How to Post Ads on Facebook and Make Money

Written by C. James on January 10, 2020 updated October 22, 2024

Are you an entrepreneur who wants to build revenue for your business or venture?

Do you want to reach a wider audience and improve your products or services’ online presence?

If your answer is yes to these questions, then it’s time to tap into Facebook’s power.

Advertising has been a part of every business strategy since the dawn of time but thanks to technology, marketing your products and services has never been easier (or cheaper). Facebook, one of the most popular social media platforms, hosts a perfect venue for every business to promote their products and drive more sales.

Do you want to know the effective ways to post ads on Facebook and make money? This article will show you how to create compelling ads and convert those clicks into real purchases.

What are Facebook Ads?

There are about 1.39 billion active Facebook users monthly, and each user spends an average of 40 minutes on Facebook daily.

With these statistics, it’s no wonder a lot of business owners are clamoring on Facebook to drive higher sales and grow their businesses. Chances are, your potential customers are already using this platform.

Facebook ads are advertisements created by businesses to target a Facebook audience based on the user’s profile information, demographics, activity and off-Facebook activity. It provides a venue for you to connect with these audiences. It helps marketers reach their target audience in ways that are not possible through almost any other channel.

Although Facebook was created in 2004, it wasn’t until 2007 that Facebook Ads were launched. The platform immediately enabled any company to purchase advertising on the platform with ease and convenience. Ads were initially displayed at the far right-hand side of the newsfeed.

Facebook ads have certainly come a long way since then. A lot of campaigns and features were added to target the right users to help businesses find their ideal customers interested in the products or services.

How Does it Work?

Nowadays, social media presence is important to any business. This is why even the smallest brands leverage social media, especially on Facebook, to boost their reach and conversion.

Since Facebook advertising has become an integral part of most of the social media strategy, it’s important that you know how to leverage Facebook ads to reach the right customers.

Facebook advertising helps your business find potential customers. It helps you target specific users that are more likely to use or purchase the products and services that you are offering. As a result, you drive more sales.

How to Post Ads on Facebook and Make Money

Facebook Ads may be a great platform to grow your business, but a lot of brands and businesses may find it intimidating.

You may be overwhelmed with a lot of options offered by Facebook Ads, but this should not stop you from exploring and getting the most out of this platform. It may take time to get familiar with the campaigns and features.

Here’s a step by step guide on how to create your first campaign on Facebook and make money by posting ads.

1. Set Up Facebook Business Manager

Business Manager is a tool that allows you to manage your Facebook Pages and ad accounts. It’s a one-stop-shop to manage business assets, business tools and employee access to these assets.

Here are some of the functions of Facebook Business Manager:

It helps you manage all of your Facebook advertising and marketing activities.
Controls access of multiple users to additional resources like product catalogs and Instagram account.
Separates your personal profile from your business activities.
Tracks Facebook ads and provide details on how these ads are performing.
Gives page access to agencies, partners, and vendors without having the need to hand over asset ownerships.

To start creating your Business Manager account, click the “Create Account” button on the Business Manager home page. Login using the credentials for your personal Facebook account. You will then need to enter your business name and email address. Once you’re done setting up your Business Manager account, you can start adding your Facebook page and your Facebook ad account.

You now have the foundation to start creating your first ad.

2. Choose the Objective of your Campaign

One of the most common mistakes of many Facebook advertisers is boosting their posts rather than choosing the right objectives for their campaigns. If you want your ads to generate better results, then you must take time to understand each of the Facebook ad objectives and choose which one suits the best for your campaign.

Facebook Ad Objectives are divided into three categories – Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. If you want your audience to be interested in your product, then you must choose awareness. Consideration, on the other hand, is great if you want to attract an audience who is already interested in your product but may want to know more information. Lastly, the conversion is used if you want your audience to action, such as purchase, download, opt-in, register or visit your store.

Here’s a complete list of Facebook Ad Objectives:

Brand Awareness – When your goal is simply to create and increase brand awareness.
Reach – When you want your ad to reach as many people within your target audience as possible.
Traffic – Use this goal when you want to drive traffic outside of Facebook (visit your landing page, listen to a podcast episode or read your blog post).
Engagement – Drives more engagement with your ads such as shares, comments, likes or reactions.
App Installs – When you want your audience to download your app from the app store.
Video Views – If your objective is to get as many people as possible to view your video, then this goal is the right one.
Lead Generation – Are you looking to generate more leads within the ad? This goal is perfect to capture data such as name, phone number, email address, etc.
Conversion – Ads to convert into a specific action such as register, opt-in or purchase your product.
Product Catalog Sales – Promote products from your e-commerce store.
Store Visits – This ad objective is perfect if you want people who are nearby to discover and visit your business location.

3. Select your Target Audience

Defining your target market is the foundation of a marketing strategy. And with the flexibility and power of Facebook, you can get quite specific.

You must remember that your product is simply not for everyone. It’s important that before you spend countless nights brainstorming on the perfect product, you must take time to understand your niche and your target market.

You’re more likely to see higher conversion rates on your Facebook ads when you understand your target market better. You’ll be able to focus your ads closely on the audiences that are most likely to support and purchase your products and services.

