The goal behind running many ads, is that by slightly tweaking each one you will be able to identify the winners (ones that cost the least) and then deactivate the under-performers. Things start out expensive but quickly get cheaper.
For example: Say we run three ads under our first ad set. There is a red ad, a blue ad, and a green ad. Those three ads are shown to the audience that we predetermined when setting up our ad set. After three days, or 1000 ad impressions, when we come back to check how our ads have performed, we identify that our blue ad is doing the best. That means, the audience of our first ad set prefers the blue ad. That does not necessarily mean that a different audience will feel the same. So, we must run more tests!
What if, as an example, instead of choosing to look at America, at the ad set level, we focus on advertising to China. Or, instead of 18 - 25 year old Americans, we want to test our ads on +35 year olds. Those audiences could prefer the red or green ad, and by split testing (which I explain next) we can make these kinds of discoveries.
Now we’re getting into it!
To be successful with Facebook ads you need to put the effort into split testing different variables that comprise your ads and ad sets. If you do this right you will be able to lower cost per impression / conversion / reach.
For instance, does red text work better in Australia, or is my ad performing better with Linkin Park as the target interest versus Anderson .Paak? It’s this kind of A/B, or split testing that you must do throughout the process of running ads. Eventually, you will find some ads that work well, and you can just leave them running with a small budget.
It’s worth being aware that the amount you spend on ads, at the beginning, will likely be a lot more than by the time you’ve run a few campaigns, learnt how the system works, and have optimized your ads.
I’d plan on spending $10 - 20 per day in the beginning. It will help you gain conversions more quickly, which you can use to create lookalike audiences. Once you have found a few ads that have low cost per conversion, leave those on with a small budget of $1 - 5 dollars per day, while you continue split testing to find more winners.
If you have a database of email addresses, or users who have clicked your ad, or Facebook fans on your page then you can ask Facebook to generate a list of similar users to them. This is considered a lookalike audience.
In our case, we will build out lookalike audiences from Facebook users who have engaged with our ads. However, we will need at least 1,000 users (to have engaged with our ads) before we can create a lookalike audience around them. Note: this is why we need to be prepared to spend more money on ads in the beginning of running Facebook ads. The benefit of having lookalike audiences is that Facebook will use them to better refine our targeting, which will give us the ability to significantly decrease our costs running ads.
After running our first set of ads, let’s say that we have our 1,000 ad clicks, which means we have enough to make a lookalike audience. Now it’s time to set up a lookalike audience:
Step one is to select this symbol from the left hand sidebar on Business Manager, and then navigate to the Audience tab.
From there you’ll select “Create Audience”. Note: You must create a custom audience before making a lookalike audience.
Next, select to create a custom audience. On the screen that follows, choose the option called Website. The website, in this case, will be your landing page (or your actual website, if you have one).
After selecting Website, you’ll choose, on the following screen, a Pixel as your audience source. By accident, I used SubmitHub’s Pixel on Indie Shuffle’s landing page, so ignore that in the screenshot below.
The Pixel allows Facebook to track people who visit our landing page. So, when a visitor clicks the Spotify “Play” button on my landing page (in the right hand image) it triggers the event called PageViews. The Pixel keeps track of who has clicked that and we can later use them as part of our custom audience.
Lastly, I have named this custom audience Fanlink PageView.
It is then time to set up the lookalike audience.
I’M STILL CONFUSED ABOUT HOW TO SET UP A LOOKALIKE AUDIENCE?
Make sure to consider whether your ads are better targeted at Mobile and / or Desktop users. In the same breath, consider whether your ads should be on just Instagram, just Facebook, or on both. Mobile / Desktop and Facebook / Instagram are two alternative lines you can split tests across.
One interesting setting to tinker with is the detailed targeting drop down towards the bottom of the page when setting up your ad set. You’ll notice that it suggests adding demographics, interests or behaviors. If you click Browse, you can get an idea of some of the options available to you.
Thanks for taking the time to read through this guide. I hope it demystifies working with ads on Facebook Business Manager. There isn’t really a right or wrong way to do so, so if your ads are getting consistently good results, keep that up, but remember to test, test, test.
If you ever get stuck with anything, there are tons of resources online. There will also be a community chatroom set up on SubmitHub to talk specifically about running ads and ad optimization. You can check that out here.