Facebook Ads is a difficult platform to learn. It’s no different than learning, say, Google AdWords, but the amount of moving pieces at work require advertisers to plan and strategize deeply to find ongoing success.

With multiple ad types, complex settings choices, user interfaces with learning curves, and a platform that brings relevant but not actively-searching audiences, the potential for huge success or fast failure is great.

So how do we get up to speed quickly?

At Iterate, we believe video and interactive content is the future of learning. We also understand that not everyone wants to read hundreds of articles and books just to get started. In that spirit, we’ve compiled 27 videos from niche YouTube creators to teach you, the Facebook Ads beginner, the ropes.

Watch all videos at 1.5X or 2X speed, and within three hours you should have an intermediate understanding of:

• How to build a Facebook Ads Strategy
• The core Targeting options
• Differences between Warm and Cold Audiences (& what to do about it)
• How to use the Facebook Pixel
• How to set up killer Custom Audiences
• How to scale using Lookalike Audiences
• Going deep with the Audience Insights tool
• How to setup and use Facebook Business Manager
• How to structure campaigns
• The best campaign types
• How to build campaigns quickly with Power Editor
• How to avoid audience overlap
• The basics of ad types
• How to write great copy for Facebook
• How to analyze performance
• How to scale without getting ruined by Frequency
• …and much more

Though you can watch all of the videos in three hours, I’d recommend not watching all of the videos in one sitting. Tackle one or two sections at a time, rewinding and replaying sections of videos. Review the notes we’ve compiled with the videos and Let’s go!

Facebook Funnels & Philosophy

Total Watch Time: 9.5 Minutes

Building a FB Ads Funnel That CONVERTS Ryan Stewart – Whiteboard Friday (Moz)
Watch 0:52m-8:00m (3.5 Mins)

Key FB Ads Mistakes:

• Not having Facebook Pixel installed
• Not using Custom Conversions
• Not using custom audiences correctly
• Not using tag management solution for setup

The Facebook Ads Mentality:

• SEO/SEM mentality – we assume strong intent with search.
• FB Ads mentality – no intent, need 6-9 touch points to build awareness, impart value and drive interest.

The Facebook Funnel:

1. Cold – lookalike audience
2. Warm (audience) – already aware – monitor audience behaviors – which segments convert – make lookalike audiences from them
3. Aware – Build content for specific to sub niches of audience
4. Interested – Ads shown to users who meet specified goals on the landing page or website such as watching a video or visiting a product page.
5. Consider ads designed to retarget those who completed more goals
6. Purchase – final ads run for users who have had the previous engagements such as downloading a free trial. This ad is the hard sell.

Facebook Ads requires multiple touch points. It’s easier to build the top of the funnel with the ability to create specific ads only to users who have completed a specific action. It’s easiest to gradually draw more people down the funnel because of super specific ads based on the user’s prior engagement.

This can all be automated, but not without testing and hustle.

How to Build a Simple Lead Funnel Using Facebook Ads (Late 2015) by Alexander Broderick-Forster
Watch 7:44m-19:20 (6 Mins)

Walks through creating an audience and how to include or exclude people based on interests, location, gender, lifestyle and more.

Key Takeaways:

1. Separate your audiences into individual sets – don’t have one audience covering every interest and behavior.
2. It’s all about testing. Test your cold audiences before throwing serious money at the audiences you assume will be best.
3. Track results that actually matter – use FB conversion pixel to track new subscribers, webinar registrations and purchases (high value goals).

His testing process: At the top of the funnel, where you’re looking to generate MQLs, build 20 audiences with $1/day to see who’s biting and where you can scale up. Run your tests at $1/day for a couple of days (3 or more) to gather data to analyze CTRs and performance.

Facebook Ads Audience Targeting

Total Watch Time: 24 Minutes

Targeting 101:

Facebook Advertising Targeting Options – LIKE A Boss Facebook Training by Kingpinning
Watch 1:01m-7:55m (3.5 Mins)

The basics of audience targeting on Facebook Ads.

