Case Study

I know what you’re thinking. “Coffee… AND marketing!?!”

Yep! Coffee, and marketing! “Those are like… my two favourite things!” 

Us too! That’s why we’ve created a marketing forum where users can get advice, answers and entertainment.

Over the past year, the group has amassed a following of over 480 people, but it’s time for an upgrade. Since the success of this group, we’ve been working on a better platform for marketers to post, discuss, ask, answer and help each other out online! 

What Can You Do on Coffee & Marketing?

• • Share unpopular opinions 
  • Ask your biggest questions 
  • Share your marketing discoveries, life hacks, strategies 
  • Put in a request for someone to make a YouTube video on a topic 

• • Follow other users 
  • Contact via Direct Message 
  • Request to connect via Linkedin 

This is a great way to look for jobs, or qualified employees to fill those jobs!

• • Profile picture
  • Your area of expertise
  • Company name
  • Articles, publications, projects, videos
  • Certifications

What Kind of Questions Can You Ask on Coffee & Marketing?

Sounds Awesome! What’s the Catch?

No catch! No subscription, no flat-rate, no premium version, no nothin!

Coffee & Marketing is free for anyone to browse. You can even create a profile to post, ask, answer and interact with the platform.

We wanted to create a marketing forum, a community where marketers could get their heads together to brainstorm, network and help each other out. 

The platform is free to use and browse. YES! To interact with the platform (ex.: joining a table, interacting with a post, etc.), all you have to do is create a profile!

How is Coffee & Marketing Different From Other Platforms?

Unlike our private Facebook group All Things Facebook Ads (which is soon being shut down), Coffee & Marketing is public, similar to Reddit or Quora.

Your question and its answer will be visible when typed into search engines, which means that anyone with the same question will find their answer! 

Help us grow our online community by signing up for free today!

If you’re confused, you’ve come to the right place. It can sometimes be hard to tell what’s what in the vast world of Facebook buzzwords. 

In this article, we’ll be explaining what the difference is between Facebook ads manager and business manager. Plus, we’ll even show you how to navigate them, add users, and launch a campaign.

You can skip to any section in the directory below. 

What is Facebook Business Manager? 

What’s the Difference Between Facebook Ads Manager and Facebook Business Manager? 

Which One Should I have? 

How Do I Start Using Facebook Business Manager? 

Navigating Business Manager

• Business Settings 
• How to Easily Get Back to Business Manager
• Adding Users to Facebook Business Manager
• Adding Pages and Accounts to Your Business Manager 

How Do I Start Running Facebook Ads? 

• How Can I Create and Access My Facebook Manager? 
• How Do I Create a Campaign?

If your prefer watching videos, you can find my video on the topic here: 

What is Facebook Ads Manager?

Create campaigns, ad sets and ads. Facebook offers a step-by-step design process where you can customize your format, placement, target audience and marketing objective. 

Experiment. Use A/B split testing to test different ad sets. This means that you can run ads side-by-side and compare results. 

Edit your settings for your ads at any point during their time running. 

Manage multiple campaigns, audiences and ads at once by navigating through ads manager

Watch the magic happen. Customize, create and schedule reports about your ad’s performance! Facebook offers standard, customizable reports and the option to create one from scratch. 

You can use filters, sort through breakdowns and more options to understand how your ads are performing. You can even share or export them for your team or client to see. 

What is Facebook Business Manager?

Everything is connected and under the roof of your business manager, including your ads manager. 

What’s The Difference Between Facebook Ads Manager And Facebook Business Manager?

The main difference between ads manager and business manager is this: 

• • Ads manager is a place for ads only. You can use it to create, edit and analyze ads. 
• • The business manager is a place that combines several Facebook tools, including the ads manager. 

Which One Should I Have?

We recommend that you have a business manager that has the ads manager set up within it. 

This will keep all of your tools in one place and make your life easier. If you’re not quite ready for ads yet, you don’t have to start running them right away!

How Do I Start Using Facebook Business Manager?

1. Go to business.facebook.com/overview.
2. Click Create Account.
3. Enter a name for your business, your name and work email address and click Next.
4. Enter your business details and click Submit.

1. Navigate to business.facebook.com.  

2. Hover over the Give Feedback option on the bottom left corner and select Switch to Business Manager. 

3. If ever you prefer the Business Suite, you can easily find it in the Manage Page menu of your Facebook page. 

This is what the homepage of your Business Manager should look like. 

You’ll be able to see all of your ad accounts on this page, and the name of your business will be in the top left corner under Home. 

Navigating the Business Manager

Business Settings

2. Click on the Business Settings button, which will bring you to… you guessed it! Business Settings!

How to Easily Get Back to Business Settings

In order to easily get back to business settings, you’ll want to bookmark this page by following these steps:

1. Click on the star icon in the far right side of your search bar.

2. A menu will drop down, allowing you to click Add bookmark. 

3. Name the bookmark and find it under your search bar by clicking on the >> icon underneath your search bar.

If you would like it to be among the visible bookmarks under your search bar, you can drag it out of the >> menu and into that section. 

You can also have it show up under your Google search bar as a by clicking on the + icon marked as Add shortcut. You can have up to ten shortcuts, so use them wisely! 

Adding Users to Facebook Business Manager

Everything in your Business Manager is private. The only people who can see it are those who have access (either employee, admin or partner access if you’re working with a marketing agency).

If your Business Manager is a house, think of your Business Settings Page as the front door. Anyone who is added to your Business Manager has the key to access the front door into that room. 

1. Navigate to the Business Manager Settings by clicking on the hamburger menu in the top left of Facebook Business Manager and clicking on Business settings.

2. Under People, you can add users. 

When adding people, you can either give them Employee Access (access to tasks that you assign them) or Admin Access (full access to all parts of the Business Manager).

