Facebook Sponsored Campaign Management requires skills and experience. However, many startups are starting to run Facebook-sponsored small to mid-budget ads in the form of a test to test the area.
It’s not a bad idea. There are several ways in which a Facebook-sponsored campaign can give an initial indication of how much the target audience may be interested in your service or product.
The problems begin when trying to move from a simple engagement campaign to more advanced campaigns such as a traffic campaign, a conversion campaign, an app installs campaign and more.
The more advanced campaigns require serious planning and complex technical setup. Of course, only for those who want to make it right.
In this article, we present our work process for setting up a Facebook ads campaign for a startup.
The setup process has five steps, which are later followed by copywriting and art design that are not part of this article.
At the end of the article, we also share a worksheet that you can use to start planning your campaign (hit the red button to get it).
Step 1 – Marketing objective:
What is the final target for the marketing activity on Facebook? Usually, for IT startups, it should be expressed with a finite amount of clients/users or revenue.
Step 2 – Campaign objective:
What is the desired outcome of the ad on Facebook? It should be at least one level below the marketing objective. For instance, let’s say you have a freemium SaaS, and your marketing objective is 100 paying users. The campaign objective should be at most an X amount of non-paying registered users or a Y amount of free-trials. However, it can also be the number of app-installs, leads, quote requests, etc. The advice is to make it something more than just a click, but less than your overall marketing objective in step 1.
Step 3 – Campaign goals (KPIs)
How would you measure and evaluate the campaign’s success? The metrics you should use depend on the campaign objective, but usually, all based on the two main ones: CPC (cost per click – meaning how much does it cost to get a user visit your offer). CPA (cost per acquisition – meaning how much does it cost to get a user complete the campaign objective in step 2). Both CPC and CPA are calculated effectively by dividing total ad spend in $ by the number of clicks or campaign objectives achieved.
Besides CPC and CPA you should also have KPIs for the total amount of campaign objective that you want to achieve. The amount of app installs, the number of registered users, the number of free trial requests, etc.
Step 4 – Campaign structure:
How many campaigns, how many targeting methods, and how many creative assets you are going to user. (in Facebook “campaign” is a hierarchical structure of the served advert which is built of a targeting method and a creative asset)
Usually, a structure is designed to support two main things:
1 – Depth of the conversion funnel. Meaning, a campaign for Top of the Funnel users who are not familiar with your product yet, and a campaign for the Middle or Bottom of the Funnel users who are already showed interest in your product.
2 – A/B testing, or how they are named in Facebook’s ads manager – “Split tests.”
Step 5 – Creative messaging:
How will you present your product or service to the audience? For example, if you have a campaign structure that based on the Top & Bottom of the Funnel audiences, you may want to use a specific message for each audience. For the Top of the Funnel audience, you’d like to use product/service benefits as a reason to get a free trial or a free account. For the Bottom of the funnel audience, you may want to use a promotional discount to encourage them to upgrade for the premium version.
