How to Set Up Facebook Ads (Step by Step)

A short, practical YouTube tutorial by Jamal (for HubSpot) that explains how to set up and optimize Facebook ads. It covers choosing campaign objectives (awareness, sales, leads), selecting ad formats and creative best-practices, targeting options (Core, Custom, Lookalike), recommended optimization cadence, and which analytics to track (impressions, engagement, clicks/conversions, ROAS, LTV). The tone is informal, instructional, and promotional for HubSpot resources.
Questions this video answers
Up to 10 products (images or videos).
1.7 seconds.
Wait two to three days for learning; avoid editing more than once every seven days.
Chapters
What's up? It's Jamal, and welcome to the channel. Today, I'm going to help you understand everything you need to know when it comes to Facebook ads so you can start running your own and watch sales and signups skyrocket. Before we begin, take a moment to scroll to the video description and click the Link to download HubSpot's free Facebook advertising Checklist. This is an essential tool for making sure all of your Facebook ads are optimized for performance. So I want to make sure you have it. And don't forget to hit that like button and ring the notifications bell so you never miss any of our Facebook marketing videos. Now let's get it Facebook's ad tools have proven their ability to help any size business increase revenues and save costs. And because 98% of Facebook's revenue comes from ads, the company is constantly working to innovate. Whether it's developing new ad formats that drive customer behavior or refining its targeting algorithm so that every ad gets seen by the right audience and target they do. I'm sure we've all gotten those ads where it's like, I'm pretty sure I said that in a conversation maybe 30 minutes ago. Now I'm seeing an ad for it. Hmm hmm. So if this is your first time running Facebook ads or it's been a while since you've used the platform, here's everything you should know for results today. The first step in any Facebook ad campaign is to determine what goals you want to achieve. You can 1 increase awareness for your business or product, 2 drive online sales or 3 increase leads. Ads that increase awareness are meant to do exactly that. Make someone aware of your business or product who wasn't before. These ads also remind customers of your business and improve the sentiment surrounding your brand. Whether you're a local business running a special deal or a global brand introducing a new flavor, ads that increase awareness encourage the audience to take further action offline. Personally, I think I can use one of these. I've taken a couple PR hits in the last quarter. You know what I'm saying? My brand is tanked. Ads that drive sales are even more literal. They want users to make a purchase online by clicking from Facebook to an E Commerce landing page. This can be a page on your own site, but it can also be an Amazon page, Etsy, ebay, whatever. There are even ways for Facebook to let you know once the customer completes the purchase, but we'll explain how that magic works later on in this video. The third goal Facebook ads can accomplish is to Generate Leads A lead is like a cross between awareness and a sale. That's because the user takes direct action now, but instead of making a purchase, the user signs up to receive more information that could lead to a sale down the road. Leading lead generating ads are best used when offering a product or service with a longer sales funnel, things like personal finance or health or a major investment for a home or business no matter what objective you choose for your Facebook ad campaign, the decision you make will help determine every other aspect of your campaign. Once you've picked your business objective for your campaign, you'll then want to decide on your ad content. This includes the ad format as well as the creative, both visual and copy. So let's start with the ad format. There's no right or wrong when choosing Facebook ad formats, unlike the candy corn decision. Buy some, but some are better suited for different business objectives. For example, if your goal is to raise awareness of your business, the simplest way can be to boost a post from your Facebook page. The post will then appear in more users news feeds. You can choose to target the post to your followers or you can target non followers who might be interested. Another good ad format for raising awareness is Facebook or Instagram stories. Since Facebook recently started letting anyone add links to their stories, the format has become effective in driving sales. Facebook Facebook's most popular ad format for driving sales is their Carousel ads. These ads let you show multiple images or videos per ad. You can Showcase up to 10 products, each with a button that clicks to the item's landing page. It's like having your own mini catalog right on Facebook. I think we all already know what I'm using all 10 of those spots for. Candy Corn. Or you can use Facebook Collection ads that include up to four images or videos with a single link. And collection ads link seamlessly to Facebook Instant Experiences, a full screen mobile advertising platform that doesn't need extra time to load. These ads are so immersive it's easy to forget that you're using Facebook. The next type of ad is Facebook Lead ads. These ads let you collect the user's information right in the Facebook mobile app. HubSpot offers easy integration between your CRM and Facebook Lead ads so you can follow up with a new lead immediately using an automated email flow. Can you imagine being so seamlessly integrated into something that you don't even notice that it's happening? Well, you don't need to imagine it because that's what happens with email flow. It's crazy. Try it out sometime. We'll discuss more Modern methods Facebook gives you to target ads later on in this video. Of course, ads from any era need quality creative to resonate with the audience. But there are unique rules to social media when it comes to being creative. 