevancy, for instance, is your ad meeting the needs of your client.  Also, engagement is considered, such as if your client is responding to your ad in any way. Another really important factor is how your client behaves when they go from your ad to your destination page.

The reason why Optimization & Delivery is being addressed, at length, in the Budget & Schedule section of this guide is precisely because Facebook requires data.  To ensure there’s an efficient and effective optimization of your ad campaigns and a chance to acquire a sufficient amount of data, your ads need to be actively running, being delivered to your clients according to the ad campaign configuration you have setup.  As long as you keep your ad campaigns active, Facebook is accumulating the data it needs.  As soon as you deactivate your ad campaign, your optimization is no longer accumulating data, and when you do decide to reactivate them again, your optimization will need to completely start from the beginning.

There are two things to consider, first, spending more money isn’t going to necessarily get you more optimization, it will probably cause your campaigns to be unprofitable.  But, if you have your ads, client audience, and configuration choices perfect, then increasing your budget intelligently has the added benefit of building up your optimization.

Second, poor campaign structure will not allow you to isolate problem campaigns, ad sets, or ads, so your going to be at the mercy of one or all of these.  Understanding your objective and different configurations you can use to reach it will allow you to put together a smart ad campaign structure that will encourage your optimization to remain accumulating data.

If you need to refresh your knowledge on how to properly structure and name your ad campaigns according to your choice of objective, audience, and variant, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure.

Choose Optimization

As previously discussed, optimization refers to the algorithm that Facebook uses to ensure that your ad is reaching your client audience according to the configuration of your ad campaign.  Part of that configuration is your choice of optimization for your ad delivery, which when you take into consideration your chosen objective, allows Facebook to not just find those initial opportunities, but to keep finding more in the most efficient way possible.

The optimization options each have their advantage and are specific to the campaign objective that you chose earlier.  You should always give great consideration as to whether your choice fits into your overall objective you have chosen.  If you want a refresher on ad campaign objectives, just go back to where we went over each of them in detail, go to Guided Creation – Choose Your Objective.

Use Optimization to Keep Your Client‘s Attention

Brand Awareness

• Ad Recall Lift:  Ads will be delivered to maximize the total number of clients who will remember seeing your ads.

Reach

• Reach:  Ads will be served to the maximum number of clients.
• Impressions: Ads will be delivered to as many clients and as many times as possible.

Use Optimization to Keep Your Clients Responding

Traffic

• Link Clicks:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients that are more likely to click on your ad to your destination URL at your business blog and at the lowest cost.
• Landing Page Views:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients that are more likely to click on your ads’s link and load the landing page at your business blog.
• Impressions:  Ads will be delivered to as many clients and as many times as possible.
• Daily Unique Reach:  Ads will be delivered to your clients up to once a day.

Post Engagement

• Post Engagement:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients to help you get the most likes, shares, or comments on your post at the lowest cost.
• Impressions:  Ads will be delivered to as many clients and as many times as possible.
• Daily Unique Reach:  Ads will be delivered to your clients up to once a day.

Page Likes

• Page Likes:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients to help you get more Page likes at the lowest cost.

Event Response

• Event Response:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients to help you get the most event interest at the lowest cost.
• Impressions:  Ads will be delivered to as many clients and as many times as possible.
• Post Engagement:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients to help you get the most likes, shares, or comments on your post at the lowest cost.
• Daily Unique Reach:  Ads will be delivered to your clients up to once a day.

App Installs

• App Installs:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients to help you get the most app installs at the lowest cost.
• Link Clicks:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients that are more likely to click on your ad to your app installation page and at the lowest cost.
• App Event:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients that are more likely to take a specific action at least once.
• 10-Second Video Views:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients to help you get the most video views of 10+ seconds at the lowest cost.

Video Views

• 10-Second Video Views:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients to help you get the most video views of 10+ seconds at the lowest cost.
• 2-Second Continuous Video Views:  Ads will be delivered to the right clientsto get the most video views of 2 continuous seconds or more. Most 2-second continuous video views will have at least 50% of the video pixels on screen.

Lead Generation

• Leads:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients to help you get the most leads at the lowest cost.

Messages

• Replies:  Ads will be delivered to clients most likely to have a conversation with you through messages.

Use Optimization to Keep Your Clients Doing Something

Conversion

• Conversions:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients to help you get the most website conversions.
• Landing Page Views:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients that are more likely to click on your ads’s link, load the landing page at your business blog.
• Link Clicks:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients that are more likely to click on your ad to your destination URL at your business blog, complete a conversion vent, and at the lowest cost.
• Impressions:  Ads will be delivered to as many clients and as many times as possible.
• Daily Unique Reach:  Ads will be delivered to your clients up to once a day.

Product Catalog Sales

• Conversion Events:  Ads will be delivered to clients more likely to take action when they see a product from your catalog.
• Link Clicks:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients that are more likely to click on your ad to your destination URL at your business blog, complete a purchase of a catalog item, and at the lowest cost.
• Impressions:  Ads will be delivered to as many clients and as many times as possible.

Reach Objective Chosen

When you choose the Reach objective for your ad campaign, you will have the ability to limit your clients from seeing your ad again, for a minimum number of days.  Facebook is going to use your selection to achieve the maximum amount of deliveries of your ad for the lowest cost.

Input Frequency Cap Interval

You can set the number of times that your ad will be seen by your client audience.  Depending upon your ad campaign objective, using a Frequency Cap can be very effective at saturating your communications or limiting how often that message can be seen.

Conversion Objective Chosen

When you choose the Conversion Objective for your ad campaign, you will have the ability to assign a conversion window, which is the amount of time it takes for a client to complete a conversion after they have engaged or viewed your ad.  This information will be used to optimize your ad delivery, for instance, if you choose “1-day“, more clients that engage or view your ad within that timeframe will be targeted over those outside of the window.

Choose Your Conversion Window

By choosing your Conversion Window, you can control the amount of time that your client audience, on average, takes to complete the ad campaign objective that you have chosen.  Facebook is going to use this information to create the optimization necessary to achieve the most efficient ad delivery.

7 Days Click or 1 Day View Chosen

Each ad campaign is going to be different in producing the most efficient results for the objective that is chosen, so a good start to test your configuration with a standard Conversion Window would be to choose the “7 Days Click or 1 Day View” option.  With this choice, your going to give Facebook an adequate amount of time, 7 days, to achieve a click, and 1 day for a view.

Bid Amount

Before we get into what is the Bid Amount and the strategies you can employ to support your overall ad campaign objective, we need to first introduce you to the auction system that Facebook ads operate under.  The auction, which is a marketplace where you and other advertisers, including other businesses, compete for the opportunity to run their ad  to the same targeted client.

Your Bid Amount is going to let Facebook know exactly what you value for each completed objective, for instance a “Post Engagement“, an “Impression“, or a “Click” to your business blog.  Facebook uses a pacing method to increase and decrease your Bid Amount for each individual auction to ensure that it’s meeting your optimized objective.  The bid strategy is going to be the general method that Facebook is going to use to get you as many of those completed objectives at the desired Bid Amount that you have chosen, whether it be through the automatic or manual entry of the value.

• Lowest Cost:  Facebook will enter your ad into the auction with the specific intention of achieving the lowest possible cost, but still meet the need of spending your predetermined daily budget before the day is over.  Your going to get the most value from your budget, but your costs are going to fluctuate.  There won’t be any consistency in the cost, because it will vary on the participants that are competing against you, the results will be efficient.
• Target Cost:  For “Lead Generation“, “App Installs“, “Conversions” or “Catalog Sales” objectives, Facebook is going to get as close to your target cost as it can during the auction.  This means your going to have a more consistent average cost each time your ad enters the auction and is optimized for your  completed objective.

