When it comes to digital marketing, there are many different avenues and revenue streams which you can take in order to find success. Some of them are free, but often the most successful are those where you put a level of budget into the endeavour.

With that in mind, here are the steps you need to follow in order to set up an effective paid Facebook campaign.

Have a Goal in Mind

The first step to setting up a successful paid Facebook campaign is to have a specific goal in mind. After all, two advertisements on Facebook may seem very much the same; but, are actually really different in terms of what they aim to do. For example, one may be designed to increase audience size and boost engagement for the Facebook page itself. While another might be more intent on boosting website traffic and conversions.

Ultimately, your goal will change the way you present the ad itself and the parameters of the campaign, so it’s important to understand this from the outset.

When you first look to create a Facebook paid ad, you will be given the option to choose the objective of the campaign. You will have a choice of Awareness (boosted posts, brand awareness, post reach increases), Consideration (app installs, video views, event attendance) and Conversion (claim an offer, physical shop visits and website conversions). Choose whichever fits your campaign best and you can then move on to other considerations.

Define an Audience/Budget

Next, you will have to set the audience and budget for a campaign. This is a fairly simple step but very important to get right. As choosing the wrong audience or a poorly thought budget can severely impact the success of your campaign.

Your audience parameters will include:

• Location
• Languages
• Age
• Gender
• Behaviour/Interests
• Connections

See an example of these choices here:

So, for example, if you were a local, trendy, Manchester restaurant. You might set your location to Manchester within a 5km radius, with an age range between 20–50, with interests in your cuisine type. The ad will give you an estimated reach for your audience, so you can check if it’s worth your while.

Once the audience is set, you can move on to defining the budget. This can be done in a couple of ways, importantly by either setting a daily budget or a lifetime budget (especially good if you’re looking to have the ad running continuously). Daily budgets are ideal if you have a smaller budget and want to ration it out over a long period. You can also choose the start and end days of your campaign, so you can work out the exact spend of your campaign beforehand.

With so many budget parameters in place, overspending shouldn’t be an issue unless you accidentally put in the wrong date. So, remember to double check everything before putting campaigns live!

Create the Advert

There are a couple of ways that you can go about creating your ad, either by boosting a current post or creating a completely new one. For the purpose of the blog, we will instruct on the creation of a new ad.

Firstly, you will need to select the format you want the add to take. Your options are as follows:

Carousel ads tend to be ideal for e-commerce, as you can select a number of great product images for users to scroll through. Single image ads give you the ability to create variations to your ad with the simple image, to fit a number of different formats and ad locations. Then you have the video options, which include a simple video, a slideshow of looping images and a combination of the two in the canvas format.

If you have set a specific objective, then your format options may be limited (if you’ve set the objective ‘get video views’ then you will have to select a video format, for example).

Now, all that you need is the content for the ad. It needs to stand out, whether it’s an image or video, so some production value needs to be put into this in order to work. High-quality product photos, interesting videos and the like may be an expensive initial cost — but, you will find they’re much more successful when used in your Facebook campaigns.

And with that, all you have to do is set the ad live and wait for approval!

Monitor the Results

Once your ad has been approved, it becomes a waiting game. Will it be a success or not? That all depends on the numbers that come as a result of the campaign.

Of course, your objective should be a good indicator of whether or not the paid campaign is a success. Has your videos gotten more engagement? Is there more web traffic or conversions on your site? Is your Facebook page seeing more followers or likes as a result of the campaign?

Once you have determined the success of your campaign, then all you need to do is rinse and repeat! As after you have set up your first Facebook campaign the next few should be much easier! Just remember to tailor each one to your various objectives to ensure the right results.

This article is contributed by Zack Halliwell, freelance writer at Apadmi — Mobile app development London

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