1. Selecting Partners under Users in the Business Settings menu. 

2. From there, you can either Give a partner access to your assets or Ask a partner to share their assets. 

3. If you give them access, you’ll be asked to enter their business ID, which they can find in the URL of their Business Manager after business_id= (ID number). 

Your business ID would be like the address of your “house”, while your Ad Account ID would be the name of that room.

Adding Pages and Accounts to Facebook Business Manager

1. Navigate to Business settings through Business Manager. 

2. In the menu on the right, click on Pages under Accounts.

3. Click on Add. A drop down menu will appear.

4. Add a page you already own or have access to by clicking Add a Page or request access to one by clicking Request access to a Page. To create a new one, click Create a new Page. 

Add your Instagram account(s) by clicking on Instagram Accounts under Accounts and clicking on Add. 

Adding Ad Accounts to Your Facebook Business Manager

2. To find your Ad Account ID, navigate to your Ads Manager.

3. Confirm that this is the Ad Account that you would like to add. You can use the dropdown menu next to Campaigns on the top left  to change between ad accounts.

4. The URL of this page should look something like this: 

Facebook.com/adsmanager/manage/campaigns?act=…

The letters act stand for account. You’ll find your Ad Account ID number after “act=”.  

How do I Start Runnning Facebook Ads?

How Do I Create and Access My Facebook Ads Manager?

2. We recommend that you create a Facebook Business Manager Account so that you can manage everything in one place! 

3. Simply go to business.facebook.com/overview and click Create Account. 

4. Enter your business details and click Submit. 

5. Confirm your account information in your ad account settings. 

6. Choose your payment method. 

7. Access the ads manager from the Business Manager 

• • Click on the menu hamburger icon on the top right to open the All Tools menu. 

• • Click on the Ads Manager button. 

In the top right corner, you’ll find a menu icon that you can open to find the Create section.

In this section, you’ll find the Ad button which will bring you to the Ads Manager.

OR

To access a less in depth version of the Ads Manager: 

Click on the AdCenter under Manage Page (menu on the right hand side). 

This will bring you to the Ad Center, a simplified version of Ads Manager. The ads you run here will also appear in Ads Manager. 

We recommend that you use the full version by following the steps above instead. Here are the features that you can find in Ads Manager and not in Ad Center: 

• • A mobile app dedicated to the ads manager. On mobile, you can only access Ad Center though your Facebook App.

• • Ads created in Ads Manager cannot be seen in Ads Center. 

• • The ability to create ads. Ad Center only shows results form “boosted posts”.

Learn more on their differences, pros and cons and when to use either one in our article: Boost Post vs Facebook Ads Manager (side by side comparison). 

How Do I Create a Facebook Ad Campaign?

Make sure you have the following in order to run ads properly: 

• • Facebook Pixel events set up for iOS14 

• • A verified domain 

• • The conversion API on Shopify set up (all events)

If you don’t know what these are, you want to learn more or you need help setting them up, simply click on each link! 

Summary

So there you have it! If there’s anything you should take away, it’s this:

• • Facebook Ads Manager is a place where you can create, manage and analyze your ads. 
  • Facebook Business Manager is a place where you can manage all aspects of your business. 
  • Your business manager is like a house with several rooms. One of those rooms could be your ads manager (you can access the ads manager through the business manager).
  • You can have an ads manager without a business manager and vice-versa. 

If you have any questions, comments you would like to have a helping hand in your online marketing journey, feel free to join our Facebook group: All Things Facebook Ads. 

Since the dawn of time, history’s greatest poets, thinkers and philosophers have pondered the question: 

Should I boost my posts or use Facebook Ads manager?

(ok, maybe if the dawn of time was 2012). In this article, you’ll learn the differences between boosting a post and ads manager and when to use them. 

As an agency, we always recommend ads manager, but this is your chance to compare the two side-by-side and make your decision from there! 

Feel free to skip to any section using the directory below:

Part 1: Basics

• What Is the “Boost Post” Option? 
  • What’s the Difference Between a Post and a Boosted Post? 
  • How to Boost a Facebook Post
• What Is a Facebook Ad?
• What’s the Major Difference Between Boosting a Post and Running an Ad? 

Part 2: Features compared in the article: 

1. Content and Format

• • Headline and Description 
  • Call-to-action
  • Ad Creative Sizing
  • Platform Options 
  • Ad Creative

2. Event Tracking 

• • Event Timeline 
  • Conversion Event Location 
  • Campaign Objective VS Boost Post Goal
  • Events Available 

3. Tools 

• • A/B Split Testing 
  • Tasks 
  • API VS Pixel 

4. Audience

• • Post Boosting Audience 
  • Facebook Ad Audience

5. Budgeting 

• • CBO VS ABO 
  • Budget Scaling 

6. Price 

• • How Much Does Facebook Advertising Cost? 
  • How Much Does Boosting a Post Cost? 

If you’re more audiovisual, try watching our video version!

What Is the “Boost Post” Option?

The name kinda gives it away! A boosted post can be described as a Facebook post that’s been given a sponsored power-up, of sorts. The easiest way to explain it is by pointing out the differences between a traditional post and a boosted post.  

What’s the Difference Between a Post and a Boosted Post?

A boosted post is a post of yours that you pay to pop up on the feeds of users who may not have seen your posts if you kept it organic. Here are some features that your post gains when it is boosted:

• • Call-to-action: When the user sees it on their feed, it will look like a normal post, except with a call-to-action button. A call-to-action button is a button in the corner of your post that users can click on to be brought to your destination of choice.
  • Metrics: You will only get high-level metrics when you boost a post, since it’s a simplified version of ads manager. So, your ability to analyze data is reduced when you boost a post.

How to Boost a Facebook Post

Not so fast… You might want to read the rest of this article before deciding to boost a post! We always recommend running ads through ads manager instead of boosting a post for a number of reasons, however here is how you would go about boosting a post if you did decide you wanted to.

