Setting the right foundations for your Facebook ads can benefit you in a long term.
When getting started on your first Facebook ads campaign, you could be overwhelmed by everything it has to offer.
Doing these 5 things before running your first Facebook Ad campaign will ensure that you get the most out of your spending.
1. Setting up S.M.A.R.T goal for your campaign
The difference between traditional marketing and digital marketing is that you can track your result instantly in the latter.
Online platforms can give you the data of how many people have seen, interacted or converted (made a purchase) from your campaign.
To utilise this, you MUST know the end goal of each campaign.
Specific: What exactly are you trying to achieve? (eg. more visits to the website)
Measurable: What metrics are you using to track your results? (eg. clicks)
Attainable: Setting your goal high and not being able to achieve it can let you down, whereas setting your goal too low might not motivate you.
Relevant: Are the goals relevant to your business need right now? (eg. do you need more people to know about your business or do you need more people to visit your website?)
Timely: Setting an appropriate deadline for your goal. (eg. We want to achieve ____ within ___ time frame__ )
Marketing is more than just selling. It involves building trust and relationship with your customers so you need to understand where your customers are in their buyers journey.
In the Facebook Ads Manager, the first question that Facebook asks you is What’s your marketing objective?
Awareness: You are reaching to people who has never heard of your business to make them aware.
Consideration: You are getting into their mind when they’re choosing whether to buy from you or somewhere else.
Conversion: You’re giving people a little nudge (eg. special offer, time is running out) to drive them to convert (to buy).
So be sure to think about your goal/marketing objectives before starting your first Facebook Ads campaign and ensure that your ad copy is relevant to where your customers are on their journey.
2. Calculating your Budget
After you’ve set up your goal, you need to know how much you are willing to spend.
Obviously, it is not worth it if you’re spending $10 to obtain a client who’s only worth $5.
This is where ROAS (Return on Ads Spent) comes in.
The goal of any marketers is to get highest ROAS possible, meaning getting the most results with the least spending.
If you’re testing your ad, go with the daily budget (eg. $5 a day).
If you want to see how your campaign will really perform, go with the lifetime budget.
3. Setting up Facebook Pixel
Facebook Pixel helps you collect the data from everyone who has interacted with your page, your video, visited your website and basically done almost any specific actions with your Facebook page and website.
The earlier you set this up, the better because the data will build up over time and it eventually will become a goldmine for your business.
With Facebook Pixel, you can
- Retarget anyone who have visited a specific page/any pages of your site
- Build Custom Audience by combing YOUR data with Facebook data (eg. Targeting people who visited your website with a specific interest)
- Build Lookalike audience where you can reach your new potential customers based on a SUPER ACCURATE Facebook algorithm
This involves a little bit of coding and there are many ways to do it.
Some website platforms may provide you with a plugin for you to set up Facebook Pixel (eg. Wix).
Visit Facebook for more information on how to set up.
4. Setting up Google Analytics
This is a second goldmine you can use together with your Facebook Ads Campaign.
Google Analytics collects all the data from website visitors.
With GA, you will find out how many people have visited your website hourly, daily, monthly, yearly and forever.
With GA, you can see how many visits each page on your website gets and you can always retarget those with a specific interest (eg. if you want to do a Facebook Ad promoting special offer for a specific service)
With GA, you will see the Behaviour Flow where you can find out where your customers are dropping off from your site.
There are MANY MANY MANY different things you can get from GA so make sure you set it up!
You are going to need it to implement your Google Ads too anyway.
5. Gathering your email list
This is the first nugget of any business since the dawn of digital marketing.
Other than sending your special offer & message straight to your customer’s personal inbox, you can also upload your email list on Facebook Pixel!
This means you can
- Retarget those on the list with ads on Facebook
- Create a lookalike audience from your list to reach your new potential customers
For any business, your existing customers are the most important customers. They already have bought from you so they’re more likely to buy it again if you maintain your relationship with them.
If you want more sales, target your existing customers first.
Why Is It Important to Do These Things?
Not only these five things will make sure that you’re making the most of your budget, assuming that your ads are relevant and perform well, Facebook will recognise your account as being helpful for their users, hence, they will reward you even more by showing your ads more with less cost.
If your ads are not relevant and keep being reported by customers, it will badly hurt your account & brand reputation and is going to affect your business, and cost you even more on Facebook ads in a long-term.
Therefore, make sure you’ve done these five things before running any Facebook Ads campaign!