• Split test different pockets of users with different sub interests in the detailed targeting and connection sections within your Ad Set.
• Interests/Demographics/Behaviors is where potential scale and performance can be found.

“Warm Audiences”

Warm Audiences You Should Always Target with Facebook Ads (Late 2015) by Alexander Broderick-Forster
Watch 1:22m-13:35m (6 Mins)

A walkthrough for creating the three main types of Custom Audiences and how to avoid overlapping targeting by excluding audiences.

Always target:

1. Facebook Fans – If you do not specifically select “People who like your page” under Connections, the default is to target FB Fans and Friends of FB Fans
2. Your Mailing List – Upload an email list and match those against user emails in their database to find users.
3. Your Website Visitors – Target users based on pages they interacted with or actions they took. Classic Remarketing.

Key Takeaways:

• When creating a first audience, put the Pixel on every page on your website.
• Avoid overlapping targeting. Example: For Website Visitors Audience, you can exclude Custom Audiences like Facebook Fans, which is an audience you are targeting separately. Likewise you should exclude users targeted in your mailing list for your Website Visitors audience.

[TUTORIAL] How to Use the New Facebook Pixel To Do Retargeting Ads Campaigns? By Hernan Vazquez Marketing

Watch 2:44m-13:25 (5.5 Mins)

A technical walkthrough for adding the Facebook Pixel and creating custom Facebook Conversion Pixels.

Facebook now uses one pixel instead of many. Setting up the Pixel:

1. Go into Ads Manager > All Tools > Pixels
2. View Pixel Code > Copy Code > Paste FB Pixel Code in between the head tags on your website

You can segment audiences by:

• Anyone who visited the entire website
• People visiting specific page(s)
• People visiting specific page(s) but not others
• People who haven’t visited in a specified period of time

For example: Target users who are likely to download a demo from your website. Target audiences by people who visit specific web pages but not, say, a “Thank You” page.

Depending on what type of conversion you track you can customize further, for example, you can assign a dollar value to a conversion.

Facebook Abandoned Cart Retargeting (Highest Converting Audience) by Ecommerce Laboratory
Watch 3:43m-9:00m (3 Mins)

Walks you through an Ecommerce shopping cart abandonment example, however, the process is applicable to more than just Ecommerce businesses, as Custom Combinations can be used to slice and dice audiences in many ways.

To Build An Audience:

1. In Create Audience select Custom Audience > Website Traffic > Custom Combinations
2. Under traffic that meets the following >URL>Contains (type in “Product URL goes here”)
3. In this case, users can access a product page via the collections page, so the product page’s final url is www.website/collections/title-of-product
4. After inputting URLs click the “and” button to add a second Contains drop-down.
5. Enter “/cart”. This means we’re targeting users who visited your product page (contains>www.website/products/title-of-product) and were on the /cart page.
6. To exclude purchasers, click Exclude, opening a new URL drop down > Contains field.
7. Enter “/thank you page”. Grab the request URI from your Thank You page, insert it into the field.
8. Under your excluded section is a field labeled In the Last __ Days. Input a number up to 180. Check the “include past website traffic” box.

Using Facebook Lookalike Audiences (Late 2015) by Alexander Broderick-Forster
Watch 9:08m-21:00m (6 Mins)

Lookalike Audiences are incredibly powerful, and 1% Lookalike Audiences tend to work very well. Here’s how to create them.

From your Tools tab:

1. Under the Create Audience drop down menu select Lookalike Audience.
2. A pop-up will appear with two empty fields: Source and Country. For Source, click into the box and any audiences you have created will be available.
3. In the Country field, select the appropriate country.
4. To narrow an audience, select the amount of people in the country you want to target from a pre-set range.
5. At the Ad Set level you can Edit Audiences and narrow down further.

