How do I run a successful advertising campaign on Facebook

Facebook Ads Campaign

Ad buying ain’t easy! When you begin a campaign on Facebook, you’re ready for the leads, sales, and calls to flood in! However, in order to be successful advertising campaign, you’re going to have to be patient. Many people begin an ad campaign and become frustrated when they don’t see immediate results, but you have to give them some time. Let your ads age for a couple of months, and you will see results. Here are some tips from us while you’re playing the waiting game. 

Starting Out (Month 1)

In the first month of your ad campaign, let your campaigns collect the data they need to run as effectively as possible. You will still usually see sales and leads, but you may need to wait. If you are running a conversion ad or lead generation ad, there is a “learning phase” that the ad goes through so that Facebook can learn what types of people within your targeting audience complete the desired action. The learning phase is typically 50 events within a week, but if you have more than that, the ads can be optimized more quickly. The learning phase can vary, and if you make changes to the ads will have to go through the learning phase again. So be careful and don’t play around with your Facebook ads too often. Try to let things sit. A watched pot never boils.  This is not to say that no work should be done in month 1. New ads, ad sets and campaigns should be created if necessary.  

Getting There (Month 2)

This is when you implement major changes based on the data you’ve collected. When you target users based on interest, you’ll notice an increase in the number of email subscribers, Facebook fans, brand advocates and buyers. Overall, you’ll convert more users into customers. Once they are customers, they will likely become your advocates as proof of the quality of your brand to your target audience. Once you get a steady stream of incoming traffic, you’ll be able to switch over to using custom audiences. These are like remarketing or retargeting audiences that just visited your website, engaged with you on Facebook, or even recently joined your newsletter. Once you find an audience that’s working, you can even create ‘lookalikes’ of it. Basically, Facebook will comb through all of their users in order to find people that are similar to those who you’re already reaching. (That way you can stretch those ad dollars a little further without wasting money on un-targeted people.)

Lets See Some Results (Month 3)

This is about scaling. Successful ad campaigns can start off great, only for results to drastically decline after a few weeks. What’s happening? The first thing to look for is ad fatigue. Ad fatigue is a real problem, but fortunately, it’s pretty easy to fix (or avoid completely by continually testing new subtle ad tweaks). Showing the same exact ad to the same audience for too long can result in them ‘tuning you out’ after a while. Facebook even recommends you switch up ad creative every week or two. The good news is that you don’t have to go crazy with tweaks or changes. For example, you can take the same basic ad template and simply switch up the images you’re using. The next issue to look for is a problem with your frequency. This is closely related to the last problem, where people are basically seeing the same offer too often. In this case, try sequential retargeting. This is where you try a few offers, one after the other, in order to eventually appeal to everyone.

This is general advice based on our experience – of course your results will vary from account to account, based on many factors such as: website experience, the product, the advertiser and more.

Good things come to those that wait! Hang in there with your campaigns, be very observant, and soon you will have the results you’ve been dreaming of. However, if you do become extremely frustrated with your Facebook ads campaigns, feel free to reach out to us! We would love to take it off of your hands.