1. Be direct. The average user views a piece of content on Facebook for 1.7 seconds. Your precious ad dollars are just a thumb flick away from being wasted. So make sure your copy is clear and maybe clever. Your images are captivating. And if you're using video, get to the point in three seconds or less. Also remember to always lead with how your product or service solves a problem for the customer that'll get their attention and give you extra time to sell yourself. That's actually good advice for all marketing and dating. I'm single. Someone date me please. You may have noticed that a lot of the ads you see on Facebook don't look as good as what you see in other media. But running professional looking ads is important even if you don't have the budget for a top shelf design team. Fortunately, online design tools like Canva offer an easy way to make great looking ads using templates. Canva also connects directly with HubSpot's Facebook ad integration, making us a one stop shop for running high quality Facebook lead campaigns. So be sure to stop on by, you know what I'm saying? Finally, always follow Facebook's size guidelines to make sure that your ad looks the way it was intended to. I think we've all seen those images that are just like stretched out super weirdly and you're like, how did no one find this? Why isn't there, why isn't there like quality assurance for this ad, you know what I'm saying? If you want to see more ads that work on Facebook, you can head back down to the description and click the link to Download our free report. 50 Facebook Ad Examples that we actually click. Now that you've created an ad, it's time to target it. Custom targeting is the real reason why business owners love Facebook. Facebook offers several ways to target ads to get the most bang for your buck. The first is called Core audience. With core audience, you can aim your ads at Facebook users within certain demographics like location, age or gender, education level or job description, and even specific interests. I'm talking about anything from like I don't know, sentient fern friends to candy corn. They can get very specific. The second targeting method Facebook allows is called Custom audience. Have you ever gone to a company's website and the next time you check Facebook, you start noticing ads for that same product? That's because your phone really is listening cookie that the website loaded into your browser is now telling Facebook where you've been and serves up ads accordingly. And if I'm being honest with you, I think I'd prefer a chocolate chip cookie over that kind. You know what I'm saying? But hey, we gotta do what we gotta do. The practice of tracking has been around for almost as long as there have been ads on the Internet. And while every few years some marketers like to declare cookies dead or under baked, Facebook has always found a way to get ads to the right audience. Even if you don't want to rely on tracking users, Facebook also lets you customize your audience better based on users who are already in your CRM. This is an effective way to cultivate leads and encourage return customers. And if you still want to find new customers, Facebook's newest targeting technique, called the lookalike audience, takes an existing audience like your CRM list and lets Facebook's algorithms find a new audience with overlapping similarities. I told you, Facebook always finds a way. And if you're thinking to yourself, hey, Facebook, don't me, too bad, literally, they will do anything. They've found a way and they will continue to find ways to you. I'm sorry, it's the way it is. Now I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, okay, cool. I've determined my business objective. I've created the best ad and I've targeted the customers. I'm done, right? No, there's much more to do still. Namely, you have to monitor your ad's performance and possibly make some optimizations even while the ad is running. But I'm gonna be transparent here. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Most experts will tell you that you need to wait two to three days for Facebook's algorithms to really hone in on the best audience for your ads. And unless you're a highly trained Facebook ads ninja, you shouldn't be making edits more than once every seven days. This can seem like an eternity as you watch your ads dashboard update in real time. So maybe it's best just to launch and chill, or launch and get back to working on all the other things that you need to keep your business running. And once an ad is finished, you definitely wanna spend time reviewing the performance to see how the next ad can do better. These ad analytics can also be divided into three Catego awareness analytics include impressions, that is the number of people who saw your ad, as well as engagement, or the number of people who liked, shared or commented on your ad performance analytics are used for sales and lead objectives by tracking how many people clicked on your ad or even signed up or made a purchase. This is done using the same tracking pixels I mentioned before for targeting ads and the final analytics to help businesses succeed on Facebook. Track the big picture. These include roas or Return on Ad Spend. This takes the total revenue brought in from the campaign and divides it by the amount you spent on the ad. As long as the number on top is is greater than the number on bottom, you win. Good job. Finally, you can analyze the lifetime value of every customer from a Facebook ad. Conventional wisdom says that it's five times more expensive to gain a new customer than it is to make another sale to an existing customer. So every dollar you spend on advertising today is only 20 cents you'll have to spend tomorrow. Facebook makes it easier than it's ever been to do this sort of long term math. And that's the true way that Facebook ads can help businesses like yours. You're ready to learn more? Sign up today for HubSpot Academy's free Facebook advertising Training. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any future Facebook marketing and go check out our video on understanding more Facebook insights and analytics. Until then, I'm just gonna be eating candy corn. I might just come back on here as straight up a full life size candy corn. I will have become the candy corn. I'm looking forward to it. Until then, I'll see you next time. Is to generate leads. Don't me candy corn is delicious.
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