1. Go to your Facebook Page. If you are running a business, we recommend that you create a Facebook Business Page by following Facebook’s instructions. You can only boost a post if you’re a business.

2. Find the post that you would like to boost. 

3. Click on the blue Boost Post button on the bottom right corner of your post.

• • Goal
  • Call-to-action button
  • Audience
  • Duration and timing
  • Budget
  • Placement
  • Payment method

5. When you’re happy with your settings, click on the Boost Post Now button.

6: Use Facebook’s metrics to analyse your results

What Is a Facebook Ad?

Ads are a piece of content that you can pay to promote a certain product or service. If you’re interested in running ads on Facebook, the company offers a tool called Ads Manager. Here is a list of things you can do with it:

Create campaigns, ad sets and ads. Facebook offers a step-by-step design process where you can customise your format, placement, target audience and marketing objective. You can even duplicate ads (create copies and change certain elements)

Experiment. Use A/B split testing to test different ad sets. This means that you can run ads side-by-side and compare results. 

Edit your settings for your ads at any point during their time running. 

 Manage multiple campaigns, ad sets and ads at once by using customizable sections and columns. 

Watch the magic happen. Customize, create and schedule Facebook’s reports on your ad performance! Facebook offers standard, customizable reports and the option to create one from scratch. 

You can use filters, sorting breakdowns and more options to understand how your ads are performing. You can even share or export them for your team or client to see. 

What’s the Major Difference Between Boosting a Post and Running and Ad?

Don’t confuse running ads with boosting posts. Although the two can seem similar, there are many differences.

To put it simply, Ads manager offers more features and an overall better choice if you want to see a return on your ad spend (ROAS).

A boosted post only requires a Facebook Business Page and offers less options to advertise.

Ads manager should be your first option if you are looking to spend money on Facebook. We’ll cover the difference between each one in this article. 

1. Content and Format

When it comes to the content and format of Facebook ads, there are far more options to choose from than with boosting posts. Here are some key differences: 

Healine and Description

Vertex Marketing Agency 

Consulting Agency 

This is actually a pretty big deal because this is where you should be including your main offer. But since “boosting a post” doesn’t give you options to really market & sell your products like ads manager does, you may never see a positive ROAS because you are missing the main elements that would properly market, and sell your offer.

Call-to-action

In this example, Nike is running an ad for their new app, with an Install Now button. 

If you’re looking to boost a post but you would like a specific button, it’s important to know that there are far less options. Below is a list of call-to-action buttons for B.P (Boosted Post) and A.M (Ads Manager). 

Ad Creative Sizing

Facebook Ad: You can customize your ad’s dimensions, media for each placement it’s in. The placement is where the user sees your ad. Here are the placements that you can customize by hovering over them and clicking edit group. This is something you can’t do to a post.

Boosting a post allows only one size for your creative, so whether the user is on their news feed or stories, it’s the same size. This can make for a bad experience since you should always be customizing your ads for each placement.

Platform Options

Boost Post: you can run your boosted post on Instagram, Messenger and Facebook, but you don’t have the option to not show it on Facebook.

We typically recommend you keep it automatic unless you really want to select your own. Facebook uses AI to find the best platform fit for your business. If you prefer taking the reins, there are significantly more options to choose from than when boosting a post.  

If you select Manual Placements, you’ll be able to choose between 4 platforms and a large amount of placements. 

Ad Creative

Facebook Ad: In ads manager, you can use an existing post from your Facebook or Instagram and promote it as an ad. It’s something you can easily do on the ad level.

2. Tracking & Data

Events are actions done by the user in relation to your ad or boosted post like link clicks, purchases, add to carts etc. 

Event tracking is a very important, and practically necessary strategy when running a business because it lets you know how your ads are doing. 

Ads Manager offers different options for event tracking than boosting a post. Here are some: 

Event Timeline

Facebook Ad: You can create custom audiences based on when the event took place. For example, you’re able to use warm targeting audiences because you know they visited your website in the last 30 days. You can also know when your conversions happen. 

Boost Post: When boosting a post, you aren’t able to see any time frames for events, limiting your ability for data-driven decision.

Conversion Event Location

Boost Post: The call-to-action only sends users to a website. 

Campaign Objective VS Boost Post Goal

Facebook Ad: In the Campaigns section of your Ads Manager, you can create a new campaign by clicking on the Create button.

You’ll be able to choose one objective out of three subjects (Awareness, Consideration and Conversion). This will tell Facebook exactly what kind of results you want to see from your ads by picking an event to prioritize like conversions. 

The default setting is Automatic, meaning that Facebook will select the most relevant goal based on your settings using AI. As good as that sounds, we don’t really recommend that. 

Using Post Boost, you have less options when it comes to objectives.

Standard Events Available

Facebook Ad: Here are the available events you can track using Facebook ads manager: 

Active Events

• • Purchase
  • Add payment info
  • Complete Registration 
  • Add to cart
  • Lead
  • View Content
  • Add Payment Info
  • Add to wishlist
    
  • Complete registration
  • Contact
  • Customize product
    And more! 

Boost Post: The events traceable for a boosted post are in the Goal section. The goal you set will be the one that uses tracking, whereas using ads allows you to select an objective and an event to track. 

3. Tools

Facebook Ads Manager offers a wide range of tools that are very useful for running ads on a professional level. Take a look at the following tools to see if they resonate with your business.

A/B Split Testing

Facebook Ad: Facebook Ads Manager allows you to run A/B split tests, which means that you can test two different creatives and see which one performs best. This may seem a little advanced, but it’s a very useful tool! It’s also good to learn This option isn’t available when boosting a post.

Comparing ad creative results can only be done in ads manager. 