Automatic

To make it really easy, you can let Facebook set the bid amount that helps you get the most link clicks at the best price.  This is going to be the best method since Facebook will look for the best possible bid for your objective.

Manual

If you want more control, you can enter a bid amount on what you feel link clicks are worth to you.  In instances where you have a mature ad campaign that is running efficiently, setting a manual bid might be advantageous.

When You Get Charged

Your optimization and objective choices are going to determine the options you have for how Facebook will determine the best opportunity for the delivery of your ad that you are willing to pay for.  For example, you may have chosen an objective for Website Traffic, so your possible chargeable events are “Impression” and “Link Clicks“.  If you choose “Impression“, each time your client audience sees your ad, it will be considered a chargeable event.  If you chose “Link Clicks“, the chargeable event will be the unique click that your client audience initiates from your ad.

It’s also important to understand that Facebook may determine, that within a specific auction, you would get better value and a more efficient delivery for your ad, but during the next auction, your choice may not be the most efficient or the cost may be too high, based on that choice.

Post Engagement – Page Like

If you chose Post Engagement as your ad campaign objective, you have the option of choosing between, “Impression” and “Page Like“, as your chargeable events.  The “Page Like” option is going to look at each time your client audience initiates a like of your business blog Facebook page.

Video Views – 10-Second Video View

If you chose Video Views as your ad campaign objective, you have the option of choosing between, “Impression” and “10-Second Video View“, as your chargeable events.  The “10-Second Video View” option is going to look at the minimum amount of time that your client audience allowed your video ad to play, which is 10-seconds.

Ad Scheduling with Daily Budget

If you have chosen the Budget Type option of Daily Budget, your ad scheduling options will not be available for your choosing.  Instead you will be limited to the default options of running your ads continuously or within a set start and end date.

Ad Scheduling with Lifetime Budget

When you choose the Lifetime Budget as your Budget Type, your ad scheduling options are “Run ads all the time” or “Run ads on a schedule“.  The “Run ads all the time” option is a default and will run your ads throughout your schedule choice.  If you choose “Run ads on a schedule“, then you have the ability to select precisely when you would like your ads to run, such as day of the week, specific hours of the day, and any combination that you choose.  Your Lifetime Budget restriction will be split equally across all available days that your ad campaign is active.

Lifetime Budget – Run ads all the time

If you want to continually run your ads, for instance your driving traffic to your business blog, more specifically a new content post, or you have an ad that is doing really well for you, then the “Run ads all the time” option will be an effective choice.

Lifetime Budget – Run ads on a schedule

You can choose the right time for your ad to reach your client audience to get the best results for your business.  So, to meet your specific schedule requirements for communicating with your client audience, Facebook offers Ad Scheduling to meet your needs.  You can choose the exact time zone of your client, exact days, or hours of day, which Facebook will use to delivery your ad.

Delivery Type with Automatic Bid

When you choose the Bid Amount option of “Automatic Bid“, your active delivery type is going to be “Standard Delivery“, which is the preferred choice for the majority of ad campaigns.

Delivery Type with Manual Bid

When you choose the Bid Amount option of “Manual Bid“, you have the choice of choosing between a “Standard Delivery“, or “Accelerated Delivery“.  As already described, “Standard Delivery” is preferred, for most.  “Accelerated Delivery” allows for your ad to be run with greater emphasis on reaching your client audience.

Create Ad Set

As soon as your done configuring your ad set with the options that you want Facebook to use to deliver your ad to your client audience, you can save it by clicking or tapping on the “Continue” button.

Setup Ad

The ad is going to provide you with the opportunity to carry your message to your client, according to your ad set configuration, to meet your campaign objective.  You can have multiple ads running at the same time within your ad set, but each can have it’s own variant to help you to achieve the most efficient and effective result.

Name Your Ad

As your Facebook ad campaigns begin to progress in scale and success, you ads are going to be increasing in number to help you determine the best combination of images or videos, message, and destination link or landing page.  This process is going to require that you maintain some degree of organization to keep track of all the different variants, so you can achieve maximum efficiency out of your ad spend.

So, name your ad according to how you intend to keep track of it.  If your still not sure how to properly structure and name your ad according to your choice of objective, audience, and variant, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure.

Identity

You can add validity to your ad by choosing the Facebook Page or your Instagram Account that is associated with your business.  Adding a true identity is going to immediately catch the attention of your current clients, but you also add that layer of authenticity for your future clients.

Choose a Format for Your Ad

Your choice of ad format is going to allow you to pursue your business goal across Devices Types, Platforms, and Placements choices, all of which you have already chosen.

Photo:  You can add an image that best represents the message your trying to convey to your clients.

Video:  You can add a motion and sound element to your ad by using a video to better represent your business to your clients.

Carousel:  You can give your clients an immersive experience by adding multiple photos or videos in a single ad.

Slideshow:  You can use motion, sound and text to get your message across to your clients.  It can include images or even a video.

Collection:  You can put together a number of items for a single ad that your clients can see and experience.

Messenger:  You can start a conversation with your clients inside of the Messenger application, without any other interference.

Single Image Format Chosen for Ad

The single image ad will allow you to upload any image to be used as part of your overall messaging to your clients.  Using an image adds an opportunity to stand out on the Facebook platform and really grab your client‘s attention.

Add a Single Image to Ad

Your going to need to prepare your image beforehand in order to have it ready to be uploaded and used as part of your ad.  You have technical and policy requirements that you have to consider before you upload the image. As soon as you decide to publish your ad, the image will undergo a review process to ensure it meets those requirements.

Image  Recommendations

File type: jpg or png
Image ratio: 9:16 to 16:9
Recommended resolution: Upload the highest resolution image available.
Images that consist of more than 20% text may experience reduced delivery
Text: 125 characters

Image Recommendations With Link

Images cropped to 1.91:1
Recommended resolution: At least 1,200px x 628px
Headline: 25 characters
Link Description: 30 characters

Links in Ad

The link in your ad is going to be the destination URL located at your business blog that you want your clients to be delivered to as soon as they click on the image or link in the ad.

Destination

The Website URL you input is the same URL that you intend on promoting in your ad campaign, such as your business blog.

Text

The text that your going to be adding to your ad is the copy that is going to begin introducing your client to the problem that they are suffering from and the solution that you propose to offer to them.

Headline

Your headline is going to let your clients know what is the purpose of the ad.  Your going to be confined to a 40 character limit, simply because the ad is going to be placed in certain platforms where there is a limitation of space and in some cases it won’t be seen at all.

Call to Action in Ad

The Call to Action is the standard action you want your clients to take after seeing the ad.  You can add a call-to-action into your copy, which in most cases is sufficient to get your client to respond.  In some cases, the standard options Facebook offers may fit into your ad messaging, so testing is going to get the best determinator of whether it works to meet your campaign objective.

Choose Call to Action in Ad

Facebook gives you a wide variety of Call to Actions you can use to define a response that you want your client audience to perform.  The Call to Action is going to be displayed in your ad as a button.

Overlay in Ad

You can add a standard text over your ad image to further grab your clients attention.

Display Link

You can add a specific URL that is displayed to your clients as soon as they see your ad.  It’s a benefit when your URL is either too long, for instance containing multiple keywords, or when you just want to display only the URL itself and not the page name  Your only requirement is that it leads to the same destination URL.

Newsfeed Link Description

Adding a description to the Newsfeed Link is an extra opportunity to, not just capture the attention of your client, but it’s also very important in continuing with the message from your ad copy.  It might not be available for some platforms, but it is still worth it to add supporting copy that keeps your clients interested.

