Facebook advertising is an of import way to connect with your audience on the earth's largest social network. How large? 2.80 billion monthly active users large, to be precise.

Certain, that's an impressive number. But Facebook ads are all about getting your bulletin in front of exactly the right segment of those people. The people who are most likely to actually want your products or services.

If you want to go the all-time results, it's of import to understand the different Facebook advertizement types and targeting options before you dive in.

In this Facebook ads guide, we'll walk you through everything you need to know, from planning your get-go ad to developing avant-garde campaign strategies.

Bonus: Get the Facebook advertizing cheat sheet for 2022. The costless resource includes primal audience insights, recommended ad types, and tips for success.

Types of Facebook ads

Image ads

These uncomplicated ads are a bully way to get started with Facebook paid advertising. You can create 1 with simply a few clicks by boosting an existing post with an image from your Facebook Page.

Prototype ads may be simple, only that doesn't mean they take to be deadening.

For case, you might think domain names are a pretty ho-hum production. But that doesn't finish the Canadian Cyberspace Registration Potency from creating fun Facebook photograph ads.

Canadian Internet Registration Authority Facebook photo ads

Source: Canadian Cyberspace Registration Say-so on Facebook

Video ads

Video ads can run in the News Feed and Stories, or they can appear as in-stream ads in longer Facebook videos. Video ads can show your team or your production in activeness, similar this quick demo video advertising from Abeego.

Abeego reusable beeswax food wraps video ad

Source: Abeego on Facebook

Simply similar image ads, video ads can also take a more artistic approach, like this i from Tru Earth:

Your video ads don't demand to employ filmed video footage. Yous can too create GIF-like graphics or other animations to capture attention or explain your offer, similar in this video advertisement from IKEA.

IKEA seasonal box GIF animation

Source: IKEA Canada on Facebook

Poll ads

This mobile-only Facebook ad format incorporates an interactive component past adding a ii-option poll to an paradigm or video ad. Y'all tin add a carve up link for each poll choice.

Both you and those who answer will see the tally of responses to each poll option.

Jasper's Market poll ads

Source: Facebook

Carousel ads

A carousel ad uses up to 10 images or videos to showcase your product or service.

Y'all can apply this format to highlight different benefits of one product, several dissimilar products or fifty-fifty utilize all the photos together to create one large panorama image.

Each image or video can have its own link. In the advertising below, each "Shop Now" button goes directly to the sales page for the found in the accompanying prototype.

Plantsome Shop Now Carousel ads

Source: Plantsome on Facebook

Slideshow ads

Slideshow ads offer an like shooting fish in a barrel fashion to create short video ads from a collection of all the same photos, text, or existing video clips.

Slideshow ads have center-catching move, simply similar videos, simply use five times less data. So, they load well even for people on slow cyberspace connections. They're an easy, depression-touch on manner to draw attention.

You tin can build your advertizement and add text and music inside Ads Manager.

Build slideshow ad in Facebook Ads Manager

Source: Facebook

Collection ads

These Facebook paid ads, which are offered just for mobile devices, allow you to showcase v images or videos that customers can click to buy a product or service.

Drove ads pair with Instant Experiences (more on those below) and let people to buy your products without ever leaving Facebook. This makes online shopping easy when people are on-the-become.

The principal photo or video can practise much more than showcase a single product. For example, in this Lee Valley Tools ad, the master video teaches viewers how to choose the right seeds for their garden. The production images below all point to supplies for planting and saving seeds.

Lee Valley Tools seeds collection ad

Source: Lee Valley Tools on Facebook

Lee Valley Tools explore more garden products

Source: Lee Valley Tools on Facebook

Instant Experience ads

Instant Experience ads used to be called Canvas. They're a full-screen advert format that loads 15 times faster than a mobile website outside of Facebook.

This advertizement from Kilne links to an Instant Experience with a video at the top and a carousel below.

Kilne instant experience ads

Source: Kilne on Facebook

Kilne knifes shop now

Source: Kilne on Facebook

You can also link a few Instant Experiences together so people have access to fifty-fifty more than instant mobile content.

