How to Create Good Facebook Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide for Success [2025]

You’re here because you know that to win over your customers, you need to show up on their feed. 

However, if you’ve been paying attention, Meta is making businesses spend big to be seen on the Facebook streets.

Today, simply boosting a post and waiting for sales to roll in won’t work. 

One, you’re competing with 3 million businesses. And two, if your ad isn’t relevant, relatable, and value-adding to your target audience, your budget goes to waste. 

Fortunately, you don’t need a huge budget or a marketing degree to be able to run profitable Facebook ads. 

We’ll show you exactly how to create good Facebook ads that are worth your time and, most importantly, your money. 

Key takeaways

• Define clear campaign objectives to guide your Facebook ads. Choose from options like Awareness, Traffic, or Sales based on your goals.
• Create engaging ad content with high-quality visuals and concise copy.
• Use precise audience targeting and leverage Facebook Pixel for data-driven insights.

Define your campaign objectives

Before anything else, define what you want your Facebook paid campaign to achieve. 

Do you want to:

• Increase brand awareness?
• Generate leads?
• Drive conversions?
• Or increase engagement on your Facebook pages? 

Facebook offers six main objectives to choose from: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App Promotion, and Sales. 

Each of these objectives influences how Facebook’s algorithm optimizes your ad delivery.

If driving traffic to your website is your goal, focus on Traffic objectives. To generate interactions and build a community, opt for Engagement objectives. 

Choosing the right objective will align your efforts with your business goals and set the stage for a more effective campaign.

Set up your Ad account and business page

Now that you know what you want to achieve, it’s time to set up your ad account. To run ads on Facebook, you must have an active business page. If you don’t have one, this guide is quite simple to follow along. 

Once your business page is set up, you can move on to creating your ad account. 

Navigate to business.facebook.com and log in with your Facebook account. Once inside, click on the menu in the top left corner and select Ads Manager to set up your ads. 

This is where you’ll handle everything from setting your campaign objectives to choosing your ad placements.

Follow this guide to complete the setup of your ad account. 

Once your ad account and business page are ready, you can start running ads to reach your target audience.

But before we show you how to set up the ads, let’s first create the assets we need for our ads. 

Create engaging ad copy and visuals

The heart of any Facebook ad is its content. 

The quality of your content determines whether your audience takes the actions you need them to take or scrolls by without a second thought. 

Here are a few recommendations for creating scroll-stopping Facebook Ad content:

The copy

1. Write with the audience in mind

Determine who you are targeting and start from there. What are their pain points? What keeps them up at night? What are their goals? What are their interests? Don’t try to speak to all your potential customers with one ad copy. Have a different ad copy for each audience segment. 

2. Keep it short

Attention spans are shorter than ever, so be direct, relatable, and relevant. 

Also, Facebook has character limits depending on the ad type. For example, News Feed ads only let you use 27 characters for the headline, and Carousel ads max out at 32. Get straight to the point, make it punchy, and leave the fluff behind. 

The same goes for your ad copy. Stick to the essentials and focus on the key benefits. If your audience has to scroll to get to the point, you’ve lost them. 

3. One goal for each ad

Use one CTA per ad copy. If you want your audience to buy, include a CTA encouraging people to buy. Think along the lines of ‘Buy Now,’ ‘Get a Free Demo’, Get Your Today,’ etc. 

 If you want them to join your email list, try CTAs like ‘Sign Up’ or ‘Join Now.’ 

Of course, you can A/B test the CTA messaging, but each ad's goal remains the same. 

The visuals

A great copy paired with an awful visual will harm your ad and significantly reduce your ROI.

Check out these tips for creating Facebook ad visuals that complement the copy:

1. Make the images relevant to the product, the audience's pain point, or their desire.
2. If you include text, it should complement the ad copy, not communicate a different idea entirely.
3. Ensure the images are the correct dimensions for the ad format you choose.
4. Keep it simple.

Choose the proper ad format

Facebook offers various ad formats, including image, video, carousel, Collection, and Messenger ads.

Which you choose comes down to your objectives and goals. 

• Image ads are straightforward and effective for raising brand awareness.
• However, video ads might be better if you want more visibility and engagement.
• Carousel ads are perfect if you run an ecommerce business, as they provide a dynamic and interactive experience for users to see your products.
• Collection ads are ideal if your main goal is to sell. These ads are presented as a cover image or video. Once a user clicks on the cover photo, they are shown more product image variations.
• Stories ads are a good complementary option for your campaign offers. 

