Steps to Properly Set Up a facebook Ad Account
Setting Up A Facebook Business Properly
Facebook is built from the bottom floor up. This means it all starts with a personal profile, and all of the business assets that you create originate from what you do with that personal profile. A personal profile creates a page, then a business manager, or business suite account should be created from the same personal profile that the page is created with. Then an ad account, a pixel, verifying a domain, creating/uploading a catalog- all of this should be completed within the same silo. This may seem simple, but I cannot tell you how many times I have taken on a client for Facebook and Instagram ads, and their various assets exist in separate business manager accounts, owned by another person at the company, and other assets haven’t even been created. My best piece of advice for someone setting up these tools for the first time is to be sure which personal profile you want all the assets to originate from, and to keep all the assets in one place. This doesn't mean you will be running ads from your own personal profile, just that Facebook uses that profile as the root of all the work you complete from there on out in creating the various assets needed to succeed with Facebook ads. Another pro tip is to create a personal profile on Facebook that isn't tied to any one person’s personal profile, and to use that profile as the root for the business. This can avoid having to claw back ownership of any assets that may have been created using a former employee’s personal profile.
Facebook Business Manager Account
Once you decide you want to have a social presence with your company, you will need to create a business page. Then you will create a business manager account. A business manager account, or business suite, is where all of the assets the company uses are stored. Once you log in to the business manager that the assets are within, you can create ads, manage your pixel, assign access to others in or out of your organization, give partners access, along with a ton of other things.
Facebook Ad Account
After that, to run ads- the real kind, not the ads you can run from your page- you should create an ad account where you can run different types of ads, from single image ads, carousel ads, shopping ads, remarketing ads, on both Facebook and Instagram. After all, Facebook owns Instagram. Both platforms run ads from a Facebook ad account.
Facebook Pixel
You will then need to create and integrate a pixel that tracks your website data. Facebook makes this easy with multiple partner integrations available on platforms like Shopify and WordPress. After you generate your pixel ID, Facebook will guide you through partner integrations where you can download an app or plugin to input the pixel into.
Facebook Events
Your Facebook pixel tracks events and all the user data on the site. You can set these events up using the event set up tool inside Facebook’s events manager, with raw coding on the site, or via a plugin with various partner integrations available. The event set up tool, or a plugin that automatically registers the events on a site with the pixel is the best, and easiest choice.
Verifying Your Domain With Facebook
Then verify your domain by adding a meta tag to the head of the site. This is easily done by editing your site theme- if you aren’t comfortable with this, ask your developer to add this for you.
Once the domain is verified, set up aggregated event measurement. This is to tell Facebook which event to count towards conversions if the ad engagement is coming from a user who has opted out of tracking with Apple’s iOS 14.5. You can have eight total events added to aggregated event measurement, with value based events taking four of the eight spots should you choose to use those.
After all of this, you’ll need to test your events and see how your pixel is tracking them. You’ll go to the events manager settings to input your domain, then start navigating through the funnel on your live site, checking to make sure the events are firing properly in the testing area of the Facebook interface. You are now set up to actually build ads. That was just the admin part, it’s also crucial you do all of these things correctly or your assets will be disorganized and your data from Ads potentially inaccurate. Now the fun part!
Ad Creation
Then create your ads, complete with audience targeting- either interest based, which is now recommended because of the iOS 14.5 update from Apple, and/or custom, first party audiences. Set up your budget, your campaign goal, write your ad copy, and use your media you’ve uploaded to your media library. Facebook works off of audiences, not keywords, so your audiences are the testing ground. You’ll need to rotate through audience winners and losers regularly to double down on winners and edit targeting for losers. If all of this sounds like a lot of work, it’s because it is. We can help, fill out that form below and we can chat about how!