Lead ads

Lead ads are but available for mobile devices. That's because they're specifically designed to make it easy for people to give y'all their contact information without a lot of typing.

They're bully for collecting newsletter subscriptions, signing someone upward for a trial of your product or allowing people to ask for more than information from you lot. Several automakers have successfully used them to encourage test drives.

automakers like Endomoto use lead ads

Source: Facebook

EndoMoto find your car today

Source: Facebook

Because these ads are such a great way to feed your sales funnel, we've got a whole guide to using Facebook lead ads. It breaks downward all the details you lot need to know to brand the most of this important type of Facebook ad campaign.

Dynamic ads

Dynamic ads allow you to promote targeted products to the customers well-nigh probable to be interested in them.

For case, say someone has visited a product folio or placed a product in their shopping cart on your website, only then abased the purchase. With dynamic ads, you lot can annunciate that specific production in their Facebook feed.

This reminds the potential customer to complete the buy, and can be a very effective Facebook marketing strategy.

It'southward not only the product selection that tin can be dynamic. The Taiwanese beverage brand Nature Fruit used dynamic ads to manage the language settings for its ads when it expanded into Malaysia.

This allowed them to create a unmarried ad that automatically ran in either English or Simplified Chinese, based on the user'southward preferences. The result was a 25% lower price per add-to-cart.

beverage brand Nature Fruit dynamic ads language settings

Source: Facebook

You need a Facebook Business organization Manager business relationship to employ Dynamic ads.

Messenger ads

Facebook Messenger ads give you access to the 1.3 billion people who use Messenger every month. When creating your ad, but choose Messenger as the desired placement. Y'all as well need to select Facebook feed.

Here's what an ad looks like in the Messenger app:

Jasper's Market ad Messenger App

Source: Facebook

You lot tin likewise run "click-to-Messenger" ads in the Facebook feed. These ads feature a call-to-action button that opens a Messenger conversation with your Facebook Page. People can use it to have a i-on-one chat with one of your salespeople or client service reps.

Stories ads

Mobile phones are meant to be held vertically. Stories ads are a mobile-only full-screen vertical video format that allows you to maximize screen real estate without expecting viewers to turn their screen.

Stillhouse Spirits Co. ran Facebook Stories ads as role of a entrada to achieve U.S. males aged 21 to 40. They specifically targeted the ads to those interested in booze, cocktails, hiking and the outdoors.

Stillhouse Spirits Co. Facebook Stories ads

Source: Facebook

Augmented reality ads

Augmented reality ads employ features like filters and animation to let people to interact with your brand.

For example, the filter could assist users see what a shade of lipstick would look like on their lips, or how a pair of spectacles might fit their face.

Augmented reality ads can too be used to extend your attain. The ads permit users to take selfies with the filter and share them on their own channels.

The cosmetics band essence used mask filters in augmented reality ads to connect with their audience. The mask designs were based on an before round of ads that polled followers on their favorite features.

augmented reality ads cosmestics brand mask filters

Source: Facebook

Over the course of the two-month campaign, the ads reached 6.5 1000000 people.

Bonus: Get the Facebook advertising cheat sheet for 2022. The complimentary resource includes key audition insights, recommended advertizing types, and tips for success.

Get the free cheat sheet at present!

How to advertise on Facebook

If you already have a Facebook business organisation folio (and you should), y'all can head directly to the Facebook Ads Manager or Business organisation Director to create your Facebook ad campaign. If you don't notwithstanding have a business page, yous'll need to create 1 first.

We'll follow the steps for Ads Manager in this post. If you'd prefer to utilize Business Director, you tin can get the details in our post on how to use Facebook Business Manager.

Step 1. Choose your objective

Log into Facebook Ads Manager and select the Campaigns tab, and so click Create to go started with a new Facebook ad campaign.