URL Parameters

The URL Parameters are used to keep track of your ad campaign results.  The parameters that you input are added to your Destination website URL.  As long as you have a web analytics software and tracking code installed on your business blog, you will begin to capture data for each client visit that can be tracked back to your ad campaign.

If you need to get a better understanding of the URL parameters and how they help you to track your ad campaigns, go to Setup Your Business Ad Campaign Tracking.

Conversion Tracking

One of the most important aspects of your ad is conversion tracking, most importantly, how Facebook manages to acquire valuable data about how your clients are interacting with your ad, then visiting your destination link located at your business blog.

The basis for conversion tracking is the Facebook Pixel, if it’s installed correctly, it’s ready to be assigned to your ad, you will see the active pixel name and id displayed.  The default position is set to active, but you have the ability to deactivate it, if you choose to ( Why would you do that? ).

If you haven’t setup your Facebook Pixel, then now is a good time to get that done before you publish your ad, go to Install Your Facebook Pixel to Target Your Clients.

Create Ad

As soon as your done configuring your ad with the details that you want Facebook to incorporate into your ad, you can save it by clicking or tapping on the “Confirm” button.

Exit Guided Creation Process

If at any time during the Guided Creation process you need to exit, Facebook will allow you to save your configuration, just click or tap on the “Close and Save to Draft” button.

To pick up exactly where you left off when you exited the Guided Creation process, go to Finish Creating Your Facebook Business Ad Campaign.

Finish Creating Your Facebook Business Ad Campaign

If you exited at any point during the Quick Creation or Guided Creation process of your ad campaign, ad set, or ad, Facebook saved the options and details that you chose or added.  you can pick up where you left off and continue.  If you completed any of the creation processes, you can go back and edit any options or details you previously inputted.

Edit Campaign

In the Ads Manager, under the Campaigns tab, you will see your incomplete campaign with a “Draft” status.  As soon as you hover over the campaign row, you will see the navigation links appear below the name.  Click or tap on the “Edit” link to be taken to the edit window to begin editing your ad campaign.

Finish Setting Up Campaign

If you decided not to complete the Quick Creation or Guided Creation for your ad campaign, you can pick up up where you left off by hovering over the campaign row, your going to see the navigation links appear below the name of the ad campaign.  Click or tap on the “Edit” link to be taken to the edit window to continue creating your ad campaign.

Name Your Campaign

Whether you’re managing a single ad campaign or multiple that are live and driving traffic to your business blog, you need to have a smart naming convention to keep track of each and their results.  So, don’t just name your ad campaigns, think about what their objectives are, more importantly what your trying to achieve, and specifically the choices you made for each.

Name your ad campaign according to your choice of objective, audience, and variant, to go over this again, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure.

Campaign Details for Traffic Campaign Objective

Your going to add the basic information for your ad campaign.  Since you already chose your ad campaign objective, your going to see it selected and the accompanying Buying Type will be chosen as well.

• Objective: Your ad campaign objective is going to help you to focus on what you’re trying to achieve from your client. To get a better understanding of your campaign objective choices, go to Guided Creation – Choose Your Objective.
• Buying Type:  This is the method by which your going to pay for and target ads in your ad campaigns: through dynamic auction bidding, fixed-price bidding, or reach and frequency buying.
• Campaign Spending Limit:  A safeguard from spending too much, the ad campaign spending limit will allow you to set a maximum amount of money to be spent on an ad campaign. As soon as your ad campaign spending limit is reached, your campaign will stop running.

Edit Ad Set

In the Ads Manager, under the Ads Sets tab, you will see your incomplete ad set with a “Draft” status.  As soon as you hover over the ad set row, you will see the navigation links appear below the name.  Click or tap on the “Edit” link to be taken to the edit window to begin editing your ad set.

Finish Setting Up Ad Set

If you decided not to complete the Quick Creation or Guided Creation for your ad set, you can pick up up where you left off by hovering over the ad set row, your going to see the navigation links appear below the name of the ad set.  Click or tap on the “Edit” link to be taken to the edit window to continue creating your ad set.

Name Your Ad Set

Even if you only have a single ad set, or thinking about setting up multiple more that will be split up to define your target client audience, you need to have a smart naming convention to keep track of each and their results.  So, don’t just name your ad set, think about who your client audience is, including their demographics, interests, and behaviors.

Name your ad set according to your choice of objective, audience, and variant, to go over this again, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure.

Choose Website for Traffic Campaign Objective

For the Traffic objective, you will have a subset of options to further align with your ad campaign intention. The most common choice is going to be for a “Website“, but you also have the “App” and “Messenger” options as well.

Budget & Schedule

Your Budget and Schedule are going to depend on the objective your have chosen for your ad campaign. You just need to ask yourself these questions:

• Branding:  Are you trying to get the attention of your client?
• Engagement:  Are you trying to get your client to learn, follow, or explore something?
• Response:  Are you trying to get your client to respond to a call-to-action?

If you need to go over the details for each of these objective categories, plus the Budget and Schedule strategies for each of them, go to Guided Creation – Budget & Schedule.

Choose Between Daily Budget or Lifetime Budget

The Daily Budget and Lifetime Budget choice for Budget Type is your way of telling Facebook how you wish to spend your budget to have your ad delivered to your clients.  The Daily Budget will spend the amount you have indicated per day for the specific ad set.  The Lifetime Budget will spend the amount you have indicated across the amount of time you have chosen.

Choose Daily Budget and Run Continuously

With the Daily Budget option chosen for Budget Type and the “Run my ad set continuously starting today“ for End Date, your ads will begin running as soon as they are approved and your ad campaign and ad set are published. Your Daily Budget restriction will be in effect every day that your ad set is active.

Choose Daily Budget with Start and End Date

Choosing Daily Budget as your Budget Type and “Set a start and end date“ as your End Date option, your ads will begin running on the Start Date and time that you choose, and for the duration up to the End Date and time that you choose. Your Daily Budget restriction will be in effect each day that your ad campaign is active.

Choose Lifetime Budget with Start and End Date

Choosing Lifetime Budget as your Budget Type, your ads will begin running on the Start Date and time that you choose, and for the duration up to the End Date and time that you choose. Your Lifetime Budget restriction will be split equally across each day that your ad campaign is active.

Choose Run Ads All The Time for Ad Scheduling

With the “Run Ads All The Time” option chosen, Facebook will delivery your ad to your client audience evenly each day of your chosen ad schedule.

Choose Run Ads on a Schedule for Ad Scheduling

If your business has specific schedule requirements when communicating with your client audience, Facebook offers Ad Scheduling to meet your needs.  You can choose the exact time zone associated with your client, exact days, or hours of day, which Facebook will use for the delivery of your ad.

Audience

You want your ads to reach your client audience, so your going to use a single or a variety of audience types to find and target them.  If you already have a combination of demographics, interests, and behaviors, then that’s the start of a Saved Audience.  If your Facebook Pixel installation has accumulated a sufficient amount of audience data from your business blog visits, then that’s a Custom Audience that is ready to be used.  To expand your client audience choices, you can have Facebook create a Lookalike Audience for you, using a variety of similar client characteristics.

To get a better understanding of the different audience types, such as creating a Saved Audience, go to Save Your Business Client Audience for Targeting, or how to create a Custom Audience. go to Retarget Your Business Client Using Custom Audiences, or how to create a Lookalike Audience, go to Expand Your Business Client Reach Using Lookalike Audiences.