Facebook Audience Insights Research

Total Watch Time: 29 Minutes

How To Use Facebook’s Audience Insights Tool & Targeting To Get The Most From Your Facebook Ads by Miles Beckler

Watch 1:18m-20:12 (9.5 Mins)

Miles breaks down his strategy of finding less competitive Interest-based targeting through starting with the big-name influencers in your space, then moving to more niche targets.

• Analyze Page Likes off of your searches, cross-reference those Likes with Interests you can access.
• Don’t focus on Demographics as a means of doing research. Let the ad tests show you the correct Demographics to target. Focus on Interests when researching.
• Go outside the platform! Use Amazon, Google Display Planner, and more.
• He likes to create 30 different “registered” Interests that are very specific.

How To Research Facebook Interests w/ Audience Insights – LIKE A Boss Facebook Training by Kingpinning

Watch 10:31m-30m (10 Mins)

Get deep, detailed, and niche. Make a master list of all possible Interests and related Interests and create a shortlist of highly relevant audiences as you explore.

To tame and organize his deep research, Kingpinning aims to build out categorized lists across:

• General
• Products/Brands
• Associations/Groups
• B-List Celebrities
• Magazines/Publications

Advanced Facebook Targeting for Selling Ecommerce Products by Ecommerce Laboratory

Watch 5:11m-24m (9.5  Mins)

What do you do when you’re exploring a large topic like “mountain biking,” and none of your Page Likes look relevant? You research outside of the platform!

1. Look at actual SERP results and find niche-related sites and publications.
2. Put 1-3 super-relevant sites into the Google Display Planner
3. Click Individual Targeting Ideas > Placements
4. Find the websites, mobile apps, and YouTube videos that Google deems relevant – start with websites. Sort your list by Relevance.
5. Click through a few of the sites you find – are they relevant?
6. Match the relevant Google-suggested domains with Interests in Audience Insights.

Facebook Ads Account Structure

Total Watch time: 5.5 Minutes

How To Create Multiple Ad Accounts With Facebook Business Manager by Casual Ecommerce

Watch 0:25m-3:27m (1.5  Mins)

Key Takeaways:

• To have one pixel per site and separate billing for different businesses, you need Business Manager.
• To create a Business Manager Go to business.facebook.com, log in with a Facebook account and begin creating accounts.

How To Add Account In Facebook Business Manager by Jay Williams TV

Watch 0:44m-4:45m (2 Mins)

Manager Side:

Business Manager > Business Settings > Ad Accounts > Add New Ad Account > Request access to another business’s ad account > Next > Copy the # they give you and send it to the client!

Client Side:

Log into Facebook Manager > Business Settings > Ad Accounts > Assign Partner > Next > Assign Roles: Ad Account Admin

FB Ad Tutorials (Lesson 2) – Campaign Structure by Erick Shuck

Watch 0:35m-4:45m (2 Mins)

A quick video to help you understand what Campaigns, Ad Sets and Ads are for:

• Campaign = Objective
• Ad Set = Audience, Placements, Budget & Schedule
• Ads = Format, Media, Text

Building Facebook Ads Campaigns

Total Watch Time: 35.5 Minutes

Facebook Ad Styles – LIKE A Boss Facebook Training by Kingpinning

Watch 0:55m-13m (6 Mins)

You’d think “Increase conversions on your website” would work best, but that’s not necessarily the case. Test and find out.

95% of the time you’ll use these three:

• Boost your posts – PPE
• Send people to your website
• Increase conversions on your website

Mix In and Test:

• Get video views
• Collect leads for your business

Facebook Advertising Power Editor Tutorial (April 2016) by Alexander Broderick-Forster

Watch 0:29m-31m (15 Mins)

Alexander walks through the major elements of the Power Editor, then breaks down the creation of Campaigns, Ad Sets, and Ads, including ad delivery and settings.