Facebook offers 11 marketing objectives based on what yous want your ad to reach. Hither's how they align with business goals:

  • Brand awareness: Introduce your brand to a new audience.
  • Reach: Expose your advertising to as many people in your audition equally possible.
  • Traffic: Bulldoze traffic to a specific spider web page, app, or Facebook Messenger conversation.
  • Engagement: Reach a broad audience to increment the number of mail engagements or Page follows, increment attendance at your outcome, or encourage people to claim a special offering.
  • App installs: Get people to install your app.
  • Video views: Go more people to lookout man your videos.
  • Lead generation: Get new prospects into your sales funnel.
  • Messages: Encourage people to contact your business using Facebook Messenger.
  • Conversions: Get people to take a specific action on your website (like subscribe to your listing or purchase your product), with your app, or in Facebook Messenger.
  • Itemize sales: Connect your Facebook ads to your product catalog to show people ads for the products they are most likely to want to buy.
  • Shop traffic: Drive nearby customers to brick-and-mortar stores.

Cull a campaign objective based on your goals for this particular ad. Keep in mind that for conversion-oriented objectives (like sales) you can pay per activeness, but for exposure objectives (like traffic and views) yous will pay for impressions.

For this example, we'll choose the Engagements objective. From there, we demand to specify which kind of engagement we want. We'll choose Page likes for now.

Some of the options you see in the adjacent steps will vary based on which objective y'all choose.

Facebook Ads Manager create new campaign

Source: Facebook

Click Proceed.

Step two. Proper name your entrada

Proper name your Facebook advertizing campaign and declare whether your ad fits into any special categories like credit or politics.

If you want to prepare an A/B split exam, click Get Started in the A/B Test section to set this advertisement as your control. You can choose different versions to run against this ad after it'due south published.

Curlicue downwardly a niggling farther to choose whether to plow on upkeep optimization. This selection tin be useful if y'all're using multiple advertising sets, simply for now, you can leave information technology turned off.

choose campaign name and details

Source: Facebook

Click Adjacent.

Footstep 3. Set your budget and schedule

At the meridian of this screen, you lot will proper noun your ad set up and choose which Page to promote.

Next, you decide how much money you want to spend on your Facebook ad campaign. Yous can choose a daily or lifetime budget. So, set the showtime and end dates if you lot desire to schedule your advertizement in the hereafter, or choose to make it live right away.

Proceed in listen that running your Facebook paid ads on a schedule may be the near efficient way to spend your budget since you lot tin can choose only to serve your ad when your target audition is about likely to be on Facebook. Y'all tin can merely set a schedule if you create a lifetime budget for your ad.

budget and schedule

Source: Facebook

Pace 4. Target your audition

Scroll down to first building the target audience for your ads.

You'll encounter the kickoff option is to add a custom audition of people who have already interacted with your business on or off Facebook. Nosotros've got a separate guide to walk you through Facebook custom audiences, so here we'll focus on the targeting options.

Start by selecting your target location, age, gender and language. Note that nether location, you tin specifically choose to include or exclude cities over a certain size.

As y'all brand your selections, keep an eye on the audience size indicator on the correct of the screen, which gives you a sense of your potential ad attain.

You'll likewise see an estimated number of Folio likes. These estimates will be more than accurate if you have run campaigns before, since Facebook will have more than information to work with. Always keep in mind that these are estimates, not guarantees.

target audience based on demographics and estimated daily likes

Source: Facebook

At present it's fourth dimension for the detailed targeting. Remember: Effective targeting is key to maximizing ROI—and at that place'due south no shortage of ways to target your audience using Facebook Ads Manager.

You have 2 fields here in which to brand your audience equally specific as you cull:

  • Detailed Targeting: Use this field to specifically include or exclude people based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. You can get really specific here. For case, you could choose to target people who are interested in both meditation and yoga, but exclude people who are interested in hot yoga.
  • Connections: You lot can target or exclude people who have an existing connectedness to your Facebook Page, your app or an event you managed. For example, if you want to reach a new audition, you would select "Exclude people who similar your Page." If you lot want to promote an offer or new product to existing fans, select "People who similar your Page" to reach people who already know your brand. You can also cull to target friends of people who take previously interacted with your brand.

