5 Things You Must Do Before Launching Your Facebook Ad Campaign

Facebook is number one when it comes to social networking sites. With over 1.94 billion active monthly users, its influence is too significant to ignore.

With this many people on Facebook, it’s certain that your audience is on Facebook. Your main job is to find them.

According to Brian Bolan (one time VP of Ads and Product Marketing for Facebook), Facebook is where people view content from their family and friends, as well as businesses.

This amount of content on Facebook is increasing, so it’s becoming harder for any story to gain exposure in the Facebook News Feed.

Some people resort to using tools to acquire Facebook followers.

The second reason Bolan gives for why Facebook can be challenging involves how the News Feed works.

Rather than showing people all possible content, the News Feed displays content that is the most relevant to each user.

Therefore, if you have a business page, it can seem impossible for you to reach your followers organically due to the huge decline in the organic reach of posts.

Therefore, to gain success on Facebook, you must understand how to leverage Facebook Ads. Here is what you need to consider before you launch your Facebook Ad campaigns.

Goals for Your Facebook Ad Campaigns

The first step you should take before you begin your social activity is to have a clear cut goal.

Your Facebook ad campaign will not be effective if you don’t have a goal. I like using the acronym S.M.A.R.T when setting my goals.

Specific:

Your goal should be specific, not vague. For example, “I want to get more likes” is too vague. A better goal is, “I want to get 100 likes this week.”

Measurable:

Your goal should be measurable. At every point in time you should be able to determine where you are in your goal actualization process.

Attainable:

When you set your goal, it should be attainable. An attainable goal should stretch you to become more productive, but it should not be something you know you cannot achieve with your resources.

Relevant:

Your goals should be relevant to your overall business plan. This is true whether they are short-term or long-term objectives.

Time:

Your goal should have a time frame. Because you have no way to measure it, a goal without a deadline is merely a wish.

A good goal for your Facebook ad campaign could be, “To increase my online sales by 30% before Sept. 31, 2022.”

Target Audience

You target audience is that unique group of people you desire to reach, in this case via social media. The members of your audience are your potential customers, i.e., those that are likely to become your customers in the future.

Your goal on social media is not just to get followers, even though followers will give you a stronger presence on social.

Gaining followers gives you social proof, but sometimes that success might only be a pseudo-success.

If you don’t target your audience members properly, they might not end up buying from you or even recommending you to someone else. Remember, trying to reach everyone is a recipe for failure.

Your strategy will be too broad to be able to make a significant impact on a specific group of people. For example, if you sell athletic apparel, your posts should be with athletic people in mind.

Posts or status updates about beauty products will be meaningless to people who are mainly interested in activewear.

Such posts might even lead to them unfollowing you. So knowing your target audience is very important for the success of your Facebook advertisements.

You can get an idea of your target audience from the history of your sales. Get the relevant information from your sales department. This data will give you an idea of who your target audience should be.

However, there are times when your target audience is not the people you are attracting on social media.

This might be because your activities on Facebook are attracting the wrong audience (which often happens when you buy followers). Or you could simply be wrong when determining your audience.

Develop a Strategy

After identifying your target audience, you are a step closer to achieving your desired success. The next part is developing your strategy.

The right strategy is mostly dependent on your business type and target audience. Sometimes your strategy might be limited to sharing videos or pictures.

The strategy you employ is of the utmost importance to your business.

For example, if you sell cakes, sharing pictures will be an important part of your overall plan. Your target audience will also determine your approach.

If your target group includes young people, you can afford to be more casual in your approach. Your status updates can be funny and informal.

But you can’t afford that kind of online attitude if your audience is older or if you sell insurance. You will want to be more formal in those situations.

Choose the Right Facebook Ad

Facebook has several types of ads for different campaign objectives. You need to know the right type of ad to suit your goals.

Choosing the wrong kind of ad might lead to you wasting time and money and will not give you the results you want.

If your goal is to make people sign up for an event, ads that promote your page likes will not do you much good.

Leads ads, on the other hand, would be perfect. With those, you can get information from people and acquaint them with the event.

Determine the Right Metrics to Track

Measuring the success of your Facebook ads or any other online marketing tool requires a good knowledge of the right metrics to track.

With so many metrics to choose from, you might choose the wrong ones and think your ad campaign is doing well when it’s not.

Most people make the mistake of focusing on the wrong metrics, sometimes even mistaking data for metrics.

Metrics that focus on a single piece of data might not help you get the whole picture of how your ad is performing.

If you have a product and decide to market on Facebook, metrics such as “Likes” might be too shallow to determine how your ad is performing.

As we said earlier, getting a lot of likes on social media can give you social proof. But you can’t ascertain how many of these followers would end up becoming customers, and that is unhelpful.

Useful metrics are measurable and easily to manage. They should also lead you to actualize your campaign goals.

Since you are paying for your campaign metrics, they should help you calculate return on ad spent (ROAS).

You should focus on metrics like:

• Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the rate at which visitors perform your desired action. This rate will give you an idea of how your ad is performing.

You will know how many visitors come to your website or visit your page before converting.

• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS = revenue from ad campaign minus cost of ad campaign. When your revenue from your ad campaign is sufficiently greater than the cost of the ad campaign, it shows that your ads are yielding a profit.

You can then work on ways to increase your profit margin. With this knowledge, you can know whether an advertisement is worth the money you spent on it.

Originally published 7/5/17; updated 9/18/21 to remove outdated information and format for mobile devices.

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Micheal Durodola

Micheal Durodola is a Digital Marketing Specialist/Strategist with experience in SEM and Social Media Marketing.

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