Tasks

Facebook Ad: In the Resource Center of your Facebook Ads Manager, you’ll find tasks that need to be done in order to run ads properly. Typically you’ll have to :

• Set up your Conversion API
• Set up a Facebook Pixel
• Verify your domain

Boost Post: You don’t have to complete these tasks because you don’t have access to them. They are, however, used to set up tools that will improve results. If you’re looking to take your business to the next level, you’ll want to use these tools by switching to ads manager.

4. Audience

Your audience is made up of all of the people that you reach on Facebook. The beauty of Facebook is that unlike TV or billboards on the road, the ads or boosted posts are catered to the person reading them. Both methods have different options for audiences. 

Post Boosting Audience

When boosting a post, you have two options:

1. You can select website visitors and lookalike audiences. This seems great but Facebook won’t let you select a specific timeline, meaning that these users could have visited your website 3 days or 3 years ago and you would have no clue! Facebook will also pick look-alike audiences using AI and the data it has collected from website visits. 

2. You can also choose people using targeting, where you can select the gender, age, and location of targeted users. 

Facebook Ad Audience

From there, you make Facebook create a look-alike audience or retarget these customers.

You can include multiple custom audiences at once, or exclude audiences, which you can’t do when boosting a post. 

Excluding audiences can be very useful to prevent ad fatigue. This means that you can stop advertising to customers who just bought from you.

When creating a new audience, you can use location, language, age, gender and Detailed Targeting.

5. Budgeting

When you spend money on ads or posts, there are many ways of organising it, and Ads Manager offers more options. Check them out:

CBO VS ABO

Facebook Ad: You have the choice to set the budget to a campaign budget optimization (CBO) or on an ad set level (ABO). This means that you can choose to let Facebook’s AI manage your budget within a campaign (CBO) or you manage your budget manually on each ad set. Learn more on budget optimization in our article : CBO VS ABO 

Boost Post: ABO and CBO are unavailable.

Budget Scaling

You can only scale up results by upping the budget in ads manager, not when boosting a post.

6. Price

Unfortunately, these things cost money. It’s important to understand the differences between both options to see what works best for your business. 

How Much Does Facebook Advertsing Cost?

Below are the estimated average costs for Facebook ads based on their objectives:

• • $0.97 ≃ Average cost per click (CPC)
  • $7.19 ≃ Average cost per 1000 impressions
  • $1.07 ≃ Average cost per like 
  • $5.47 ≃ Average cost per app download

It’s important to note that more effective ads will up your conversion (like clicks, for example). Since every user that sees your ad costs money, our CPC will lower if more of those users click! Learn how to create effective Facebook ads.

How Much Does Boosting A Post Cost?

You can boost a post using a daily budget as small as $1 a day in your local currency, which is the minimum. 

There is little to no data on the average CPC of a boosted post. 

Summary

When to Run Ads

• • When you want to scale up your business  
  • When your advertising budget increases 
  • When you want to appear more established 
  • When you plan on doing A/B testing and advertising based on analytics

When to Boost a Post

• • When you want to get more reach on social media 
  • When you are trying out Facebook for your business
  • When you are a much smaller business
  • When you don’t plan on advertising in the future

To put it simply, post boosting on your Facebook page is great for very small, personal business that you can run from your house. If you are looking to take it to the next level, or you would simply rather have more control and a better return, the ads manager is for you. 

Something I wish I would have had at the beginning of my facebook ads journey is a helping hand. That’s why I’ve created a facebook group called All Things Facebook Ads! This group is all about helping each other and sharing tactics & strategies.

Woah! It’s okay! We’ve got the answers (most answers anyways)! After reading this article, you’ll understand everything in the directory below. Feel free to skip to any section.

Directory:

• • What’s the Main Difference Between CBO & ABO?
  • What Is Campaign Budget Optimization
    • When And Why Did Facebook Start Using CBO?
    • How Does Facebook Use CBO?
  • What is Ad Budget Optimization?
  • What Is the Difference Between Managing My Budget using CBO vs ABO?
    • Pros and Cons of Turning CBO on:
    • When do I turn on CBO?
    • When do I Use an ABO Campaign?
  • How to Set Your Budget to CBO
  • How to Set Your Budget to ABO
  • Our Proposed Startegy: How to Test with ABO, Then Scale with CBO 

We know this is a critical concern many people have and continue to ask us about, so you can always send this article to anyone in need!

If you’d rather follow our video, ABO vs CBO (which budget optimization to use) Facebook Ads 2021, we’ve linked it below!

What’s the Main Difference Between CBO and ABO?

What is Campaign Budget Optimization?

When and Why Did Facebook Start Using CBO?

In light of this, Facebook has given its advertisers a more simple way to manage their advertising budget and made  the transition into setting CBO as the default budget distribution setting with the intention to produce better results for the advertiser. how it works and when to use it. 

In February 2020, it became the default setting, meaning any new campaigns you create would have been automatically set to CBO, but you could easily change them to ABO. 

How Does Facebook Use CBO?

How does Facebook measure ad performance? Simple! Well… as simple as AI is. You heard that right! Artificial intelligence is more present than we thought. Facebook uses AI to collect data on conversions by monitoring different: 

• Audiences 
• Creatives
• Ad copies and titles 
• Trends 
• Geographic locations 
• Interests 
• Keywords

And more! This data has been collected from Facebook ads throughout the years to create a knowledge base for the algorithm, which it can use to estimate ad success. 

Despite this knowledge, it still needs some data from your own ads, since every ad is different. That’s why it will invest more money in better performing ads. 

With ABO, on the other hand, it is up to you to decide how much money goes into each ad set. 

What is Ad Budget Optimization?

What is the Difference Between Managing My Budget Using CBO vs ABO?

CBO uses artificial intelligence to invest in the best audiences AND ads, while ABO uses AI to choose which audience to invest in. 