Create New Audience

To narrow or broaden your target client audience, you can also include or exclude Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences to further refine or expand your reach.  To create a better match for your client profile, you can also include personal or geographic characteristics that you think are a good fit.

Choose a Saved Audience

If you already have a Saved Audience that you created, you can choose it as your audience option.  It saves time to be able to store these varying combinations of client profiles.

Add Detailed Targeting

You can include or exclude a combination of demographics, interests, and behaviors that fit with your client profile.  As you add or remove choices, your audience pool is going increase or decrease for your ad delivery.

Add Suggested Interests

Facebook will help you to decide on which demographics, interests, and behaviors to choose to narrow or expand your client audience.  Just type in your keyword and you will see interests that are similar that you can choose.

Add Demographics, Interests, or Behaviors

Facebook also allows you to search for categorical demographics, interests, and behaviors to narrow or expand your client audience.

Connection Type

You already have a direct connection to your client, so you can add that group to your audience based on how they are connected to you.

Choose a Connection Type

The most common Connection Type is the going to be your business Facebook Page, but you can also choose your Apps and Events as well.  You have the option of choosing your business, their friends, or even just excluding them from the audience.

Save Your Audience

Your now ready to save the audience, so it can be available for you at a later date and for another ad campaign.

Placement

You have many different ways to reach your client, all of which can be adjusted to meet your ad campaign objective.  The great opportunity that Facebook offers is the ability to place your ad in front of your client at a right time and place.

For a more detailed explanation of Placements and the various options that you can choose, go to Guided Creation – Placements.

Choose Automatic Placements

You can let Facebook place your ads automatically where you will see efficient results for your ad campaign objective.

Choose Edit Placements

You can manually place your ads where you feel you are going to get the best results that meet your ad campaign objective.

Device Types

You can infer a lot about your client by the choice of Device Type, especially how they consume content.

Choose a Device Type

You have the option of “Mobile Only“, “Desktop Only“, or “All Devices“.  Each has their purpose, your client audience might have a specific characteristic that best fits either or all of these options.

Choose Your Platform

Your ability to manually choose your platform allows you to customize your ad campaigns according to each individual placement opportunity.  Different placements are going to have their own delivery characteristics, you would need to understand them and determine how they will be received by your client audience.

Specific Mobile Devices

Just like Device Types, choosing the Specific Mobile Devices  that best represent your client audience’s usage will pinpoint your targeting to meet your ad campaign objective.

Specific Mobile Device Options

Your given several Specific Mobile Device options to choose from, including “Android Devices Only“, “iOS Devices Only“, “Feature Phone Only“, or “All Mobile Devices“.

Choose All Mobile Devices

The “All Mobile Devices“ choice for the Specific Mobile Devices option makes it really easy, you don’t have to try and figure out if your client audience is using an “Android“, “iOS“, or “Feature Phone“. Instead, Facebook does the work for you and delivers your ad based on your configuration, objective, and optimization.

Choose Android Devices Only

You can segment your client audience by Android device users, so your choice for Specific Mobile Devices options will be, “Android Devices Only“. Your also given several further choices to choose that are specific to only Android devices, such as:

• Included Devices:  You can further target your client audience by choosing an Android category, such as “smartphones” and “tablets“, or specific models by entering their names into the text box.
• Excluded Devices:  You can also target your client audience by choosing an Android category that you don’t want to be considered, such as “smartphones” and “tablets“, or specific models by entering their names into the text box.
• OS Versions:  You can choose to target your client audience by choosing more granular options, such as Android operating system versions.

Choose iOS Devices Only

You can segment your client audience by iOS device users, so your choice for Specific Mobile Devices options will be, “iOS Devices Only“. Your also given several further choices to choose that are specific to only iOS devices, such as:

• Included Devices:  You can further target your client audience by choosing an iOS category, such as “iPads“, “iPods“, and “iPhones“, or specific models by entering their names into the text box.
• Excluded Devices:  You can also target your client audience by choosing an iOS category that you don’t want to be considered, such as “iPads“, “iPods“, and “iPhones“, or specific models by entering their names into the text box.
• OS Versions:  You can choose to target your client audience by choosing more granular options, such as iOS operating system versions.

Exclude Content and Publishers

It’s really important that you have the ability to choose which content you deem as best for your ad to appear next to or which publishers you feel are appropriate to find your client audience.  It’s also important to note that Facebook makes every attempt to follow your choices, but these are considered guidelines, and there may be instances where the exclusion does not work.

Choose Excluded Content and Publishers Options

You would just proceed to fill in all of these options that you feel are important to build a suitable set of guidelines that Facebook will use to attempt to control where and how your ads are delivered.

Optimization & Delivery

Facebook uses its proprietary algorithm to optimize and deliver your ads, consisting of relevancy, for instance, is your ad meeting the needs of your client, engagement is considered, such as if your client is responding to your ad in any way, and another is how your client behaves when they go from your ad to your destination page on your business blog.

It would be a good idea to make sure you understand your choice of ad campaign objectives before choosing your Optimization & Delivery options, go to Guided Creation – Choose Your Objective.  To go over the full details of how Optimization & Delivery works and the explanation of each option you can choose, go to Guided Creation – Optimization & Delivery.

Choose Optimization for Traffic Campaign Objective

The optimization you choose will work with the ad campaign objective that you have already chosen, such as Traffic to Website.  Facebook is going to make sure your ad is delivered to the right client audience for the optimization of your choice, while achieving your objective.

For the Traffic objective, you can choose from one of the following optimizations:

• Link Clicks:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients that are more likely to click on your ad to your destination URL at your business blog and at the lowest cost.
• Landing Page Views:  Ads will be delivered to the right clients that are more likely to click on your ads’s link and load the landing page at your business blog.
• Impressions:  Ads will be delivered to as many clients and as many times as possible.
• Daily Unique Reach:  Ads will be delivered to your clients up to once a day.

Choose Bid Amount

The Bid Amount is going to determine how well Facebook can optimize your ads for delivery. Your chosen bid , whether it be “Automatic“, determined for you, or “Manual“, you input the best bid yourself, competes in an auction with other advertisers, who also want to reach the same target audience.

Automatic

Facebook will use the configuration you have setup for your ad campaign to determine the best bid possible to meet your objective and at the best price.

Manual

You can manually input the target cost for each conversion that Facebook gets you.  You can either set an average cost across all of your conversions, or, you can set a maximum cost that you feel is ideal for each conversion.

Choose When You Get Charged

Facebook will allow you to choose between several options for When You Get Charged in an effort to create the most efficient spending of your ad budget to achieve your chosen ad campaign objective.

Impression

The majority of the optimization goals will include an “Impression“, each time your ad is served to your client audience, as an option for When You Get Charged.

Link Click

For the Traffic objective, you also have the “Link Click“, each time your ad is clicked by your client audience, option for When You Get Charged.

Choose Delivery Type

Your choice of Delivery Type, whether “Standard” or “Accelerated“, gives you the flexibility of letting Facebook know how much and how soon you want your client audience to view your ad.

Standard

If you’re unsure as to what Delivery Type would work best for your ad campaign objective, “Standard” is the recommended option.  Your ad will be delivered according to the schedule you previously chose.

Accelerated

If you have an immediate need to reach your target client audience, then the “Accelerated” option for Delivery Type will fit best in meeting your ad campaign objective.  Your ad will be delivered as quickly as the marketplace for ad serving will allow.

Edit Ad

In the Ads Manager, under the Ads tab, you will see your incomplete ad with a “Draft” status.  As soon as you hover over the ad row, you will see the navigation links appear below the name.  Click or tap on the “Edit” link to be taken to the edit window to begin editing your ad.

