Answer These 4 Questions Before Launching A New Facebook Ad Campaign

We’re sure you’ve heard this statistic time and time again, but it’s true. Facebook has 2.2 billion active monthly users globally and 210 million in the US. With such a big audience, there’s a lot of potential for ad spend to be wasted.

When you think your budget for Facebook is all accounted for and it’s time to hit the “publish” button in Ads Manager, we implore you to slow down and take a moment for some introspection. Before you greenlight anything on Facebook and start spending your budget, ask yourself these four simple questions.

1. What is the goal?

Before you decide to open Ads Manager, find a whiteboard, grab a sticky note or a loose piece of piece of paper and ask yourself the following:

What is the ultimate goal of this campaign?

What do I want to drive from these ads?

What do I specifically want to get out of advertising on Facebook?

We understand the process of launching a Facebook ads campaign can be daunting. With plenty of options for ad types, audiences to target, or even new features like an ad effectiveness tool while you’re setting up the campaign, we strongly recommended you have clear goals before you begin so that you can always refer back to them during set up. Simply put, your goals will help you select campaign objectives, ideal ad types, and how to select the appropriate KPIs to make sure your reach your goals.

2. Target the audience that matters most.

Believe it or not, you have more flexibility to be creative with your audience than, well, actual creative elements with facebook ads. Yet, here is the catch, discovering the right audiences can be tricky, and if done incorrectly, wasteful for your budget. Our advice is simple: before you greenlight your ad campaign, you should identify who you are targeting based on the campaign goals and objectives you’ve set.

3. Where do you want your ad to be placed?

There is a little-known feature within Facebook ads that we’ve found to be quite valuable to SMBs. Within your ad set, you have the ability to choose placements. Typically, Facebook will allocate your budget according to what “they” decide to be the most effective (based on the goals you’ve given them). Here’s the rub: often, ad placements within the Instagram feed or Instagram stories may not be as effective as Facebook feed or 3rd party placements (especially for B2B purposes). Now, here is where you can have your say: by editing the placement option at the ad set level, you’ve now taken control over your budget, and your ads will be placed where you believe they can be the most effective.

4. What’s the frequency of your ad?

No one, including you, likes to be bombarded with the same ad over and over, so it’s important to check this particular setting before you get started. To avoid any negative sentiment of your brand or product, it’s ideal to monitor your ad frequency often to ensure you aren’t over-indexing your audiences.

Side note: better-performing audiences are likely to be more accepting of your messaging (we call these “the loyalists”). You can likely show this audience your remarketing ads more often and still expect to drive conversions.

These 4 steps in a nutshell…

Here’s a summary of our key points:

• Ads Gut Check: Ask yourself the basics… “Who, what, when, where.. and why?”
• Discover the RIGHT audience: Identify which audiences convert and run with it!
• Placements: Instagram stories are great, but not for everyone. Save yourself some $ and OPT OUT!
• Frequency: If you get annoyed with repetitive ads, so does your audience. Make sure your ads schedule is short and simple.

If you’ve spent the time to learn how advertising on social media works, you might as well spend a little extra to look good doing it.