When you are using a CBO model, you are managing your budget on a campaign level, meaning you decide how much money goes into each campaign. Facebook will then take care of managing funds between ad sets, and ads.

With an ABO model, you would still need to think about how much you want to spend on the overall campaign, but the budget is ultimately set at the ad set level.

A CBO budget adjusts dynamically over your audiences and ads (changes overtime) whereas an ABO budget stays static (does not change) unless you manually adjust it. 

CBO will machine pick how much budget will go into which audience. However you are still targeting your audiences the same way in CBO & ABO. But if you have 3 audiences within a campaign, CBO will decide that A and B will get more than C.

Pros and Cons of Turning CBO On:

• Lower cost per conversion when used properly! 

• Facebook is able to prevent overlap of our audiences between ad sets since the budget is centralized to one campaign. 

• You can avoid wearing the audience down because the budget adjusts dynamically between warm audiences and cold audiences

• Less manual work. 

Cons 

• Less control over your budget. 

When Do I Turn On CBO?

• When you have more data from the pixel for the AI to work with: 

• When you have a smaller budget: Facebook will optimize what little budget you have if you aren’t supplying enough to fund two campaigns. 

• When you have less experience with Facebook ads: you can rely on AI until you get a better understanding of the system.

• When you are scaling: If you increase the budget, Facebook already knows which ad sets are performing well and will spend wisely, so you won’t have to change each individual ad set budget.

When Do I Use an ABO Campaign?

• When you have a new ad account with very little data on the pixel: if the algorithm doesn’t have much to work with, it might not know what to do. If you’re starting off with a fresh ad account, try collecting enough data to guide the AI once you start using CBO. 
• When you are testing new creatives, audiences or copy: it’s good to keep test budgets the same, so that you know exactly how much better other ads are doing with the same amount of funds.
• When your audiences are very different in size: Facebook will generally favor a larger audience size, without necessarily knowing what kind of audience you are looking for. If you are hosting a location-specific, niche event that has a very small but very warm audience, you might know who would be best to reach instead of Facebook. CBO will try to get the most reach, so if you really want to reach a smaller audience, you can control how many funds go into them vs your larger target groups.

How to Set Your Budget to CBO:

OR

Click on the Campaigns section and edit your budget in the Budget column. 

1. Enter in your campaign budget.

Our Proposed Strategy: How to Test with ABO, then Scale with CBO

• Different topics (angles) in each campaign
• different creatives in each ad set 
• different texts and titles in each ad 

For these testing campaigns, we recommend you start by using ABO, since it’s good for testing. This will also let Facebook collect data on the ads performances so that it can know where to invest. 

Try making sure you keep a smaller budget for this strategy, since you are only running tests. 

To up your ad game, try out some of our creatives in our article on 5 Facebook ad Creatives That Convert. 

1. After getting enough data from Facebook, try to figure out which campaign is getting the best CPA (cost per action).
2. Create a “golden campaign” with the best performing ads and be sure to target a large audience. We suggest keeping the targeting as broad as possible. Turn on CBO.  
3. If your golden campaign is working well, try scaling up by increasing the budget by 5%-10% every 48 hours

DO: make sure you are doing this with a larger audience to avoid oversaturation. Investing too much money in a small audience may spam them, scare them away or worse: get your ad flagged! 

DON’T: overspend! Make sure the reach you are getting does not surpass your capacity to serve new customers. If you invest in too many ads, you may get too many customers at once!  Yes, it is possible to have too much of a good thing, especially if you are a service based business, or you have a limited inventory. 

Summary

As with any intelligence, AI has room to grow out of infancy. And who knows? We may find ourselves in a world where we have robot best friends and drone flown pizza delivery. Why not leave marketing up to the computer!  

We advise you to take it slow and use both setups to experiment which drives better results. Make sure YOUR marketing strategy works for YOUR business. 

If you’re not quite sure how to get there, don’t be afraid to book a free strategy session with us, where we can help you come up with a plan!

As always, feel free to leave any comments or questions on this page, so that I can leave no stone unturned!

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• How To Fix a Payment Issue Causing “Account Error” In My Facebook Business Manager?
• How Can I Prevent Payment Failures Causing “Account Error” In My Facebook Ad Account?
• In Which Countries Does Facebook Accept Debit/Online Banking?
• Still Having Issues?

Troubleshoot: Why Is There an “Account Error” Notification In My Facebook Ads Manager?

Make sure that your 

• Payment information is updated and correct 
• Card expiration dates aren’t reached
• You have no outstanding balances 
• Your spending limits have not been reached
• You have no insufficient funds on your account

How To Fix a Payment Issue Causing “Account Error”

1. In your Business Manager, click on the hamburger in the top left corner.
2. Under Business Manager in All Tools, click on Billing.

4. If you are having bank account, credit card or outstanding balance issues, you might find that it says Failed under Payment Status.

5. Click on the Payment Settings box in the top right corner.

7. Check your spending limit to make sure your budget hasn’t exceeded your spending limit. 

8. Update your payment information and make sure it is correct by clicking on Payment Methods. 

How Can I Prevent Payment Failures In My Facebook Ad Account?

• Remove your account’s spending limit. If you reach your spending limit, Facebook will stop charging you for your ads.

• Make sure there are sufficient funds on your card. Facebook will charge when you reach your payment threshold and again on your monthly bill date for any leftover pay due. 

• Lower your payment threshold to match the limit of funds that can be charged to your credit card. This way, Facebook will never charge you more than your credit card transaction limit. 

• Add a backup payment method to your account in case the one you are using is declined, expired, limited or out of funds. You can use this to pay of any remaining balance in your Facebook Ad Account. 