How can you define your target market and select your target audience? Here are some helpful tips:

Use the data on your existing customers to understand their defining characteristics. You might want to consider the age, location, language, spending power patterns and interests in conducting your research.
Utilize social media analytics to get a grasp on who is interacting with your social media accounts and responding to your posts.
Check out your competition and study what type of approach generates the most engagement online.

4. Decide Your Ad Placement

Facebook ads offer limitless opportunities. There are so many types of ads that you can create and you can even target people outside of Facebook. While this is a good thing, it can also be overwhelming to some.

Facebook ad placements designate which platforms will your ad shows up. Depending on the objective of your campaign, you can set your ads to appear on Messenger, Audience Network, Instagram and/or Facebook.

There are several options to place your ads. Let’s take a look at some of these placements:

Facebook News Feed – Your ads will appear in the Facebook news feed, regardless of your audience is using a desktop or mobile app.
Instagram Feed – Instagram has more than 1 billion active users, it’s no wonder this placement is amongst the most effective option. Run this placement alongside your Facebook feed placement.
Facebook Marketplace – This placement shows your ads on the Marketplace home page. It will also appear when someone is browsing Facebook Marketplace on their phone.
Facebook Suggested Videos – Your ads will appear on Facebook Watch feed as well as suggested videos feed.
Facebook Right Column – Only applicable to people who are accessing Facebook on their desktop. This placement enables your ad to appear in Facebook’s right column.
Messenger Inbox – It’s a new placement option where your ads are being displayed on the Messenger home tab.
Stories for Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger – You can display your ads either on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger stories. Amongst the three, Instagram stories are the most used platform.
Facebook In-Stream Videos – Show your ads before, during or after a video.
Messenger Sponsored Messages – Your ads will be delivered as messages directly to the person you’re having a conversation with.

5. Set the Budget

You don’t need to spend a lot of money on Facebook advertising. Any business can take advantage of this platform to reach out to a wider audience even on a small budget.

You have two options in setting the budget of your Ad Set. You can choose either the Daily Budget or Lifetime Budget. The daily budget allows you to hit your set numbers each day. A Lifetime Budget, on the other hand, allows your ads to be shown during certain hours of the day.

You can allot $1.00 per day for the entire duration of the campaign. Run it for at least 3-4 days to test if it’s effective in driving the results that you want. If you want to get more significant results, you may want to spend more on your ads.

6. Choose the Right Format for your Campaign

Now that you have selected your target audience and set your budget for your ad campaign, you are ready to go to the next phase which is creating your ad itself.

The first thing that you need to do in ad creation is choosing the ad format that best fits your objectives and ad placements.

You can choose from a wide range of ad formats on Ads Manager.

Single Image Ads – One of the most popular choices, this classic format is compatible with the majority of placements. To boost your image ads, make sure that the image is clear in providing the value that you offer.
Video Ads – Video posts on Facebook receives 135% greater organic reach than image posts. This is why video ads are most effective in increasing brand awareness.
Slideshow – If you want to achieve the effect of the video but has a limited budget in filming and editing, this format is your best choice. This short video using a group of images, text, and sound is a good alternative to reach out to a wider audience.
Carousel Ads – This format offers great versatility. You can add up to ten square images and/or videos to your ads. This is perfect if you have different products that you want to showcase or several features that you want to highlight.
Collection Ads – Do you have a large product catalog and want to increase your sales? Collection ads can help you achieve this. In addition to a single image of your video, you can also feature your products in your collection. When users click on this ad, your full collection will be displayed on the entire mobile screen.
Instant Experience – Only available for iOS and Android, this ad format aims to offer an interactive user experience.

7. Place Your Order

Once your ad is ready to go, click the ‘Place Order’ button at the bottom right-hand corner of the page to submit your ad. You will be asked to enter your payment information if it’s your first time placing an order.

Facebook would still need to review your ad before it goes live. You will receive an email confirmation once your ad is approved and can go live.

8. Optimize Your Campaigns

If you want your ad to go to the next level and increase its effectiveness, you should find ways to optimize your campaigns.

Below are some helpful tips to get the most out of your ad budget:

Manage your ad exposure by monitoring ad frequency – A user’s action can be influenced by the number of times that they see your advertising campaign. They won’t be able to recall your brand if they see your ad only once. On the other hand, they will stop paying attention if your ads are shown too often. Add a frequency cap to your advertising report and observe how it affects your cost.
Use an existing post to preserve engagement stats – Are you wondering how your competitors get thousands of likes on their Facebook campaigns? They are probably utilizing the “Use Existing Post” option as an optimization hack. This social stacking technique will carry over all of the previous likes and comments to your newly created ad.
Use Facebook Pixels – This easy to use tool is effective in reaching out to new markets. It allows you to identify a lookalike audience that has the same interests, habits, and behaviors with your target audiences.

Final Thoughts

Facebook Ads can bring so many advantages to your marketing strategy. It can help you increase brand awareness, reach out to a specific target audience, drive traffic to your website and generate more sales.

With the constant changing of the Facebook ad algorithm, you will also need to adapt to your techniques. Use different strategies and experiment until you find the one that works best for your campaign objective.