He builds out his “Warm Audience” Ad Sets in the walkthrough, avoiding overlapping targeting and building out testable Ad Sets.

Key Takeaways:

• Using the Duplicate feature to create Ads and duplicate for a different Ad Sets is critical.
• Naming conventions, like “Mobile NF” “RC” and “Desktop NF” is important for organization.
• Filters, used by checking the checkboxes and clicking “Apply,” can help you change out creative quickly without having to manually hunt for specific Ads.
• At 27 minutes, Alexander gets into the topic of “dark posts” or Unpublished Page Posts. You don’t want all of your individual, identical Page Posts collecting and splitting Likes, Comments and Shares. To avoid that:
  1. Page Posts > Select your Page
  2. Copy the unique ID for any Ad Post
  3. Back to Manage Ads
  4. Edit all of the Ads > click “Use Existing Post” > “Enter Post ID” and past your unique ID

How To Use The Facebook Power Editor 2017 – A Tutorial For Facebook Ads Set Creation by Miles Beckler
Watch 3:23m-28:05m (12.5 Mins)

Miles walks you through setting budgets, ad scheduling, bidding, delivery, and other Ad Set settings.

Key Takeaways:

• Naming Ad Sets – “[location] – [gender] – [age range]” in his case.
• Miles likes a $30/day per Ad Set ~ $5,000/month for all of his Ad Sets
• If you want to use Ad Scheduling, you need to use a Lifetime Budget
• Need to use “Edit Placements” and remove the Audience Network and probably Right Column, too.
• Optimization for Ad Delivery – Miles recommends Link Clicks (CPC) since your goal is not thousands of Impressions or Reach, but clicks.
• Choose only the devices you want to run on, including by Operating System.
• Miles sets Manual bids far below the “Suggested Bid,” if he gets 0 clicks after one day, he changes to Accelerated, then waits for the clicks to come, watching closely. He goes back to Standard delivery if he starts getting action.

How To Avoid Overlap With Your Facebook Advertisements by Kingpinning
Watch 4m-7:25m (2 Mins)

As you scale with Interests and Behavior, you may overlap audiences unless you exclude audiences. Though it was covered in a previous video, overlapping audiences is a major Frequency killer. Bookmark this one.

Facebook Ads Writing & Ad Types

Total Watch Time: 35.5 Minutes

How to Write Facebook Ad Copy That Gets Attention by Social Lab Marketing

Watch 7:50m-27:05m (10 Mins)

Key Takeways:

• Clear > Clever/Funny, in most cases. Be clear and benefit-driven.
• Ask a question to call out to your audience
• Appeal to the person’s emotions.
• Call-to-Action: Tell them exactly what you want them to do, in your ad text.
• If it seems “over-the-top,” you might be on the right track.
• Don’t stray from copy that’s working.
• Positive Headlines, Negative Headlines, Social Proof Headlines – go to Google and do some research for more. (23:42)

Writing Ad copy – Facebook marketing tips by Free E-Books & Tools

Watch 1:27m-30:58m (15 Mins)

Key Takeaways:

• The power of “Case Study” ads, especially for B2B sales.
• Using urgency in Offer Ads for occasional promos and sales.
• Newsfeed ads should look native, not like an ad. Let the customer discover your brand and products/services, don’t force it on them.
• Curiosity  + Benefit = Clickthrough
• High contrast images and cartoon images work for this advertiser.
• Avoid over hyping which sounds salesy. Instead of saying “We turned $10,000 into $30,000” say “We turned $1 into $3.”
• For retargeting consider News Feed and Right Side ads. Newsfeed ads generally perform better, but have show signs of ad fatigue more quickly than Right Side ads.
• Offer ads do well due to social proof and distribution –  they show how many other people have claimed the offer and offers are shared with friends of the user who claim it.