Bank check out these viii essential Facebook targeting tips for more on this subject.

Step 5. Choose your Facebook ad placements

Coil down to choose where your ads will announced. If yous're new to Facebook advert, the simplest choice is to use Automated Placements.

When you select this selection, Facebook will automatically place your ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and the Audience Network when they are likely to get the best results.

Once you accept more experience, you may wish to place your Facebook ads in specific locations. Your options will vary based on your called campaign objective, but may include the following:

  • Device type: Mobile, desktop, or both.
  • Platform: Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and/or Messenger
  • Placements: Feeds, Stories, in-stream (for videos), search, letters, in-article, and apps and sites (external to Facebook).
  • Specific mobile devices and operating systems: iOS, Android, characteristic phones or all devices.

Facebook ad placements

Source: Facebook

Pace half dozen. Fix brand safety and toll controls

Scroll downwards to the Brand Safety section to exclude whatever types of content that would be inappropriate to appear with your ad.

For example, you tin cull to avoid sensitive content, and add specific block lists. Cake lists tin exclude specific websites, videos, and publishers.

Brand Safety and inventory filter

Source: Facebook

Finally, you tin can optimize your advertizement bidding strategy and bidding type, and add an optional bid control. If you're new to Facebook advertising, you can showtime with the default options.

If you have more experience, tailor the options here to best match your budget strategy with your entrada goals.

When you lot're happy with all your options, take a final look at the potential achieve and conversion estimates. If you're happy with what you see, click Next.

Pace vii. Create your advert

First choose your ad format, then enter the text and media components for your advertizement. The formats available volition vary based on the entrada objective y'all selected dorsum at the kickoff of this process.

You tin get quite creative here. If you're working with an image, effort clicking Plow into Video to create a short blitheness. Or, click Create Slideshow to build a Slideshow ad with the congenital-in Video Creation Kit.

Video Creation Kit create slideshow

Source: Facebook

Utilise the preview tool at the correct of the page to make sure your advertisement looks adept for all potential placements. When you lot're happy with your choices, click the green Publish button to launch your ad.

Facebook advertizement specs

There are a lot of details to proceed in mind when getting your images and videos ready for Facebook ads. Since these details can modify oftentimes, nosotros've compiled them in a split, regularly updated mail on Facebook advertisement sizes.

Nosotros've as well got a set of 16 free Facebook advertizing templates you lot can apply to create your ads in just a few minutes.

Text and objective specs for Facebook ads

To create the best Facebook ads, you demand to keep the recommended character counts in mind. Annihilation beyond these text limits volition be cutting off.

Yous also need to understand which types of Facebook ads work with each of the ad campaign objectives described above.

Image ads

  • Headline: 40 characters
  • Link description: 30 characters
  • Body text: 125 characters
  • Campaign objectives: All except video views

Video ads

  • Headline: 40 characters
  • Link clarification: 30 characters
  • Body text: 125 characters
  • Entrada objectives: All except itemize sales

Facebook Stories ads

  • Text: No set up graphic symbol count. Aim to leave 250 pixels text-gratis at the peak and bottom of the ad.
  • Campaign objectives: All except engagement and store visits

Carousel ads

  • Headline: 40 characters
  • Link description: twenty characters
  • Trunk text: 125 characters
  • Campaign objectives: All except engagement and video views

Slideshow ads

  • Headline: 25 characters
  • Link description: 30 characters
  • Trunk text: 125 characters
  • Campaign objectives: All

Drove ads

  • Headline: 40 characters
  • Link description: north/a
  • Body text: 125 characters
  • Campaign objectives: Traffic, conversions, itemize sales, store traffic

Instant Experience ads

  • Text: Blocks of text up to 500 words each
  • Button text: 30 characters
  • Entrada objectives: All except lead generation

Messenger Inbox ads

  • Headline: xl characters
  • Link description: n/a
  • Body text: 125 characters
  • Campaign objectives: Traffic, app installs, conversions, catalog sales, letters

Facebook ads price

How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook? The answer is, information technology depends.