Finish Setting Up Ad

If you decided not to complete the Quick Creation or Guided Creation for your ad, you can pick up up where you left off by hovering over the ad row, your going to see the navigation links appear below the name of the ad.  Click or tap on the “Edit” link to be taken to the edit window to continue creating your ad.

Name Your Ad

You might start out with a single ad, or your ready to expand to multiple with varying messages to your target client audience, you need to have a smart naming convention to keep track of each and their results.  So, don’t just name your ad, think about the specific intent your trying to achieve and the message that your using to get it achieved.

Name your ad according to your choice of objective, audience, and variant, to go over this again, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure.

Identity for Ad

Your business can validate your ad to your client audience by choosing your Facebook Page or Instagram Account.

Create Single Image Ad

You ad is gong to contain a single image that is going to meet the needs of your ad campaign messaging.  The image itself is going to represent the benefits of your business offer.

Add a Single Image to Ad

You can upload an image or choose an image that has already been uploaded for a previous ad campaign.  Facebook has very simple recommendations for your image. The file type should be a jpg or png, image size should be 1200 x 628, the image ratio should be 9:16 to 16:9, upload the highest resolution that you have available, and an image that contains more than 20% text may experience reduced delivery.

Add Content to Ad

The Text, Website URL, Display Link, Headline, and News Feed Link Description are all going to come together to speak to your client audience.  The message your trying to convey is going to be compounded by each of these elements.

Call to Action in Ad

Your choice of Call to Action are standard options that will appear in your ad as a button.  The primary purpose of a Call to Action is to grab the attention of your client and get them to do something.

Choose Call to Action

The various options that are offered try to give you as many opportunities as possible to fit into your ad campaign objective.

Overlay in Ad

You can add a standard text over your ad image to further grab your clients attention.

URL Parameters

While adding URL parameters  are considered optional by Facebook, in order to have a successful ad campaign, they are considered mandatory.  The URL parameters that you add as part of your ad link will help you to keep track of your results.

You should have already gone over the importance of ad campaign tracking, but if you haven’t, go to Setup Your Business Ad Campaign Tracking.

Conversion Tracking

Facebook offers so many options for the configuration of your ad campaign, but they need to be able to determine if your client audience is converting according the ad campaign objective that you have chosen.  The only way they can do this is if you choose the appropriate Facebook Pixel installed on your business blog.

Just in case, if you haven’t setup your Facebook Pixel on your business blog, than now is a good time to get that done before you continue, go to Install Your Facebook Pixel to Target Your Clients.

Create Ad & Publish Your Campaign

As soon as you click or tap on the “Publish” button, your ad is going to be created and your campaign is going to be published.  At this time, the status of your ad campaign and ad set are going to be “Pending“, and your ad is going to be “Pending Review“.  Facebook requires that all ads undergo a review process to ensure that they meet the necessary guidelines for ad delivery.  As soon as your ad is authorized for delivery, your ad campaign and ad set will be set to either “Inactive“, if they weren’t previously “Active“, or set to “Active“.

Publish Your Campaign – Not Completed

In the event that their is an issue with your ad campaign,  such as your ad set or ad configuration is not completed correctly, your are going to see the “Publish didn’t complete” message.  Most of the time, there could be very simple issues that can be fixed rather quickly.  To get a better understanding of what could be going wrong, just click or tap on the “View Details” button.

Publish Your Campaign – Not Completed – Confirmation

The confirmation window will give you a listing of each item that needs to be addressed.  Your going to be able to see the issues listed by campaign, ad set, and ad, which will help you to complete the configuration correctly.

Save Your Business Client Audience for Targeting

To schedule your ad set for delivery, it needs to have a targeted audience of clients to receive your ad.  Facebook has tools that let you create an audience of clients according to specific criteria that you choose.  These audiences are then available to you during the ad set creation process.  The criteria that you use to create the audience is the same that you would associate with your clients, in an effort to create as accurate of a profile as possible.   The great part is, you have the ability to adjust your client audiences to the exact combination of criteria, from narrow to broad, that best fits your ad campaign objective.

Navigate to Asset Library

To access your Saved Audiences or create a new one, your going to need to navigate to the Asset Library of the Ads Manager.  Just go to the top of the page and click on the main menu button.  Your going to see the “Audiences” option, click or tap on it to navigate to the Asset Library.

Asset Library

Once your on the Asset Library page, your going to see a listing of your current “Saved Audiences”, “Custom Audiences”, and “Lookalike Audiences”.  Your also going to see information that is associated with each audience, which let’s you know what is the current status of each.

• Type:  The audience type that you can use in your ad campaigns.
• Size:  The amount of clients available in your audience.
• Availability:  The current status of your audience, for instance, if Facebook is processing it, it’s “Pending“, if it’s available for use, it’s “Ready“.

Navigate to Create a Saved Audience

Go to the “Create Audience” button and in the expanded options, click or tap on the “Saved Audience” option to be taken to the “Create a Saved Audience” process.

Create a Saved Audience

Your going to have the opportunity to select all the criteria that you need to create your Saved Audience of targeted clients.  Choosing the right criteria to match with your client profile is important, so your going to need to understand the categories that you have available to choose from.

• Demographics:  You know your clients better than anyone, so use traits like age, gender, relationship status, education, workplace, job titles and others to pinpoint them.
• Location:  Target clients only in areas where you want or expand outside your current area to grow your business.
• Interests:  Your clients like to do certain things, enjoy specific activities, or share mutual experiences, among others, so use these to pool them together.
• Behaviors:  You can make assumptions on your clients choices, such as purchases, device usage, and other trackable events.
• Connections:  You have an active Facebook Page, so your clients are aware and on the lookout for new posts, either target them in your audience or exclude them.

Audience Name

Give your Saved Audience a name that will be easy for you to remember the general criteria you used to create it.  You don’t have to go to the extent of a fully structured ad campaign naming scheme, such as with your ad campaign structure.  If you want a quick refresher on your ad campaign structure, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure.

Your best option is to use underscores, “_”, backslashes, “/”, pipes, “|”, or hyphens, “-“, in between important criteria, such as the audience type ( i.e. saved ), location ( i.e. United States ), demographic ( i.e. male / female / 21+ ), interests ( i.e. top 1-3 ), or behaviors ( i.e. iPhone users ).

Custom Audiences

To further narrow or broaden your Saved Audience, you can include or exclude a “Custom Audience” or “Lookalike Audience” that you previously created.  This is a powerful option to take advantage of, precisely because the more accurate your targeted client audience is, the more relevant your ads are going to be, and you will spend less to run your ads to them.

If you choose to include a “Custom Audience” or “Lookalike Audience“, you’re going to narrow your reach, but with further criteria added, your going to refine the client audience.  You might want to do this if your only interested in targeting your current clients or those that you previously had contact with.  If you choose to exclude a “Custom Audience” or “Lookalike Audience“, you’re going to broaden your reach, not including a previous client audience, perhaps your interested in reaching a completely different target with a specific set of criteria.

For a detailed explanation of how to create a Custom Audience. go to Retarget Your Business Client Using Custom Audiences, or how to create a Lookalike Audience, go to Expand Your Business Client Reach Using Lookalike Audiences.

Include a Custom Audience or Lookalike Audience

To view a listing of your “Custom Audiences” or “Lookalike Audiences“, just click on the text box below the text “INCLUDE people who are in at least ONE of the following“.  This is going to bring up a list of audiences that can be segregated by “All“, “Lookalike Audience“, and “Custom Audience” by just clicking on the tabs.