How to Create a Facebook Canvas Ad by Michelle Pescosolido

Watch :20m-7:33m (3.5 Mins)

Walkthrough on how to create a Facebook Canvas Ad. You can have multiple components in a single ad from the following options:

• Button
• Carousel
• Photo
• Text Blocks
• Video
• Header

New Facebook Ad Types Including Click to Call, Carousel and Dynamic Product Ads by Effective Ecommerce
Watch Through 2:45m (1.5 Mins)

Key Takeaways:

• Call Now Buttons are not ideal for all types of business but for local business, it’s great.
• Dynamic Product Ads are set up and served much like Google Shopping Ads.
• Carousel Ads now show on mobile devices.

Dynamic Product Ads – LIKE A Boss Facebook Training by Kingpinning

Watch 1:15m-8:15 (5.5 Mins)

Walks through building Dynamic Product Ads and analyzing your Product Feeds and Product Events.

Key Takeaways:

• Suggests 600×600 pixel images in your product catalog.
• View products matched up in the catalog and the store in Product Events (updates every 24 hrs)
• Just like creating Custom Audiences you can create Custom Combinations of Dynamic Product Ad retargeting.

Analyzing & Optimizing Facebook Campaigns

Total Watch Time: 27 Minutes

Facebook Ads Performance – How To Analyze Your Ads by Venture Digital
Watch 0:52m-14:02 (6.5 Mins)

Key Takeaways:

• Low spend ($5-$10/day) with reasonable reach (~1 million); wait ~ 3 days to see how ad performs. Redesign ads and consider rewriting copy.
• Looking to landing pages first if you’re not driving valuable actions. Make sure your landing pages look good on mobile.
• Did you target your ads properly? Revisiting targeting options, including Behavior targeting.
• Targeting size is an easy one – Keep it in the 1 million range if targeting nationally, if local, under 100,000 or 50,000 works.
• If it’s working: raise budgets in small increments OR duplicate the ad and give the new ad a big budget
• Make sure your ad has been up for at least three days.
• Consider redesigning your ad. You might simply be not capturing people’s attention.

How to use Facebook Ad Reporting to Increase ROI by UglyMugMarketing

Watch 0:20m -16:09m (8 Mins)

A basic analysis of ad performance in the Ads Manager.

Key Takeaways:

• Analyzing performance of age ranges.
• What placements are working best?
• What devices are working best?
• Using “Customize Columns” to show only the data that is important to you
• Diving into ad tests to analyze specific ads.

Analyzing Facebook Advertising Stats & Reports – LIKE A Boss Facebook Training by Kingpinning
Watch 0:22m-7:22m (3.5 Mins)

Key Takeways:

• Default Performance columns show Results, Reach, and Cost. Choose “Custom” in that Column dropdown menu to choose which stats you want to see.
• Reach, Frequency, Relevance Score, CPM, CPC, Add to Cart, Cost-per-Action, Conv. Value, Budget, & Amount Spent are the columns Travis uses when analyzing FB Ad performance.

How do you Scale your Facebook ads once you start getting some success. By Jason Swenk
Watch through 5m (2.5 Mins)

Key Takeaways:

• Scale spend very gradually, or don’t do it at all and just duplicate Ad Sets.
• Scale horizontally through Lookalike Audiences and new Interest/Behavior-based targeting immediately.
• Try duplicating the Campaign and change the Goal of campaign from Website Conversions to Website Clicks.

How to Effectively SCALE Your Facebook Ads! By The eCom Project
Watch 0:32m-13:35m (6.5 Mins)

Key Takeaways:

• Reinforcing that you should not scale simply by adding budget. Just because your test was successful with a small budget doesn’t mean you’ve hit the perfect audience, either.
• He advocates increasing budget incrementally over time – “scale slowly and continuously.”
• Ad fatigue will reach “fatigue” over time. Look at Frequency (column under Customize Columns).
• Before adding budget to a winner, look at the Demographics, Locations, Placements & Devices that are most successful. Cut the least successful, or split out campaigns so that you know where to scale.