• Check credit/debit card expiration dates to make sure your future charges don’t get denied. Make sure your payment method: 

• • Is available in your country. 
  • Isn’t associated with too many accounts. Facebook limits the number of accounts the payment method can fund for security reasons.
  • Has a CVV code. This can be a 3 digit code on the back of the card or a 4-digit code on the front. Facebook will only accept cards with security codes. THey are usually labeled as CVV, CVC, CSC, CVV2 or CVC2. 

This should fix your problem. But, here is some more information about payment information for Facebook!

In Which Countries Does Facebook Accept Debit/Online Banking?

• Malta
• Monaco
• Netherlands
• Portugal
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• Spain
• United Kingdom
• Italy
• Luxembourg

How do I pay for my Facebook ads if they don’t accept my debit?

• PayPal
• Credit cards
• Local manual payment methods 

You can even find a list of your available payment methods for your country in Facebook’s Business Help Center, under Accepted Payment Options for Facebook Ads.

Still Having Issues?

That’s why we’re here to help! This article will run you through all of the steps you need to take to recover your account. You can follow each step in order or simply skip the ones you’ve already done using the directory below:

1. Diagnose the problem

• • What does It Mean When My Facebook Ad Account Is Disabled?
  • Why was My Facebook Ad Account Disabled? 

2. How Do I Recover My Disabled Facebook Ad Account? 

• • How To Request a Review
  • How To Contact  Facebook Support
    • Why Can’t I see the Contact Support Section?
  • Last Resort Plan: What Do I Do If Facebook Rejects Appeals and Reviews, or I Never Hear Back From Them?

If you would rather follow our video on the topic, we’ve linked it below. 

Diagnose The Problem

What Does It Mean If My Facebook Ad Account Is Disabled?

• • Your ads will be frozen and your campaign will be put on hold until you either retrieve it or terminate it. 
  • No sales will be driven from any of your ads.
  • Your account will remain inactive. 
  • Everyone who should have access to your business manager will be locked out of the ad account. 
  • You will see this picture:

Why Was My Facebook Ad Account Disabled?

If a Facebook ad account has been disabled, it’s usually because of a repeated offense. 

Your ad account can get banned because of your ads, or “suspicious” activity on your account. You can read the entire list of advertising policies here.

1. Overspending: Facebook wants to avoid spamming users, so you can’t spend exorbitant amounts of money on your ads all at once, especially when you have a new ad account.

We advise you to scale your daily budget up by less than 5%-15% until you’ve reached your advertising goals. 

2. Logging in from different IP addresses: Facebook may associate this with online fraud. If you login to your Ads Manager using a different device, Facebook may consider this “suspicious” if it’s done too often.

We recommend that you only use one device. If you absolutely need to login somewhere else, try using your mobile device. 

3. Not keeping a tight circle: If any user on your ads account gets their personal advertiser’s account banned, you may lose your ads account by association. 

4. Late payments: When you aren’t paying pending bills on time, your account may get flagged as unreliable.

Make sure you always have a credit card on file, or available credit on your account.

5. Unclear landing pages: Any pages that users are directed to through your ads should pertain to the information in the ad.

It should also contain business information like a logo, contact information, resources, company name and a disclaimer. 

6. Using the same payment methods for different ad accounts: Facebook uses payment methods to recognize previous offenders.

If you’ve been banned in the past, avoid using the same payment method for the next ad account. 

7. Not keeping Facebook advertising information confidential: Make sure it stays with and isn’t used for anything like selling contacts to other companies.

8. Ads disapproved according to Facebook’s guidelines: Make sure your ads abide by the following guidelines. 

• The Facebook Community Standards. They are based on authenticity, privacy, safety and dignity. 
• Facebook’s Terms of Service. This concerns the content you are posting as an ad. 
•  Facebook’s Advertising Policies (some things may take you by surprise!).Our video, Facebook Ad Policies (full course) goes over the whole thing, including what you really need to watch out for!  You can also read our summary below:

Facebook may ban your ads for the following reasons:

• Personal attributes: Don’t personally address users by using words like “you”. 
• Facebook Brand: Remember to capitalize the word “Facebook” and to not make Facebook the main subject of the ad. 
• Restricted keywords and subjects: Using AI screening, Facebook is able to detect, flag down and restrict any ads that contain keywords regarding sensitive subjects. This includes topics like fat-loss, anti-aging, and unsafe substances. 
• Covid-19 Vaccine: Any ad that discourages the users from taking covid-19 vaccines will be rejected.
• Before-and-after images: When it comes to anything regarding users’ health, Facebook restricts before-and-after images that “contain unexpected or unlikely results” that “generate negative self perception”. This usually pertains to the fitness and dieting industry. 
• Quality of content: Facebook might disable your account if your ads have poor quality. This can be because of grammar, poor image quality or EXCESSIVE USE OF CAPITAL LETTERS. 
• Targeting: You can’t use targeted ads to “discriminate against, harass, provoke or disparage users or to engage in predatory advertising practices. Your custom audience must comply with the applicable terms.  
• Lead ads: You cannot request sensitive information such as account numbers, health information and religion.
• Restricted Content: Be sure to check your regional guidelines on any subjects that are controlled by the state such as alcohol, casinos, tobacco products etc.

• Your ad is showing up too often or has been running for too long. It’s possible that Facebook users have flagged your ad because they’ve seen it too many times, or it’s not content they want to see.
• Negative user feedback. If users find your ad annoying, disturbing or suspicious, they may flag it. 
• Your account was reviewed by a Facebook ads rep and they found a violation that was previously overlooked. Even if your ads already got approved, make sure you follow the ad policies as closely as Facebook does!
• Changes in Facebook’s Ad Policies. Pay attention to any updates! 
• Any updates to Facebook’s software. This can accidentally trigger mistakenly disapproved ads. This problem can also be solved in the following steps. 

How Do I Recover My Disabled Facebook Ads Account?