Exclude a Custom Audience or Lookalike Audience

To view a listing of your “Custom Audiences” or “Lookalike Audiences“, just click on the text box below the text “EXCLUDE people who are in at least ONE of the following“.  This is going to bring up a list of audiences that can be segregated by “All“, “Lookalike Audience“, and “Custom Audience” by just clicking on the tabs.

Locations

Your choice of location can play a key role in creating a targeted client audience, mainly because your business may obviously be confined to a geographical area.  The alternative is  when you have a business offer that doesn’t have a geographical boundary, then you need to take into consideration other factors.  You have a wide array of options to target your clients, such as global regions, countries, states/regions, cities, postal codes, addresses or Designated Market Areas ( DMAs ) to include or exclude your ad to clients in those locations.

Age

Your can use the minimum or maximum age range to increase or decrease the accuracy of your targeted audience.  While, you may know roughly the age characteristics of your client audience, the messaging of your ad may differ across each age bracket.

Gender

You don’t have to use targeted client audiences that are gender neutral, so you can further refine your messaging to meet the exact needs of your clients based on their own specific characteristics.

Languages

Together with location, you can create a targeted audience of clients that fits better into a regionalized ad campaign.  Typically, it can be left blank and Facebook will apply the right language for the location, but you may want to expand your options if it fits with your business.

Detailed Targeting

You can narrow and broaden your Saved Audience with specific combinations that best match your client‘s profile. These combinations will allow you to reach your clients with your ads.  Facebook does a good job of providing you with a wide array of demographics, interests, and behaviors, then uses them to identify the exact client audience you’re looking for.

Define your audience by including or excluding demographics, interests and behaviors.

• INCLUDE:  Adding demographic, interest, and behavior details will expand your client audience to include more people.
• EXCLUDE:  Choose new demographic, interest, and behavior details to exclude people from your client audience.  As you continue to add new details, your client audience will decrease in size.

Suggested Interests

Your going to get suggested interests as soon as you enter in your demographic, interests, or behavior keywords into the text box.  Facebook is going to show you exact or similar options to choose from.  This allows you to easily build your client audience with combinations that you might not have thought of as being relevant.

Browse for Demographics, Interests, Behaviors

You can also add more specific details to build your targeted client audience, you can browse for a specific demographic, interest, or behavior. Your client profile might comprise of a specific combination of details, so Facebook offers these predetermined data sets to help you build that client audience.

Connection Type

You may already have interactions with your targeted client audience through your business Facebook Page, your apps that they have installed, or an event that you created and they took part in.  Your going to be able to further refine your Saved Audience by using one of these options.

Choose a Connection Type

The choices you have for a Connection Type allow you to use the behaviors of your clients to created a really targeted audience.  If you have a robust ad campaign, then a client that has shown they are willing to interact with you through Facebook increases the likelihood of responding to your ad.

• Facebook Page
• Apps
• Events
• Advanced Combinations

Connection Type – Facebook Pages – Choose an Option

The most common Connection Type is going to be your business Facebook Page.  Once you choose this Connection Type, you have several options to choose from, each further narrowing or broadening your target client audience.

• People who like your Page:  The clients who have shown interest in your business Facebook Page by liking it.
• Friends of people who like your Page:  The friends of clients who have shown interest in your business Facebook Page by liking it.  Your previous criteria will also narrow or broaden this option.
• Exclude people who like your Page:  The clients who have shown interest in your business Facebook Page by liking it.  The advantage to this option is you don’t have to spend for an ad delivery when the message isn’t meant for these clients.

Facebook Pages – People Who Like Your Page

As soon as you choose the “People who like your Page” option, you have the ability to add the name of your business Facebook Page.

Advanced Combinations

The Advanced Combinations option is a unique opportunity to narrow or broaden your reach using several criteria that are related to your business Facebook Page, app, or event.

• People who are connected to:  Leave this field blank unless you want to narrow down your audience to only the clients connected to your Page, app or event.
• Friend of people who are connected to:  Leave this field blank unless you want to narrow down your audience to only the clients whose friends are connected to your Page or app.
• Exclude people who are connected to:  Leave this field blank unless you want to narrow down your audience to only the clients NOT connected to your Page, app or event.

Save Your Audience

As soon as you save your audience, it will be available for use the next time you edit or create a new ad set.

Retarget Your Clients Using Custom Audiences

Now that your clients are responding to your ad and arriving at your business blog or website, Facebook is now compiling data about their visits, and it’s available for you to use to create a Custom Audience.  When you create a new ad set or edit an existing ad set, you are going to be able to use your Custom Audience to target those same ads or any new communications.

The power of being able to deliver a specific ad with a message that is tailored to a single or set of behaviors your client performed or didn’t perform on your business website allows you to create elaborate campaigns with ads that progressively support each other.  Each Custom Audience is configured according to your choice of behaviors that should be used to segment the data that Facebook is acquiring using the pixel that you have installed.

In order to be able to create a Custom Audience, you first should have setup your Facebook Pixel.  If it’s not installed on your business blog or website, than now is a good time to get that done before you continue, go to Install Your Facebook Pixel to Target Your Clients.

Navigate to Asset Library

To access your Custom Audience or create a new one, your going to need to navigate to the Asset Library of the Ads Manager. Just go to the top of the page and click on the main menu button. Your going to see the “Audiences” option, click or tap on it to navigate to the Asset Library.

Asset Library

Once your on the Asset Library page, your going to see a listing of your current “Saved Audiences“, “Custom Audiences“, and “Lookalike Audiences“. Your also going to see information that is associated with each audience, which let’s you know what is the current status of each.

• Type:  The audience type that you can use in your ad campaigns.
• Size:  The amount of clients available in your audience.
• Availability:  The current status of your audience, for instance, if Facebook is processing it, it’s “Pending“, if it’s available for use, it’s “Ready“.

Navigate to Create a Custom Audience

Go to the “Create Audience” button and in the expanded options, click or tap on the “Custom Audience” option to be taken to the “Create a Custom Audience” process.

Create a Custom Audience

To create your Custom Audience, you have several sources to choose from, each having their specific purpose to meet your need to target your clients with ads that are relevant for the moment they are being delivered.  Identify how your going to use your Custom Audience, then choose the source that best fits into that objective.

• Customer File:  Use a client file to match your clients with people on Facebook and create an audience from the matches.
• Website Traffic:  Create a list of clients who visited your website or took specific actions using the Facebook Pixel.
• App Activity:  Create a list of clients who launched your app or game, or took specific actions.
• Offline Activity:  Create a list of clients who interacted with your business, by phone, or through other offline channels.
• Engagement:  Create a list of clients who engaged with your content on Facebook or Instagram.

Website Traffic Source

The easiest and more straight forward approach to using the data that your Facebook pixel is acquiring is to use the “Website Traffic” source option.  You have many different ways to configure the data segmentation according to a wide array of behaviors.

• All Website Visitors:  This option includes everyone who visited your business website. If you have multiple business websites, selecting this option will include people who visited ANY of your websites.
• People Who Visited Specific Web Pages:  This option lets you create URL rules to include people based on whether they visited specific business websites or website pages. For example: If you specify that the URL should contain “business“, you will only capture people who visited website pages with the word “business” in the URL.
• Visitors by Time Spent:  This option let’s you identify only those clients that spend a specific amount of time on your business website.
• From Your Events:  This option organizes your clients by a specific action that they have completed, or an event that is associated with that action ( i.e. ViewContent, PageView )

If you would like to freshen up your knowledge on Standard Events and Custom Events that your Facebook Pixel installation is keeping track of, go to Keep Track of your Standard Events, or go to Setup Your Own Custom Events.

