Facebook is often referred to as the obvious choice for organizations who want to reach a wide audience. One of the many tools made available to do this are Facebook ads. Here is a simple 6-step guide to get you more comfortable and informed about the ad creation process.

Step 1 – Create an ad

When logged into Facebook find the “create ad” option at the bottom of the page or in the top right corner and that should get you on your way!

Step 2 – Choose what you want to advertise

Here you can choose to advertise anything from URL’s – on or off Facebook – to places, events, applications or you can choose to promote your page. As you can see below I have chosen to promote a page.

Step 3 – Choose a goal for your ad

Here you can decide whether your aim is to get more “likes”, “promote a post”, or more “advanced options”. Then you can go ahead and set up your ad by adding headlines, an image, and a description. An ad preview will show up on the right-hand side to show you what your ad will look like once it’s gone live.

Step 4 – Targeting

In this section you narrow down your audience, the people you want viewing your ads, this can be done by targeting by geography, or interests like; music, other pages, sports, etc. As well as through friends, relationship status, work place and sexual preference. On the right-hand column, you will find the number of people likely to see your ad based on your choices as well as how much Facebook suggests you spend on your ad (this will only appear once you’ve chosen your currency in the budgeting section below).

Step 5 – Budgeting

This part can get a little tricky. Here you need to decide if your budget will be per day, which means whatever amount you allocate for the day is all that Facebook will spend, or a lifetime, which means whatever total your bid will be spread out over the duration of your campaign. Then you need to choose between CPC billing and CPM. CPC or cost per click means you will get billed every time someone clicks on your ad and CPM – Cost Per thousand impression means you will be charged every time someone sees your ad. The bids for these billing types range, depending on your location, type of ad, audience, as well as exchange rates on the day of the transaction. To get more familiar with the lingo check out Facebook’s guide to understanding your billing and payments.

Step 6 – Placing the order

Once you’re happy with the budget and all the finer details of your ad you can click “Review ad”. This will take you to a page where you can preview your ad and edit your ad or place the order if you are ready.

Although Facebook is a valuable resource for any business it is no secret that nonprofit organizations face some unique challenges when trying to reach their support base. In response to that the social network has made help guides available such as the Best Practices Guide to help nonprofits and charities keep users informed and interested. Use Facebook’s Help Center to get better acquainted with pricing, rules, and tools available to you.

How to set up advertising on Facebook