Paid advertising on social media platforms is an immediate way to reach your content to a wider audience. Facebook has 2.91 billion active users which makes it the most popular social media platform for running ads. Obviously you want your ad to be seen and for it to be seen on Facebook you'll have to pay for it. Understanding how to conduct advertising on Facebook is a must if you have a business online.

But before you get into the step-by-step guide to advertising on Facebook, you must know why you're advertising and what you're objectives are which you want to achieve. The point is, you should think about your reason for advertising before you create a campaign.

Step 1: Create an ad account

Facebook gives you a personal ad account by default when you sign up for Facebook. To find it you need to go to Ads Manager and look closely into the upper left hand corner. To use this Facebook Ads Manager you need to have a Facebook page, and a verified payment method.

Step 2: Head over to Facebook Ads Manager

Whichever Facebook ads campaign you come across it's due to the Facebook Ads Manager tool. To navigate to Ads Manager right from your business page, head to the left sidebar and click on the “Ad Center” drop-down arrow of any Facebook page, then choose “All Ads” from the drop-down. At the bottom of that page, there is an option to click “Ads Manager.”

Step 3: Choose your objective

You'll find a green button saying "Create ad", you need to click on it to start with your first ad. Once you do that Facebook will take you to a page whereyou will be prompted to choose a campaign objective. You have many different ways of approaching an ad campaign based on what you wish to achieve.

Step 4: Set your campaign budget

Another important thing about ad management services is that how much you would want to spend on the ad. The budget that you set should represent the maximum amount of money you want to spend. You can set your budget per day or as a total amount for the campaign.

Step 5: Customize your target audience

Facebook wouldn't just show your ad to the random audience. A strategically determined audience is crucial to the success of your Facebook ad campaign and therefore you need to customize your target audience based on location, age, gender, language, interests, behavior, etc. You can also further customize your targeting using custom audiences for retargeting people who have already interacted with your business.

Step 6: Choose your ad placements

It is basically where your ad appears to be visible to your target audience. Based on your objective and goal, you may choose to show your ad on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or any other platform that you may prefer. You can choose to make your ad appear in feed, stories and reels, search, messages, apps and sites, etc.

Step 7: Create your advertisement

This is the step where you need to create your ad and its the fun part of it. If you choose to create your ad from the scratch you need to select a format. You’ve probably seen many of the Facebook Ads formats on your personal feed, but your choices will vary based on the objective you set for your ad during Step 3. Based on your campaign objective Facebook will recommend one or more ad format to you.

Step 8: Place your order

To finally submit your ad you need to click the 'publish' button. You'll find it at the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Once you submit your freshly created ad Facebook has to review it to check that it fits their specs and doesn’t violate their community guidelines. It gets reviewed within 24hrs. Once the ad is live you'll receive a confirmation email from Facebook.

Follow these steps to create your first ever Facebook ad and run it live to reach your customized audience. No better way to generate revenue than this.