Start Creating a Custom Audience

Your Custom Audience is going to be configured according to how you want to use it.  For instance, the Facebook Pixel is acquiring data from your clients that visit your business blog or website, by setting the right options, you can create a Custom Audience made up of only website visitors and also within a specific time frame.  The possibilities are endless and can be adjusted to fit into your overall ad campaign strategy.

Choose a Condition

As you continue to add criteria to your Custom Audience configuration, your going to need to add basic conditional logic that will allow Facebook the ability to properly segment your audience.  This logic is going to cause your client audience to be narrowed or broadened, but it will be precise to fit your needs.

• ANY: Capture clients who completed any one of these actions.

Example 1:  Clients who have searched for an item on your website OR clients who added an item to their cart OR clients who added an item to their wishlist.

Example 2:  Clients who purchased on your website OR clients who purchased on your mobile app OR clients who are in your customer list.

• ALL: Capture clients who MUST complete all of these actions.  Requiring your client audience to meet the “All” criteria may cause the audience size to be very small.

Example 1:  Clients who searched for an item on your website in the last 14 days AND made a purchase on your website in the last 180 days.

Example 2:  Clients who watched your video AND clients who are in your customer list.

Choose Your Pixel Installation

You may only have a single Facebook Pixel installed on your business blog or website, which would be considered a standard installation.  In some cases, you could have multiple Facebook Pixel installations across multiple websites or landing pages, if this is the case, you can choose the specific installation where you would like Facebook to take the data that it has acquired and use it to populate your Custom Audience.

Set Your Rule for All Website Visitors

The “All Website Visitors” option is going to allow you to create a Custom Audience that is populated with only the clients that have visited your business blog or website.  It’s important to note that it will be “all” clients and the visit will be considered for “any” pages.  This is the standard rule for segmentation, it allows you to differentiate between a targeted client audience that has had exposure to your business website and those that have not visited yet.  It can also differentiate between a targeted client audience containing visits within a specific period of time and visits after.

Custom Audience for All Website Visitors

With the “All Website Visitors” option chosen, you have the option of inputting the amount of time in the past that you want Facebook to use when putting together your Custom Audience.  This is important because you may find that your client audience behaviors are more likely to produce a conversion within a “0-30” or “0-45” day time period.  Your only limited up to 180 days for any client visits to your business website.

Name Your Custom Audience

Give your Custom Audience a name that will be easy for you to remember the general criteria that you used to create it.  You don’t have to go to the extent of a fully structured ad campaign naming scheme, such as with your ad campaign structure.  If you want a quick refresher on your ad campaign structure, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure.

Your best option is to use underscores, “_”, backslashes, “/”, pipes, “|”, or hyphens, “-“, in between important criteria, such as the audience type ( i.e. custom ), condition ( i.e. all ), rule ( i.e. all visitors ), or active period ( i.e. last 30 days ).

Add a Description to Your Custom Audience

Using a standard naming convention for your Custom Audience doesn’t always allow you to be descriptive, and working with many different audiences, that could be a problem finding one when you need it.  So, you can add a description to your Custom Audience to give you a better opportunity to add detail with the exact criteria that you used to create it.

Set Your Rule for Clients Who Visited a Specific Web Page

The “People Who Visited Specific Web Pages” option is going to allow you to create a Custom Audience that is populated with only the clients that have visited the specific page on your business website, that you have set as a criteria.  This option causes you to be deliberate, which typically revolves around an ad campaign that triggers a communication only when a client visits the predetermined page.

Set Your Comparison Operator

The comparison operator is the method your chosen option will use to go about determining how to segment your client data to create your Custom Audience.

• Contains:  Facebook will identify the event only when the exact text you provide is present in the URL of the page that the client visits.
• Doesn’t Contain:  Facebook will identify the event only when the exact text you provide is NOT present in the URL of the page that the client visits.
• Equals:  Facebook will identify the event only when the exact text of a single word, multiple words, parts of a URL, or complete URL is present in the URL of the page that the client visits.

Add a Value to Compare

The value you choose to add to be compared for building your Custom Audience of clients is the exact page name that is found in the URL of your business blog or website.  The page is the deliberate response that your client fulfilled, and you are using this to segment your client data to create a Custom Audience that you will use to deliver customized communications.

Set Your Rule for All Website Visitors and for Clients Who Didn’t Visit a Specific Web Page

With the “All Website Visitors” and “People Who Visited Specific Web Pages” options, plus the comparison operator set to “Doesn’t Contain“, your going to be able to create a Custom Audience that is populated with the clients that have visited your business website, but haven’t visited the specific page on your business website that you have set as a value.  This is where you start to see the power of building targeted Custom Audiences of clients, based on their behaviors.

Start With a Further Narrow Condition

To expand the number of conditions that you want Facebook to use to create your segmented Custom Audience of clients, you can start by using the “Further Narrow” option.

Add a Value to Compare

By adding a new condition, you can now begin to narrow your Custom Audience to a more targeted set of clients.  You started with a broad audience of “All Website Visitors” within the past “30-days“, now you can add a condition of “People Who Visited Specific Web Pages” within the past “30-days“.

Assuming your business website is setup for a client to succeed  through a sales funnel, for instance after completing an email capture form, they are taken to a “/thanks/” page.  By adding the “Doesn’t Contain” operator, you can create a Custom Audience of clients that have not completed your email capture process.

Another scenario would be if your client didn’t complete a sale, so they only reached the “/checkout/” page and not the “/thanks/” page.  With the “Doesn’t Contain” operator in place, your Custom Audience would contain clients that have not completed your purchase process.

Name Your Custom Audience

Give your Custom Audience a name that will be easy for you to remember the general criteria you used to create it.  You don’t have to go to the extent of a fully structured ad campaign naming scheme, such as with your ad campaign structure.  If you want a quick refresher on your ad campaign structure, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure.

Your best option is to use underscores, “_”, backslashes, “/”, pipes, “|”, or hyphens, “-“, in between important criteria, such as the audience type ( i.e. custom ), condition ( i.e. all ), rule ( i.e. all visitors ), or active period ( i.e. last 30 days ).

Name Your Custom Audience and Add a Description

Using a standard naming convention for your Custom Audience doesn’t always allow you to be descriptive, and working with many different audiences, that could be a problem finding one when you need it.  So, you can add a description to your Custom Audience to give you a better opportunity to add detail with the exact criteria that you used to create it.

Set Your Rule for Clients Who Visited a Set of Specific Web Pages

You can capture powerful behaviors by coinciding client visits to multiple web pages located on your business website.  Setting up a series of web pages as part of a successful outcome can show you where your clients are dropping off and help you to encourage them back into your sales funnel.  A single or multiple Custom Audiences can achieve this goal, you can track these visits and use them to target your ads for delivery.

Start With a Further Narrow Condition

Your going to want to expand the number of conditions that you want Facebook to use to create your segmented Custom Audience of clients, you can start by using the “Further Narrow” option.

Add a Values to Compare

Since were looking for a set of behaviors, adding a new condition, will allow you to track the first and second web page, further narrowing your Custom Audience to a more targeted set of clients.  Your starting with a narrow audience of “People Who Visited Specific Web Pages” within the past “30-days“, and your going to continue to narrow that audience with another condition of “People Who Visited Specific Web Pages” within the past “30-days“.

First, your business website needs to be setup for a client to succeed through a path, for instance after completing a sale at the “/checkout/” page, then they are taken to a “/thanks/” page.  With the “Contains” operator in place, your Custom Audience would contain clients that have completed a purchase process.

