How to run effective Facebook ad campaigns.

Facebook's advertising potential reach of over 2 billion people makes it one of the most effective social media promotional platforms and also gives Facebook ads massive credibility.

It doesn't come as a surprise that many marketers use Facebook ads considering the immense benefits it offers advertisers. These benefits includes; increasing website traffic, reaching new clients and boosting brand awareness. Its overarching benefit however has to be how fast it delivers marketing solutions compared to organic social media.

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Below are some useful tips to help you run effective Facebook ad campaigns:

1. Start with a clear campaign objective.

A well defined objective clearly states why you want to embark on a Facebook advertisement. It will serve as your marketing compass every step of the way

Facebook actually helps you start well with their campaign level settings. This is where they have you choose the overarching  goal of your campaign.

Experts suggest that you choose brand awareness as your objective for your very first campaign on Facebook ad manager. This helps to warm up your target audience, build interest in your goods or services and get insights you can lean on for subsequent sales campaigns.

Nevertheless, it does no harm to go for sales ads on your first attempt especially if you have a solid experience running sales ads on other platforms.

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2.  Double down on audience research.

Facebook advertising like many other effective digital advertising is categorised as interruptive advertising. People don't go on social media looking forward to seeing ads. If your paid promotions are going to do well, audience research must be a priority, so that interrupting people's  expectations will end up with positive outcomes.

Know the people who need your product or service and can afford them. These people are your target audience because they are most receptive to your advertisement. Align your ad set level with them in mind. Facebook ad set level is where you define the kind of audience you want to reach. It also allows you to choose specific ad placements which you will read about later.

Understanding your audience through research helps you figure out how to schedule your ads with perfect timing. A timing that gives your ads the best visibility and viewership by your target audience.

Facebook ad features allow you to target your ads based on user location, age, gender, interest, relationship status, education and more. This is you helping your ads reach the people your ideal target audience and Facebook's algorithm will automatically display your content to people who your ads are relevant to based on your selections.

Use the facebook audience selection tool.

This Facebook audience selection tool helps you target three well defined groups of people. They are:

The core audiences: These are the audiences you choose based on demographics such as age, interests, geography and more.

The custom audiences: These are people who have shown a level of interest in your service or product by engaging with your business, online or offline.

The lookalike audiences: These are people who share interests similar to those of your ideal or perfect customers.

Select custom audiences if you want to reach the most receptive audience. Select core audience if you want to reach new clients or customers and go for lookalikes if you can afford it.\

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3. Cost effective budgeting for Facebook ads.

Ideally, your goal should determine your budget but financial constraints may reverse this budgeting approach.

Your budget is the amount of money you can afford to spend on showing your target audience your ads. On the ad set level of the Facebook ads manager, you can control your overall spend for a campaign or set of ads.

Facebook allows you to select an overall budget for your campaign with the campaign budget optimisation (CBO) or set individual budgets for your ad sets.

CBO lets you set one overarching campaign budget that automatically continues to distribute in real time to ad sets with the best opportunities.

On the other hand, you may choose to set individual budgets for your ad sets with the ad set budget instead of CBO. That's if you want more control over delivery on specific ad sets.

It is advised to opt for an ad set budget if you want more manual control of over budget spend on specific ad sets. But it is time intensive unlike customer budget optimisation that helps you get the most results possible from your campaign at the lowest cost automatically.

Combining budget type with budget duration.

There are two budget duration settings which  include; daily budgets that run for twenty four hours and lifetime budgets that run for the entire time of your campaign.

You can couple both your campaign budgets and ad set budgets with any duration of your choice.

For instance, pairing the ad set budget with a daily budget will cost you a lot of time, as you have to manually control your ad spend on a specific ad set everytime.

It is preferable to couple an ad set budget with lifetime budgets or couple campaign budgets with daily budgets which run for twenty four hours. Your experience with the latter will help you to determine if you are satisfied with Facebook's automation of your campaign budget distribution.

You can always visit your Facebook ads manager to make changes as you wish.

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4. Create well informed content.

To create ad content for your advertisement there are a factors to consider to have a successful Facebook ad campaign.

Incorporate the following into your creative process. Your copywriting, graphic designs and audio-visual content.

Format: There are about eight main ad formats made acceptable by Facebook for advertisers. These formats include photos, video, stories, messenger, carousel, slideshows, collections, playables and other variations, each designed for specific advertising goals.

Ad placements: Facebook ad placement is just as important as the ad format. These ad placements are the specific places your ads will appear such as the feed section, stories section, search section and more. Always conceptualise and create content with them in mind.

Concise & compelling messaging: There are specifications by Facebook on best practices for messaging. Things like word counts for headlines, captions, description and call to actions. Ensure to follow them.

Your copy needs to be persuasive enough to make your target audience buy or take desired actions. This is what determines the success of your marketing after activating your campaigns.

Compelling visuals production: Your ad copywriting has to be complemented with great visuals.

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Learn what makes great visuals on Facebook's resource center. Great visual tips include:

-Using high-quality images & videos.

-Correct size and aspect ratio.

-Using twenty percent text & eighty percent visuals.

-Showcasing your product or service in the image.

Your visuals represent your brand. If you are good at branding and brand storytelling, this won't be a challenge for you.

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5. Run an optimisation campaign

Test your campaign on a small scale using split testing to find the right Facebook ad setup. The essence of this is to optimise your campaign against bad outcomes.

Predictions sometimes fail due to unforeseen factors. It's not always easy to predict the reaction an ad will get. Split testing helps you know what version of an ad works best so you can learn and optimise accordingly.

Making your ads dynamic can help get this done as well. According to Facebook, "Dynamic ads are meant to promote targeted products to targeted audiences, making sure everyone sees exactly what they want to see on their display."

This makes dynamic creatives a great optimisation tool when you are unsure of the creatives that will resonate the most with different audiences.

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6. Go big and keep a close eye on your campaign.

Having optimised to make the necessary adjustments to your campaign, launch your campaign at scale over a lengthy period of time or according to your campaign timeline for achieving your objective. The more time your campaign runs,  the more landing page traffic and brand awareness you get.

Monitor your campaigns regularly to ensure your advertisement is on track and void of any glitch. All ads that you run on Facebook and its affiliated Apps like Instagram will leave you insights powered by Meta technologies. You can see insights on how your ad is performing in the Meta ads manager. Use the expanded view option to have a closer look on other performance metrics like  demographics reach, delivery of the campaign and ad sets.

Lastly, let your experience or insight from every previous campaign inform the next, so you can keep optimising for better results. In addition to this blogpost, you can find more useful tips on Facebook ads manager, a robust Facebook ad manual designed to help you run a campaign from start to finish.

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