Each format has unique benefits, so consider your overall campaign goals when choosing.

Target your audience precisely

There are many reasons why 3 million businesses come to Facebook for advertising. But one undebatable reason is Facebook’s sophisticated audience targeting. 

Let’s break down how to use this feature to get your ads to the right audience. 

1. New customers with specific interests 

Facebook's default ad set allows you to narrow down potential customers using powerful filters like location, demographics, interests, and behaviors. If you want to reach fitness enthusiasts in Chicago or tech-savvy professionals in Seattle, you can do that with just a few clicks.

2. Interested potential customers

Custom Audiences let you reconnect with people who already know your brand. These are your warm leads, or in short, people who have:

• Visited your website
• Used your app
• Been on your customer list
• Engaged with your social media content, etc.

3. New customers with the same interests as your existing clientele

If you want to reach a new audience with the same problems, goals, or desires as your current clientele, you can use Lookalike Audiences.

For this, you'll choose one of the custom audiences you've created and then use it to define the type of audience you want Facebook to deliver ads to. 

4. Advantage+ Audience

Advantage+ audiences are powered by AI, which automatically targets potential customers most likely to engage with your business by analyzing past campaign data. 
According to Meta, using the Advantage+ audience led to the following benefits:

• The median cost per product catalog sale dropped by 13%
• The median cost per website conversion decreased by 7%
• The median cost per click, lead, or landing page view was 28% lower

So far, we have our goal, audiences, and creatives. It’s time to optimize ad placement to help you get the most bang for your buck.

Optimize ad placements

Creating great Facebook ads is an art but also a science. 

You need to understand the psychology of why people buy. We deal with the why through the copy and visuals, but how people buy is also important. 

We can align ads with the customer journey by increasing the chances of getting ads before customers when they’re most likely to take action. 

How exactly do you do that?

By optimizing ad placement. 

Facebook provides two main ad placement options depending on the level of control you’re after. 

The first is manual placement, and the other option is automatic placement. 

Automatic placements allow for broader exposure, while manual placements give you more control over where your ads appear.

Your ads can be displayed in various locations across Facebook, including feeds, Stories, Messenger, and Marketplace. 

To optimize ad placements, analyze performance data to see which placements yield the best results in the Facebook Ads Manager and Google Ads. 

Usually, automatic placements do yield effective results. However, if you feel a campaign is not giving the best ROI, you can A/B test manual vs. automatic placements to see what works best for your brand. 

Set your budget and schedule

Facebook offers two budget options: daily budget and lifetime budget. 

A daily budget is the maximum amount you want to spend each day, with a minimum of $1.00. 

A lifetime budget, on the other hand, runs your ads for a specified time, spending the total budget over the entire campaign.

We recommend starting with a smaller budget and gradually increasing it based on the ad performance. This allows you to test the waters without overspending and adjust your strategy as you gather more data.

Take advantage of Dynamic Product ads

While standard Facebook ads are powerful, Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) take personalization to the next level for e-commerce businesses.

What are Dynamic Product Ads?

DPAs automatically show the right products to the right people based on their previous interactions. Whether a customer:

• Visited your website
• Added an item to their cart
• Viewed a specific product

These ads dynamically generate personalized experiences without manual intervention. Instead of creating separate ads for each product, DPAs dynamically generate ads tailored to each individual’s interaction with your website or app.

If you're looking to create high-performing DPAs, Cropink can help. Our AI-powered platform automates ad creation, optimizes placements, and tracks performance to help you reach the right audience and maximize ad spend.

Test and refine your ads

Are A/B tests mandatory for Facebook ads?

Not necessarily. 

However, any marketer worth their salt will tell you that A/B testing is a smart strategy for optimizing your Facebook ad campaigns. 

A/B testing (also known as split testing) lets you compare different ad versions to identify the better performer. You can test variations of the:

• Placement
• Audiences
• Creative(copy + visual)
• Delivery optimization

To set up an A/B test, simply toggle on the Create A/B test button when creating your ads.

Setting up A/B tests on Facebook

For A/B tests to work, you must only test one variable at a time to identify specific factors that contribute to performance. 

So, how do you know the winner after split testing?

You can find the better-performing ad variation by comparing the cost per click (CPC) and conversion rates. 

This iterative process ensures your ads constantly improve and achieve the desired outcomes.