In-depth research by AdEspresso shows the principal factors that impact Facebook ads cost are:

  • Timing: The month, day and even hour can touch on ad cost.
  • Behest strategy: Whether you lot choose the everyman toll or a specific bid cap.
  • Ad placement: Higher-competition spots cost more.
  • Ad relevance: Low scores for your advertising's engagement ranking, quality ranking or conversion ranking can enhance costs.
  • Target audience: Higher contest audiences cost more than.

Keeping all of this in mind, AdEspresso calculated the boilerplate toll per click for Facebook ads in Q3 2020. Broken down by campaign objective, the average costs were:

  • Impressions: $0.98
  • Achieve: $i.03
  • Lead generation: $0.67
  • Conversions: $0.25
  • Link clicks: $0.sixteen

CPC by campaign objective 2020 data from AdEspresso

Source: AdEspresso

Price per like was a bit of a roller coaster in 2020. Equally of September, the boilerplate was downwardly to $0.15.

Cost per like per month in 2020 AdEspresso

Source: AdEspresso

5 smart tips for running Facebook ads

1. Don't neglect higher funnel marketing

It tin be easy to focus on short-term conversions when calculating the value of a Facebook ad entrada. Only research from Facebook, Analytic Partners and GroupM shows that college funnel brand-edifice ads can drive sales at a like rate per dollar spent.

In fact, in health care, brand messaging collection more than sales than straight response campaigns for those aged 35 to 54. Even so, direct response collection more sales for teenagers.

graph of brand messaging in health care industry by sales

Source: GroupM via Facebook

There'south no one answer about what ad objectives make the most sense for your Facebook advertizement campaign. That's why you need to set specific goals early.

2. Use the Facebook Pixel—and get prepare for changes

The Facebook pixel is a pocket-size piece of lawmaking that tin can have a large impact on your Facebook ad campaigns. In one case you place the lawmaking on your website, it allows you to track conversions, remarket to people who accept viewed a product on your site and create lookalike audiences.

Even if you're not fix yet to appoint in some of the more than advanced Facebook pixel strategies, you should install it now. That style you'll have tracking and remarketing data ready to get when you are set to start optimizing your Facebook ads.

That said, changes are coming. Apple's upcoming iOS fourteen changes volition impact how the Facebook pixel functions. There are a few steps yous can take to get set up, like verifying your domain in Facebook Business Manager.

If y'all work with a programmer, you might as well desire to consider using the Conversions API for more than accurate tracking of conversions data not afflicted by cookies.

For more details on the changes, check out Facebook'due south guide to the pixel updates.

3. Experiment with advertizement frequency

Remember back in the days when everyone watched TV and we could all recite our favorite breakfast cereal jingles? How many times practise you think kids watching Sabbatum forenoon cartoons were exposed to the same ads for Magic Charms?

Information technology'southward rare for a new prospect to take action the first time they see an advertizing for a product they've never heard of, or to remember a brand name afterward hearing it just once.

Facebook IQ inquiry shows that while there is no optimal number of exposures for every ad (yes, again, you'll accept to test), more exposures do seem to pb to higher purchase intent. Only, of course, there'southward a limit. At a certain indicate, the benefit of more than exposures to the aforementioned ad—or related ads— starts to slow down.

graph of advertising and purchase intent

Source: Facebook IQ

Your testing will show yous where the plateau is for you. Keep in mind that amend quality ads plateau subsequently. That'due south not actually surprising, right?

Speaking of testing…

iv. Test everything

Information technology's important not to brand assumptions about what volition work and what won't in your Facebook ads. Every time y'all try something new, you should test it against your previous ads so yous can run into whether you're making improvements to the metrics that affair most to you.

The best practices for Facebook ads are constantly changing. Only yous know what works for your specific audience. And the just way you tin can go along that cognition up to engagement is by testing.

Since this is such an important topic, nosotros've got a whole guide on how to utilize social media for A/B testing.

5. Track and optimize performance

Closely monitor how your campaigns perform in the Facebook Ads Managing director dashboard. If a campaign isn't performing well, put your coin into an advertizement that is instead.

