Are You Optimizing Your Facebook Ad Campaign Structure?

It is now fast and easy with Power Editor to create Facebook ad campaigns, ad sets and ads. At no time with FB has it been easier to create and manage campaigns! As FB continues to improve their ad platform we are the beneficiaries. With the new ad structure and Power Editor there is no reason why account managers shouldn’t be test, test, testing. With all of the different targeting and A/B test options including; audiences, bidding, devices and buttons…etc, there are limitless tests to experiment with. Many people want to know what works on FB and the only way to know is to split out your testing across campaigns and ad sets.

With so many different strategies to build campaigns, it is important to remember to structure and organize your campaigns, ad sets and ads. Splitting out the different targeting and placements allows you to know what is working in your account. Here are a few key targeting options for campaign strategy that would be wise to split out and test.

  • Placements: Desktop, Mobile, Right Side Ads, App Installs
  • CTA Buttons: Learn More, Shop Now, Download, or no button at all…etc
  • Ad Creative: Copy, Images, Links
  • Location Targeting: Countries, States, Cities…etc
  • Audiences: Interests, Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences, Behaviors…etc
  • And many others!

Organizing Campaigns For Testing

Depending on the account, I typically like to organize my campaigns by location. It’s even more wise to go a step further and organize your campaigns by device, and/or audience. Usually when split testing you can find yourself with a lot of campaigns to manage. While there will be a lot to manage, having a clear structured account will keep your tests more accurate and organized. It’s also beneficial to have a proper naming system in place so you can easily move between campaigns and ad sets. A poor naming system or no naming system at all can lead to confusion and campaigns/ad sets getting mixed up. The image below is an example of splitting out three campaigns by device targeting.

Facebook

Smart Ad Sets 

Screen Shot 2015-02-27 at 3.47.40 PMAd sets are a perfect way to split out your audiences, devices and location targeting. This practice enables you to see which device performs better; desktop, mobile or right side column ads? A common mistake is to leave these 3 devices lumped into one ad set. Doing this will make it near impossible to see which placement is performing better. Also, when you see a location or device that is producing amazing results, you can allocate more budget to that particular ad set(s). If that location or device isn’t split out your budget may be going towards the least performing audience?

A best practice when advertising on FB is to create different ad sets for each target audience. For example, if your strategy is to target FB fans, interests, and lookalike audiences, you will want to breakout these targeting options into their own ad sets. You can analyze performance and make bid/budget optimizations based off what’s working.

Creating Ads Quickly & Efficiently

Power Editor has made creating/duplicating ads much easier. With the new ads structure you can create multiple ads for testing in one ad set very quickly. Creating ads in PE used to be time consuming. The big benefit now is you don’t have to worry about setting targeting at the ad level so you can duplicate ads across ad sets and campaigns more easily. Ads can also be edited in bulk which can be a life saver. Whether you’re testing ad copy, destination URLs or images, PE makes it quick and efficient to create new ads.

trophy-01Overall, there is a huge benefit to testing when running Facebook ads. As I’ve managed ads for multiple clients, I’ve found through testing that some audiences have performed very differently from what I expected. For example, one of my accounts, I found through testing that Lookalike Audiences performed far better than other targeting options. Desktop ads also outperformed mobile so you can guess what we did, yep, we increased budget for lookalike audiences and desktop ads. We would have never come to this conclusion without splitting out our targeting and placements. In the end testing requires a lot of work but it’s needed to create an effective and profitable account.

What are some different strategies used to structure your FB accounts?

2 thoughts on “Are You Optimizing Your Facebook Ad Campaign Structure?

  1. Bradley Hayes Green says:

    This article is incorrect and outdated. Facebook’s ad manager will show you results for placement without needing to A/B test.

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