Monitor performance metrics

Monitoring performance metrics is crucial for your Facebook ad campaigns’ success.

Track key metrics like click-through rate (CTR), CPC, and conversion rates. 

The average CTR for Facebook ads is around 1.44%, while the median CPC is approximately $0.54. On the other hand, conversion rates across industries average 8.25%.

These are just a few examples. You can tweak the KPIs you track to fit your campaign objectives better. 

Leverage Facebook pixel

If you’re leading users to an external page, such as your website or landing page, the Facebook Pixel will be extremely useful. 

This pixel allows you to gather valuable data on user interactions. Later on, you can use the data to retarget users who have previously visited your website.

Analyzing user data captured by the Facebook Pixel helps you understand your audience better and tailor your ads to their interests. This level of insight will result in more personalized and effective advertising and ultimately drive better results for your campaigns.

Incorporate video ads

Adding video ads into your Facebook ad campaigns can significantly enhance user engagement. 

In fact, 67.55% of Facebook advertisers say video ads bring more clicks than other ad formats.

But to get the most from video ads, keep them under 15 seconds and ensure they have audio. More importantly, they should be optimized for mobile because statistics show that mobile-optimized video ads achieve a 12.3% lower conversion cost than non-vertical video ads. 

Create mobile-friendly ads

98.3% of Facebook users use the social network from their mobile phones. 

Therefore, every ad you create, from the copy to the visuals, must be optimized for mobile phones.

How exactly?

• Use whitespace to create visually appealing and elegant ads
• Short sentences for the copy so it’s easier to scan through
• Vertical videos because they are better preferred by mobile users
• Interactive elements such as carousels
• Fast-loading landing pages with little to no hoops to jump through 

Collaborate with Influencers

Adding influencer partnerships to the mix can help bring authenticity to your Facebook ad campaigns. 

Nano or micro-influencers are often the better choice since they experience higher engagement rates, which would be a nice addition to a targeted campaign.

For example, partner with influencers to create authentic video or image reviews about your product. Then, run your Facebook ads using the best-performing reviews. This will add a layer of credibility and real-world validation to your campaign.

Combine Facebook ads with content marketing

Paying for ads alone is not a recommended way to grow or market your brand. 

Even if you are a large brand with thousands of dollars available for paid campaigns, it’s still important that you pair paid advertising with other content marketing initiatives.

Here's why content marketing matters alongside your Facebook ads:

• It will be more affordable in the long run
• It’ll help you nurture potential clients at every stage of the buyer journey
• Organic content marketing initiatives will also give you more ground to build trust with your audience
• You’ll also be able to build a community around your brand

Summary

Creating high-performing Facebook ads is possible even if you’re just getting started. The most important thing is to clearly define your audience and goals because they will influence all other parts of your ads. 

If you want to simplify Facebook ads further, visit Cropink for a free demo of how we can help you get more bang for your buck from Facebook ads.

FAQs

How do I create a perfect Facebook ad?

Start by choosing a clear campaign objective and then effectively target your audience. Ensure your ad copy is concise, visually appealing, and aligns with a strong call to action.

What are the main objectives I can set for my Facebook ad campaign?

Facebook allows the following campaign objectives: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App Promotion, and Sales. 

How do I set up my Facebook ad account and business page?

To set up your Facebook ad account and business page, start by creating a Facebook Page for your business. Then, head over to Meta Ads Manager to establish your ad account and manage your campaigns.

Why is it important to test and refine my ads?

Testing and refining your ads helps you discover which variations resonate with your audience. This, in turn, leads to improved performance, cheaper CPC, and better results. 

How can I use Facebook Pixel to improve my ad campaigns?

Using Facebook Pixel lets you track user interactions on your site, helping you retarget visitors and sharpen your ad targeting for better results. 

Sources

1. Facebook. 3 Million Advertisers on Facebook: Who's Advertising and How?
2. Facebook. About Advantage+ Audience
3. Databox. Digital Advertising Benchmarks by Industry
4. Databox. Increasing Facebook Ad Budget: How to Scale Without Wasting Money
5. WordStream. Facebook Ads Benchmarks: Updated Data & Trends for 2023
6. Databox. Videos vs. Images in Facebook Ads: Which Drives Better Results?
7. Meta. Lower Conversion Costs with Mobile-Friendly Video
8. Oberlo. Facebook Statistics You Need to Know