This is helpful because it doesn’t just have to relate to a sale, it could also work with several pieces of content, events, or other promotions that you’re clients are responding to, and as long as your have a path they are supposed to follow and an outcome that you expect them to reach, the Custom Audience will keep track of those successes or failures accordingly.

Name Your Custom Audience

Give your Custom Audience a name that will be easy for you to remember the general criteria you used to create it.  You don’t have to go to the extent of a fully structured ad campaign naming scheme, such as with your ad campaign structure.  If you want a quick refresher on your ad campaign structure, go to Define Your Business Ad Campaign Structure.

Your best option is to use underscores, “_”, backslashes, “/”, pipes, “|”, or hyphens, “-“, in between important criteria, such as the audience type ( i.e. custom ), condition ( i.e. all ), rule ( i.e. all visitors ), or active period ( i.e. last 30 days ).

Name Your Custom Audience and Add a Description

Using a standard naming convention for your Custom Audience doesn’t always allow you to be descriptive, and working with many different audiences, that could be a problem finding one when you need it.  So, you can add a description to your Custom Audience to give you a better opportunity to add detail with the exact criteria that you used to create it.

Expand Your Business Client Reach Using Lookalike Audiences

Communicating with your clients, by first finding them through your best combination of audience configurations using your choice of demographics, interests, and behaviors, which are your Saved Audiences, or using Custom Audiences that are created by Facebook from segmented data acquired from your pixel, according to your choice of website visit behaviors, will be the source for expanding your reach using Lookalike Audiences.

You can expand your reach using more Saved Audiences with new configurations, but with Lookalike Audiences, Facebook uses its vast trove of data to create multiple client audiences that are similar to those that you have already created.  So, Facebook does all the work for you, with its ability to find a new or set of new audiences with similar characteristics to those you chose as the source to start with.

If you haven’t created a Custom Audience or just need a refresher. go to Retarget Your Business Client Using Custom Audiences.

Navigate to Asset Library

To access your Lookalike Audiences or create a new one, your going to need to navigate to the Asset Library of the Ads Manager. Just go to the top of the page and click on the main menu button. Your going to see the “Audiences” option, click or tap on it to navigate to the Asset Library.

Asset Library

Once your on the Asset Library page, your going to see a listing of your current Saved Audiences, Custom Audiences, and Lookalike Audiences. Your also going to see information that is associated with each audience, which let’s you know what is the current status of each.

• Type:  The audience type that you can use in your ad campaigns.
• Size:  The amount of clients available in your audience.
• Availability:  The current status of your audience, for instance, if Facebook is processing it, it’s “Pending“, if it’s available for use, it’s “Ready“.

Navigate to Create a Lookalike Audience

Go to the “Create Audience” button and in the expanded options, click or tap on the “Lookalike Audience” option to be taken to the “Create a Lookalike Audience” process.

Single Lookalike Audience

If you start with a source audience from a Custom Audience you have already created, or pixel data that is being acquired from your business blog or website, or your mobile app data, Facebook is going to identify the characteristics of your clients that would be a best match for an entirely new single Lookalike Audience.  Facebook will do it’s best to use those characteristics to ensure that the new audience has a high likelihood of responding to your communications in the same way.

Create a Single Lookalike Audience

Things to consider before you start creating a Lookalike Audience of clients:

• Your Lookalike Audience will only include clients from the single or multiple country choices you select during the creation process.
• Your source audience you choose must contain a minimum of 100 clients from a single country in order for Facebook to use it as the basis for a Lookalike Audience.
• You don’t have to have clients from the single or multiple country choices you want to target in your source audience. An example would be, if your source audience is made up of 1,000 clients from the United States, it can be used to create a Lookalike Audience of similar clients from England.
• Facebook will create up to 500 Lookalike Audiences from a single source audience of your clients.
• Clients in your source audience will be excluded from your Lookalike Audience unless you use a pixel as your source audience.
• You can use multiple Lookalike Audiences at the same time for a single ad set. The ad set will target your ads to clients who are in any of the selected Lookalike Audiences.

Choose a Source for Your Single Lookalike Audience

As discussed earlier, the source of your Lookalike Audience is going to be entirely of your choosing.  For instance you can create a Lookalike Audience from your Custom Audience of clients with specific behaviors they display on your business blog or website, or from clients that have completed a purchase.  The source is going to be important because Facebook will use it to find more clients that meet the same characteristics.

Choose the Location For Your Single Lookalike Audience

Your business offer is going to dictate the boundaries of your Lookalike Audience.  For instance, Facebook will use your choice of location to identify only those potential clients within the predefined area.  This is really important because you can narrow or broaden your Lookalike Audience according to your needs.

Choose an Audience Size for Your Single Lookalike Audience

According to your ad campaign objective, you can choose the size of your Lookalike Audience of clients, but you need to understand the limitations.  If you choose to create a smaller audience size, Facebook will do a much better job of matching it, using the characteristics that were determined from the source audience.  If you decide that you want to create a larger audience size to expand your reach, Facebook will do it’s best to use those same characteristics, but you might find that the new audience and the source audience are dissimilar to each other.  So, with this in mind, when you assign these Lookalike Audiences to your ad set, you should measure the results to determine their effectiveness.

Facebook has a general rule for your source audience, they should be between 1,000 and 50,000 clients.  The better the quality of your source audience, for instance clients interested in your content, sharers, or purchasers, your going to see a better result from your Lookalike Audience.

Save Single Lookalike Audience

To create your single Lookalike Audience, click or tap on the “Create Audience” button and Facebook will start the process of identifying users that meet the characteristics of your source audience of clients. Facebook will name your Lookalike Audience for you, but you will have the opportunity to edit the name as soon as it’s created and using the edit feature.

If you wanted to create multiple Lookalike Audiences, then you would continue by clicking or tapping on the “Show Advanced Options” link.

Multiple Lookalike Audiences

When you create multiple Lookalike Audiences, Facebook is going to give you several opportunities to expand your reach.  This is important when you need help in establishing a new client base without interfering with your “Saved Audiences” or “Custom Audiences” that are currently working for your ad sets.

Navigate to Multiple Lookalike Audiences

To continue to create multiple Lookalike Audiences, just click or tap on the “Show Advanced Options” link to expand more options.

Create Multiple Lookalike Audiences

Facebook does a great job to help you to setup multiple Lookalike Audiences, you just need to fill in the options with the information that they need to create the most accurate of client audiences.

Choose a Source for Your Multiple Lookalike Audiences

The source of your multiple Lookalike Audiences should come from qualified interaction with your business or blog or website.  These sources should contain clients that have shown interest in your content, responded to an event, or purchased from you.  It’s going to be important because Facebook will identify the most important characteristics your clients contain to build your new audience.

Choose the Location For Your Multiple Lookalike Audiences

Since your going to have Facebook create multiple Lookalike Audiences, the restrictions of your business offer are going to dictate your location of choice.  To give you an example, Facebook will use the location that you choose to identify only those potential clients within your location choice.  With multiple Lookalike Audiences, your going to need to test them each in separate ad sets to determine if they are effective for your ad campaigns.

Choose an Audience Size for Your Multiple Lookalike Audiences

Similar to creating a single Lookalike Audience, Facebook is confined to the quality of your source audience.  As you increase the number of Lookalike Audiences that your asking to be created, your going to run the risk of having a broadened audience.  The best way to offset this, is to have a definitive objective that can be measured during the testing of your client audiences.

Save Multiple Lookalike Audience

To create your multiple Lookalike Audiences, click or tap on the “Create Audience” button and Facebook will start the process of identifying users that meet the characteristics of your source audience of clients. Facebook will name your Lookalike Audiences for you, but you will have the opportunity to edit the names as soon as it’s created by using the edit feature.