1. How to Request a Review

1. In your Facebook Ads Manager, you’ll come across this alert:

3. Click on Request Review. It may ask you to verify your identity, so fill in your information. The review can take around 2-3 business days.  

• If you think your account was disabled due to a violation of Facebook’s advertising policies and/or guidelines, let them know by filling out this form. Be honest and give lots of details!
• If you think your account was disabled by mistake, let Facebook know by filling out this form.

After filling either form out, you can check the Facebook Help Center regularly. Your disabled account may be assigned to a Facebook employee for review at any time. 

2. How to Contact to the Facebook Busniess Help Center

1. If you’ve waited long enough for a review, find that your ad account is still restricted, and haven’t heard back from Facebook yet, try reaching out to the Facebook Business Help Center. 

3. To start a live chat with a Facebook representative, click on Get Started. 

To contact Facebook Ad Support, you have to be an admin on an active and spending ad account. In other words, your account has been billed with ad spend before. 

If your account is active but you still aren’t able to see this section, it may be another reason. In an effort to find out why certain users can use the live chat while others cannot, people have reached out to Facebook. Below this text box is their response.

You heard it right! They aren’t really sure why you can’t use the live chat. Here are your options:

• If you can’t find the “Need More Help?” section, find someone who can, and go through the rest of the steps in this guide. 
• Assuming you’ve completed the first section of this guide, try waiting seven business days. If your ad account is still disabled, skip to follow the third section of this guide: Last Resort Plan.

6. Pick which issue you are experiencing by selecting My ad account was disabled. 

8. Here, you can chat with a Facebook representative. Remember to be kind and understanding. If the account was banned because of your actions, try apologizing and promising not to repeat your actions. 

10. Every two business days, you can follow up on the case by checking it in the Facebook Business Help Center. You can even ask for an update in your conversation with the Facebook employee. 

At this point, one of three outcomes are possible.

1. Facebook reviewed your account and gave you the green light! If it was a mistake on your end, take their recommendations seriously and don’t repeat it! Make sure you follow their advertising policies. 

2. They are taking a very long time to get back to you. This happens often, since reviews have to be done manually. 

3. You received an email from Facebook saying that they refused your account. As you can probably tell from the email, this means you are no longer allowed to use your ad account. 

If you find yourself in situation #2 or #3, it may be time to try the next step…

2. Last Resort Plan: What If Facebook Rejects Appeals And Reviews, or I Never Hear Back From Them?

DO make sure YOU are not the reason your ad account is disabled. If you aren’t following Facebook Advertising Policies, it’s very likely that it will happen again. 

DO NOT create an ad account using the same business manager. If the account gets banned, Facebook may note it as a second strike and take down your business manager altogether. This means you will lose all assets that were held in it like: 

• Instagram Page 
• Facebook Page 

Facebook employees have even advised us to do the same in that situation. 

DO Move all of your assets into the new Business manager. 

DO NOT use a credit card that Facebook has seen (one that is associated with the banned account). 

DO keep your head up! Take the necessary precautions to prevent this from happening again and keep on keepin’ on! You live, you learn. 

Summary

You did it! You were able to follow all the steps in this guide: 

1. Diagnose the problem

• • What does It Mean When My Facebook Advertising Account Is Disabled?
  • Why was My Facebook Ad Account Disabled? 

2. How Do I Recover My Disabled Facebook Ads Account? 

• • How To Request a Review
  • How To Contact  Facebook Support
    • Why Can’t I see the Contact Support Section?
  • Last Resort Plan: What Do I Do If Facebook Rejects Appeals and Reviews, or I Never Hear Back From Them?

At this point, you should be out of the woods. If you aren’t I recommend you sign up for our Disabled Facebook Ad Account Program. It’s an in-depth program showing you how to recover a disabled Facebook ad account.

Are you not getting conversions with your Facebook ads? When it comes to Facebook marketing, problems unfortunately can’t be solved by “turning it on and off again”. In this article, we’ll show you five things you can do in order to fix those issues. 

As you may have already gone through some of these tricks, feel free to skip to any section you’d like in the directory below.

1. Check notifications in resource center

2. Make sure ads are approved and spending money

3. Try troubleshooting your pixel

4. Test the landing page experience and page speed

5. Experiment with your audience and ads

For all the images of our Facebook ads account and online store, we’ll be using our demo versions instead of real accounts.

If you’d rather a video format, click on the video below! 

1. Check Notifications In Resource Center

1. Inside your Facebook Ads Manager, click on the Resource Center tab, next to Campaigns. 

1. Make sure that your domain is verified. This helps Facebook confirm that you are the owner of your business, but it also helps with tracking.

Learn how to verify your domain via DNS HTML upload, or through meta verification by following our blog post.

2. Make sure your ads are approved and spending

1. Navigate to the campaigns tab of your Facebook Ads Manager. 

2. Scroll left to find the Amount Spent row. If you aren’t spending any money, Facebook won’t run your ads. 

If your campaigns still aren’t working, make sure your ads are approved by Facebook. 

1. Navigate to the Ads tab of your Facebook Ads Manager. 

2. If you have any ads that were rejected or appear to have alerts, it’s because they aren’t following Facebook’s Advertising Policies. 

3. You can either edit your existing advertisement or create a new one. 

4. Press the “review and publish” button at the top right of ads manager. This can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 24 hours. 

3. Try Toubleshooting your Pixel

1. In your Ads manager, click on the hamburger in the top left.

2. Click on Events Manager. 

2. Click on the Test Events tab.

6. Enter your website URL and click on Open Website. This will allow you to test your website by acting as a user. Here, I am using a demo store to show you how it works. 

7. Navigate your landing page/website the same way a user would. Click buttons, view products, initiate checkout and even buy a product.

8. You should be able to see a new Pageview and a View Content event in the Test Events tab in your Events Manager. If it’s tracked properly, you should be able to read “processed” in green. 

