Are you considering Facebook ads? Wondering how to set up a successful Facebook ad campaign? Understanding the fundamentals of Facebook advertising can help you avoid common mistakes that cost time and money. In this article, you’ll discover how to create an effective Facebook advertising campaign and How to Set Up an Facebook Ad Campaign in 2020.
Once you’ve defined the strategy for your Facebook ads, here’s how to set up your campaign for success.
#1: Choose a Campaign Objective Based on Your Goal
The structure of a Facebook advertising campaign consists of three levels: a campaign, an ad set, and an ad. The first level, the campaign, is the basis of your ad.
At the campaign level, you choose your objective, which is the action you want people to take when they see your ads. Facebook has three objective categories: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.
The objective you select depends on your strategy. For example, suppose you have a content-first strategy. Because video is currently the most effective type of Facebook content, you could run specific campaigns with the Video Views objective.
If you want to run a retargeting campaign to send people from Facebook to your website, choose either the Traffic or Conversions objective, depending on what specific action you want people to take.
The best way to determine your campaign objective is to work backward from your goal. If your goal is to generate sales for your ecommerce business, for example, you could offer people 10% off of their first order to entice them to make a purchase.
#2: Build Your Ideal Custom Audience
The second stage in the campaign structure is the ad set, which specifies how your ad will run.
Targeting is one of the most important elements of your campaign and it can make or break performance, even before your campaign goes live. Let’s look at three ways to define your audience.
Target Demographics and Interests
Here you’ll choose demographic constraints such as location, age, gender, and language.
In the Detailed Targeting section, you can narrow your audience by choosing from thousands of interests, behaviors, demographics, and more.
There’s no rule for how large your target audience should be. Typically you’ll get the best results with basic targeting by using a layered approach. Choose a mixture of interests and behaviors to zero in on your ideal customer.
For example, suppose you’re a luxury retailer in the wedding industry. Start by targeting people interested in weddings and things related to weddings.
Next, you want to narrow your audience using the AND condition. Click Narrow Audience and select the life event of people who are recently engaged.
Finally, consider layering a financial variable (such as income level and affluence) and a purchase behavior (such as premium brand buyers).
Target a Custom Audience of People Familiar With Your Business
Custom audiences let you target people who have had some interaction with your business on Facebook, on your website, or in your email marketing.
Custom audiences can deliver some of the best results for retargeting campaigns because you’re targeting warm audiences of people who already know, like, and trust your business.
Click Create New and select Custom Audience.
When you create a custom audience, you can choose from four categories: Customer File, Website Traffic, App Activity, and Engagement on Facebook.
Let’s look at how to use each one in turn.
Website custom audiences are based on people’s activity on your website. You use the Facebook pixel and conversion tracking to track visitors and their actions. This type of custom audience is best for retargeting website visitors. You can create different website custom audiences based on the pages people visited, how long they stayed, and what actions they took.
For example, suppose your goal is to increase sales of your products, and you’ve decided to run a retargeting campaign to remind people to complete their order. To do this, create a website custom audience of people who completed the Standard Event actions “add to cart” and “checkout but not purchase.”
The App Activity custom audience allows you to include people who have completed a specific action in your app or game. It’s similar to a website custom audience, but the actions occur in an app rather than a website.
Engagement custom audiences include people who have interacted with your content on Facebook. Currently, you can choose from four types of engagement custom audiences: Video, Lead Ad, Canvas, and Page.
Video custom audiences, on the other hand, have a 100% match rate because the content is contained within Facebook. The same is true for the other engagement custom audiences.
Target a Lookalike Audience Similar to an Existing Audience
Lookalike audiences are the holy grail of Facebook ad targeting because they consistently deliver the best results.
Put simply, lookalike audiences are effective because of how Facebook uses the algorithm to create them. Facebook takes the data points from a source audience that you specify and uses them to find similar people. It’s like cloning your existing audience.
Check out this step-by-step article on what lookalike audiences are and four different types you can use in your next Facebook ad campaign.
After you define your audience with Facebook’s targeting options, you can choose placements, set a budget and schedule, and select a bid type.
#3: Build and Test Your Ad Creative
The last stage of the campaign structure is the ad level, otherwise known as your creative. Your ad is what your customers or audience will see. This is where you choose your ad format and creative including images, videos, news feed text, URLs, display link text, and a call-to-action (CTA) button.
What your Facebook ad will look like depends on your advertising strategy, campaign objective, and ad format. Some objectives constrain which ad formats you can use. For example, the Video Views objective allows you to choose only video ad formats and the Local Awareness objective doesn’t allow canvas ads.
All of the other advertising objectives let you choose from five different ad formats: carousel, single image, single video, slideshow, and canvas.
Conclusion
Before creating your Facebook campaigns, take the time to define your campaign strategy and where in your sales funnel you can use Facebook ads to grow your business.