If you're just starting out, it might make sense to run several ads with small audiences and budgets. Once you've determined what works best, use the winning ad equally your principal campaign.

Over time, yous'll learn how to improve your Facebook advertizement conversions. A Facebook meta-assay shows that ads developed through testing and refining had a 26% lower price per activeness.

There are tools to assistance simplify—and even automate—this procedure.

Hootsuite Social Advertizing is an integrated platform for managing organic and paid content side by side. Within the dashboard, you can easily pull actionable analytics and build custom reports to show the ROI of all your social campaigns.

With a unified overview of all social media activity, you can hands make data-informed adjustments to live campaigns (and get the virtually out of your budget). For example, if an advertisement is doing well on Facebook, you tin can adjust ad spend beyond other platforms to support it. On the aforementioned notation, if a campaign is flopping, yous tin pause information technology and redistribute the budget — all without leaving your Hootsuite dashboard.

Facebook advertizement ideas

Ready to go but not sure what you should promote with your Facebook ads?

Nosotros've put together iii entrada strategies to become you started. If y'all're looking for more inspiration, cheque out our roundup of smashing Facebook ad examples.

Facebook advertizement strategy 1: Convert a proven piece of content into a video or epitome ad

Every brand has a few pieces of content that drive most of the traffic each calendar month. Adapting that content into a curt video or image advert tin can be a great way to repackage top content for the best Facebook ads.

To create a video, think about means to convey your content'due south key letters through short text and images. And so, use 1 of these social video tools to create your video, or create a slideshow video ad in Facebook Ads Manager.

To create an image advertizing, try making an infographic from your content's cardinal points. For example, the Hootsuite social team pulled the key details from our post on social media prototype sizes into this epitome for Facebook:

The image sizes yous demand correct now! http://ow.ly/p0sf50Dy6w7?

Posted by Hootsuite on Lord's day, February 21, 2021

Pro tip: Check out our social video strategy kit for marketers, which has lots of great insights well-nigh what types of video work best on social media.

Facebook advert strategy 2: Bulldoze a direct sale

Yes, we said to a higher place yous should consider using Facebook ads for higher funnel marketing. Merely if you're looking to make direct sales, in that location are plenty of ways to do and so.

Pro tip: I of the most effective ways to bulldoze sales directly from a Facebook advertizing is to target people who have already considered ownership your product.

Y'all could endeavor targeted offers, product recommendations or reminders to complete a buy.

The fashion retailer Axel Arigato used video ads, including ads in Facebook Stories, to achieve a 98% increase in purchase conversions. Past expanding their targeted audience, they also saw 2.3 times more start-time sales.

Axel Arigato video and Facebook Stories ads

Source: Facebook

The conversions and catalog sales objectives both bulldoze direct sales. Conversions drives sales on your website or whatever other location exterior of Facebook.

Itemize sales drives sales from your Facebook itemize. You tin use dynamic ads to connect people directly with products they're likely to desire in your Facebook store.

Facebook advertising strategy 3: Think beyond the web

Y'all don't have to limit your Facebook advertising strategy to online sales. With the store traffic objective, yous can promote offline purchases, too.

You can as well drive people to an online or offline outcome. Use the engagement objective to increment event responses on Facebook, or the traffic or conversions objectives to sell more than tickets.

Or, use the lead generation objective to get people to your store or dealership to feel your product in person—for case, through a test drive.

Johnny Walker Taiwan used ads with a click-to-Messenger call to activity to drive offline sales. Within the Messenger conversation, users could select their favorite products and ask for directions to nearby shops where they would purchase.

Pro tip: Facebook allows you to runway offline conversions so you tin can understand the effectiveness of ads that drive sales offline. You can also apply this tracking data to build custom audiences of people who interact with your make offline, so you can target them even more than finer with future ads.

Employ Hootsuite Social Advertising to hands keep rail of all of your social media activity — including Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn ad campaigns — and become a complete view of your social ROI. Endeavor it free today.

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