10. In the Events Manager, select any event to open up more information.

Make sure that the URL in there matches the one you opened when testing your website. 

11. If all the necessary events are being sent, this means that your pixel is working properly.

4. Test the Website Experience and Page Speed

1. Clicking on the hamburger in the top left again, navigate to your Ads manager. 

3. On your ad, click on edit. 

You should have a URL in it which you can copy and paste into your browser. 

5. Make sure the URL leads you to an actual page that is: 

• Secure.  If it isn’t, call your hosting company. If it is, you will see a small lock icon in the URL bar.
• Free of errors like typos. 
• Relevant in the context of the ad (for example: when advertising a specific product, insert the URL that brings the user directly to the product in your shop instead of the home page). 

6. Test the page’s speed by using any speed tester like GTmetrix.

This will tell you how fast your page is, and how you can improve it. 

5. Experiment With Your Audience And Ads

If all of the technical problems above are ruled out and you still aren’t seeing results, the last thing to look at would be your audience and ads. 

This is something that I strongly recommend you don’t jump to immediately if you haven’t gone through the rest of this guide, since recreating a campaign can mean a lot of work. 

A solid ad campaign usually starts with this question: What are you really paying for with Facebook ads?

Your money goes to User Attention, like paying more for the biggest billboard in Time Square.

Here is how to get an idea of what is missing from your ads: 

1. Navigate to the Facebook Ad Library, where you can search up your competitors or similar companies to see what kind of ads they’re running. This can give you an idea of what kind of ads you can run yourself. 

For ideas, check out our video on Five Facebook Ads that Convert.

2. If the quality of the successful ads is equal to yours, it may be an audience issue. 

• Make sure it’s made up of people who are interested in your product. Try to put yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes

• Make sure your audience is large enough. With new IOS14 measures in place, your audience should have AT LEAST 4 Million people in it.

• Try using lookalike audiences based on your previous customers or clients.

• Run A/B split tests with different audiences.

3. If you’ve tried everything and you still aren’t getting conversions, ask yourself if you’re ready for Facebook ads. It helps to have all your grounds covered before investing money in campaigns.

Make sure you have:

• Enough products to seem established.

• A stable and realistic budget that can comfortably allow for campaigning. 

• A good-looking website that is user optimized.

• Trust built with customers (with things like reviews, pictures of products received, ratings, etc.) 

• Social media profiles with decent followings. 

There is no need to give up: If you do feel ready, but you need a little more guidance, we’re here to help!  If you have a shoe selling business, chances are, your expertise lies in the field of shoes, and less in marketing. That’s why it can be a great option to have a team like us to help with your advertising! 

With the constant evolution of new technologies, it can be very hard to keep up. Get ahead with our Facebook Advertising services and book your free strategy session today!

To Summarize

Campaigns can often be hit or miss, without any indication of why. It can sometimes feel like a stab in the dark, but there are ways to turn on a few lights: 

1. Checking the resource center
2. Making sure your ads are approved and spending 
3. Troubleshooting your pixel
4. Testing the Website experience and page speed 
5. Working on your audiences and ads

I hope this article has been helpful. For any questions, comments or fun dad jokes you would like to share, feel free to do so in the comment section on this post. If you have any tips and tricks that you like to use when your ads aren’t getting conversions, we’d love to hear those too!

About The Author:

Like many aspiring business owners and marketers, you may be looking for new tools to help you work smarter instead of harder.

Shopify’s Conversion API will allow you to sync important data between your Shopify and Facebook accounts which you can analyze to better your marketing strategy.

Since the Facebook Pixel has lost its power due to privacy policies, it is less effective. It pulls data from the user’s browser using cookies, unlike the Facebook Conversion API through Shopify, which uses the server. 

So what’s the catch? Well, you may find it slightly confusing. That’s why we’re here! In this article, you’ll find a clear guide to downloading this API and using it to your advantage by sending all kinds of events to your Facebook Pixel.

If you would like a more audiovisual step by step guide, we made a video on the topic linked below. 

1. Enable Shopify as a Partner

1. Navigate to https://business.facebook.com/ 

2. In the sidebar to the left of your screen, click on the hamburger (three lines stacked on top of eachother marked as More tools). 

2. Add the Facebook App in Shopify

You’ll then need to head over to your Shopify store and log in to your dashboard. Then follow these steps: 

2. Type Facebook into the search bar. You’ll find several results for that query, so look for the Facebook Channel and click add app.

3. Once the page that notifies you of the download appears, scroll down and click add sales channel.  

3. Setup the Shopify and Facebook Integration

It’s quite possible that you already had the app downloaded if you recognize the icon and sales channel.

If you’ve made it this far, congrats! You have successfully installed the Facebook app on your Shopify. 

Now, we have to set it up; click the start setup button. 

Google needs you to verify that you are the owner of your buisness before you can sign up for cloud identity. 

If it isn’t verified, I made a video on the topic, where you’ll find three different ways you can verify your domain in Business Manager. 

5. Moving onto the Data Sharing section, it will ask you to choose the level. Select Maximum, since it uses the Conversions API.

This is the purpose of this whole article!

It will allow you to share data directly from your Shopify server to your Facebook server (explained more in depth below).

The Maximum Setting: Explained

Up until recently, yes. In an email from their support team, shopify explains that you can now track all six of the standard Pixel events between the platforms as well as through javascript via the browser.

5. Connect a Facebook Commerce Account. If you don’t have one already, click on the button to create one. 

6. Review the Terms and Conditions and accept them…

And finally, DRUMROLL PLEASE, 

To summarize

1. Enable Shopify as a partner.
2. Add the Facebook app in Shopify
3. Setup the shopify and Facebook integration

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to add them to the blog. Our team is always happy to help!

About The Author: