How To Create Facebook Audiences and Campaigns Without a Business Account

Facebook is the world’s largest social media giant. Over 2.85 billion users in the world use Facebook to connect with family and friends and interact with the brands they love.

This is a simple step-by-step guide for the basic features of Facebook Ads Manager. The sequence of steps will guide you through the creation of a retargeting audience, a lookalike audience and a simple campaign that will use one of the two audiences. I created this guide for the students of the Digital Marketing Bootcamp as a first approach to Facebook Ads. Please make sure that your account is not brand new.

Log in into your personal Facebook account.
Create a Facebook page on any topic you like by selecting the 9-dots icon at the top right of the page and then selecting “Page”.
For your new page you only need to define a title. Everything else, for the purpose of this guide, is optional.
Once created, your page should look similar to this one I created.
Without logging out from Facebook enter in your browser the url https://business.facebook.com.
You should see a page similar to this one. It’s the simplified version of the Facebook Ad Manager.
In order to access the advanced user interface of the Ads Manager enter the url https://business.facebook.com/adsmanager. Your screen should display a page similar to this one.
Select the 9-dots-icon on the left and select the “Audiences” icon, not the blue icon!
Select the button “Create a Custom Audience” to start creating a custom audience.
In order to create a retargeting / remarketing audience, select “Website” as a source for your audience. This step should work even if you haven’t created a Facebook Pixel yet.
Select a name for your Pixel and one for your Audience, then select the “Continue” button.
Configure your audience parameters the way you like and save your new audience by selecting “Create Audience“.
To create a new Lookalike Audience, select the nine-dots icon and click on the Audiences icon.
Select “Lookalike Audience” from the pulldown menu.
Click on the input field for “Select Your Sources” and then select “Other Sources”. Choose the remarketing audience you just created, or any other audience you might already have in your account and that you like to use as a reference for your lookalike audience.
Select the entire United States as territory for the audience. This is the maximum granularity for remarketing campaigns. Then confirm by clicking on the “Create Audience” button.
At this point we need to complete the basic settings for our advertising account.
Click again on the nine-dots-icon and select “Ad Account Settings”
Check that the the information in the form make sense for your advertising activities.
For now, on the Tax ID field you can simply enter some number like 123456789 as your Tax ID Number and click the “Save Changes” blue button.
Now you on your screen you should see a page similar to this one:
In order to create your first campaign, go back to the nine-dots-icon and select the “Ads Manager” icon.
Click on the green button “Create” to start the creation of a new ad campaign.
Select your objective, e.g. “Traffic“.
Confirm your selection by clicking on the “Continue” button.
Enter the data about the campaign level set up and select the “Next” button
At the Ad Set level scroll down until you reach the “Audience” section. Click on the input field and select your remarketing audience as a reference for the new lookalike audience.
Move to the Ad level. Enter the info needed to complete the form, then click the “Publish” green button.
If the information displayed is correct, select “Continue”
Select the payment method you prefer. This step is required only if you like to save and later activate your campaign. If you are only learning how to use Facebook ads you can skip it.
One popular option is to select “Credit Card”.
If you are confident in sharing your credit card info with Facebook enter your credit card and you are done. If this is simply an educational activity take a snapshot at each step and don’t enter your credit card info.