How to Set Up and Run a Successful Facebook Ad Campaign

There's a difference between running a Facebook ad campaign and running a successful Facebook ad campaign. Learn how to set them up the right way.

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Facebook marketing moves and shakes whole industries nowadays. Many people attempt to master it, but few businesses manage to create the perfect Facebook ad campaign.

Read on to find out how to set up your own Facebook ads to succeed and overcome even the stiffest competition!

Facebook Advertising 101

When it comes to social media marketing, Facebook ads are the king. Period.

With that in mind, your business just can't ignore Facebook when planning any online marketing campaigns.

Facebook ads come in numerous forms. You can promote a range of different things, including:

  • Your professional Facebook page
  • Specific posts on your page (sponsored posts)
  • Specific actions taken by your users
  • External websites (i.e. your official website)

A Facebook ad campaign will target specific users based on their demographic profile, geographic location, and Facebook preferences. The latter includes their likes, follows and favorites, which Facebook monitors in order to enhance its users' advertising experience.

Specifically, you can target ads according to a host of different parameters, some of which might be ideal for your business purposes. These targeting parameters include:

  • Age
  • Sex
  • Location
  • Nationality
  • Language
  • Education level
  • Interests (likes and follows)
  • Friends
  • Relationship status

That way, you can tailor your ads to target specific groups that might be interested in your products or services.

Also, keep in mind that all ads are created and priced according to how many clicks (or thousands of impressions) they will receive. That way, you pay only for what you get.

Planning Your Campaign

Before you begin investing your marketing money into a Facebook ad campaign, you have to have an actionable plan.

Work with your marketer or your third-party marketing specialist to decide on the strategy. It will be largely defined by a range of parameters, including:

  • Your existing content
  • Your capacity to produce content that is shareable on social media
  • Your email list (if any)
  • Your overall goals for your Facebook ads campaign

A proper marketing strategy will help you measure your results, identify which ads work for you, test different audiences to find the best customer, and manage your marketing budget with efficiency.

Setting Up Your Facebook Ad Campaign

After you have decided on a solid marketing strategy, it is time to set up your campaign.

Facebook itself has launched a page dedicated to structuring ad campaigns, but it is a lot easier than it might seem at first glance.

The basic steps are easy. By following them, you can have the backbone of your campaign ready in minutes. Let's see them one by one below:

1) Log in and Create an Ad

First, log into Facebook and click on the "Create Ad" option in the drop-down menu to the upper right side of the screen.

You won't need your own Facebook page to advertise on Facebook, but if you plan on funneling traffic to specific sponsored posts, it's important to have one in place beforehand. If you haven't set up a Facebook page for your company, now it is a good time to build one.

2) Decide on Advertising Goals

Facebook will ask you where your ads should link to, and what your goals are. For example, you can focus on driving traffic to your external website, boost your followers on your Facebook page, or get more likes on specific posts.

3) Fill in the Ad Template

After you've decided on goals, it is time to design the ad itself. Facebook allows you one picture, 25 words for the headline and 90 words for the body of your ad. Then, you have to target users according to the aforementioned parameters.

4) Finalize the Campaign and Process Payment

Finally, you have to name your campaign, and set a budget and a timeframe. You can pick between a daily budget or a total spending sum for the ads' duration. Payment is done in two ways. You either pay every time someone clicks on your ad, or pay every time one thousand people see the ad displayed on their screen.

That's it! Your ad will be approved by Facebook and go live in a matter of hours!

How to Structure Your Campaign for Success

Launching a campaign is one thing, but structuring, monitoring and tweaking it to perfection is another.

Facebook's Ads Manager Tool give you a lot of power to create different campaigns for different objectives and target your ads according to different audiences.

Facebook also suggests creating a variety of ads with different images, videos, text or links to test which ones work better. This test is actually crucial for your long-term success. As markets shift, so should your Facebook ad campaign. Otherwise your competitors might overrun you!

You can use the Ads Manager tool to monitor your campaign. From there, you can see tons of charts and metrics to help you find which ads work best. Don't hesitate to adjust or even eliminate underperforming ads, and replace them with new ones to test.

The tool allows you to generate reports in HTML format, which you can share with your marketers or use for enterprise-level statistical analysis.

Finally, if an ad was particularly successful, you can create a template out of it. By creating a template, you can then basically just copy and paste the same ad into your schedule and have it run its circle again.

Just click the "Create Similar Ad" option to quickly build an ad with most of the settings you have previously selected. You can adjust only a few parameters to tweak this new ad for a different product or service, while keeping all relevant information from the previous ad pre-selected.

Creating the Perfect Facebook Ad Campaign

Finally, remember that you don't have to tackle the beast that is Facebook ads alone.

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