GEN11c: Setting Up Your FB Campaign - Ad-Level Options (12)
GEN11c: Setting Up Your FB Campaign - Ad-Level Options
The last section is about setting up ad-level options. We're almost ready to submit our campaign!
Identity
Specify your Facebook Page, which will be shown on the top of your ads.
For Instagram Account, just select "Use selected Page". (If you're promoting a business you own and it has an Instagram account, and you'd like to be able to select that here, go here to add that instagram account first.)
Create Ad vs. Use Existing Post
Let's look at "Use Existing Post" first. If you wish to use one of the posts you've published to your Facebook Page as an ad, you can specify it here - either by clicking on "Select Post" and choosing a post from a list, or via "Enter Post ID".
Next: When you've clicked on "Use Existing Post", you'll also see the tab "Use Mockup" appear. Remember we were tinkering in the Creative Hub before? If you've saved some ads there that you want to use now, here's what you do.
In a separate browser tab, go back to the Creative Hub, you'll find all the ads you've saved. Pick out the ads you want to use and toggle "Show in Ads Manager" to enable.
Back to the original browser tab where you're creating your new campaign, click on Use Mockup".
In the "Select Mockup" popup, select the ad you want and click "Confirm".
Alternatively, if you don't have ads saved in the Creative Hub - which I'll assume to be the case in the rest of this post - go back to "Create Ad" to create the ad from scratch.
Format
Dynamic Formats and Creative
Since I haven't personally tried out this feature, I won't try to talk about something I'm not familiar with. Apparently, enabling this feature will allow FB to show different variations of your ad to different users. If this is your first campaign, I would suggest to leave this off (which it should be by default) for now. For initial testing, I would suggest to focus on testing the bigger pieces of the puzzle anyway, i.e. audience+angle+videos/images. Once you have those nailed down, you can always test smaller things like this.
But here is more information about this feature for your reference.
Carousel vs. Single Image/Video vs. Collection
Throughout this tutorial I've assumed that we're promoting a single offer/service, in which case you'd pick "Single Image or Video" here.
Carousel and Collection ads can work very well if you have multiple products to promote, for example if you operate an ecom store or helping a real estate agent to showcase multiple properties for sale. You're strongly encouraged to test those formats once you have some initial experience on how FB ads work, but they are beyond the scope of this beginner's tutorial. For more info on how to make these formats work for you, I'd recommend checking out this article.
Add an Instant Experience
This is another feature I haven't had a chance to try, although I do intend to sometime, and will report back once I do.
Here's how FB describes it:
Once you create an Instant Experience, anyone can open it. Within the experience, people can watch videos, swipe through photos in a carousel, fill out forms and explore images with tagged products. You can also link 2 or more Instant Experiences so your audience discovers more content.
Media
Here you would click on "Add Media", then either "Add Image" or "Add Video" depending on whether you're setting up an image ad or video ad, and then either upload the image/video file or select one from a previously-uploaded file.
Text & Links
Here's where you'd enter the ad text we've talked about in a previous post: The Primary Text, Headline, and Description.
The "Add Another Option" are for Dynamic Creatives, where we can specify multiple primary texts, headlines and descriptions, and FB would show different combinations to see which works better. We've talked about this in a previous post. For your first campaign let's not do this.
Next we specify our links.
Destination: For most affiliate marketers "Website" would be the choice, unless you're promoting a Facebook Event.
Website URL: The link you want to send visitors to when they click on your ad. Usually this would be your landing page or a page in your ecom store.
Display Link: Some placements have limited space, so instead of showing the full website url above, would show a shortened display link you specify here. The display link and website url above should show the same domain. I usually just put the root domain here, without the https://.
Call to Action:
If unsure, you can't go wrong with "Learn More". If more than one calls to action applies to what you're offering, you can always split-test later once you have some winning ads.
Stories Customizations: Remember the 2 stories placements? If you're targeting these placements with an image or video that's smaller than full-screen vertical (9:16), there would be "extra space" at the top and bottom of the image/video.
For example if I put a 1:1 image in these two placements:
FB would automatically try to fill the top and bottom space with a matching color, but if you like, this option will allow you to specify whatever color(s) you want.
Branded Content: This is yet another option I've never used, but have been wanting to explore sometime, because it sounds like it could be relevant for affiliates promoting branded products and services. You can find information here.
Languages
I've never had to use this option, because I have a habit of target only one country and one language per campaign, and this is how I would recommend that you start as well, even if just to keep things simple in the beginning. But this option will allow you to specify other language versions of your ad so you can run multiple versions at the same time.
Tracking
If you're tracking with the FB pixel (discussed in a previous post), toggle this on and select the correct pixel.
URL Parameters: If the url you're sending visitors to is a tracking link that have tracking parameters such as https://landingpage.com/something?var1=123&var2=456, then you'd have the option of specifying the "https://landingpage.com/something" portion in the "Website URL" field above, and sticking the "var1=123&var2=456" parameters in this "URL Parameters" field.
Normally everything else in this section should be left at default.
Submitting Your Campaign
Look over all the campaign settings one more time, and if everything looks good, click the "Confirm" button to submit your campaign.
Setting Up Your Remaining Adsets
So that was just your first ad in your first adset. By now you should have prepared 2-3 audiences, 2-3 ad angles per audience, and 1-3 ads per angle. So you should have 2+ adsets to set up. So now in the Ad Manager, add the rest of these ads and adsets.
Reminder: Each adset should target ONE audience, and contain a maximum of 3 ads. It's OK to have 1-2 ads in an adset as well. For example if you have 4 ads for one audience, you can set up 2 adsets, one with 3 ads and the other with 1 ad, or even have each adset contain 2 ads.
Creating the Remaining Ads for Your First Adset
Click on the "Ad Sets" tab, checkmark the adset you're wanting to add more ads to, then click on the "Ads" tab to see the ad you've just set up for that adset:
To add an ad, click "+ Create" and specify all the ad details and click "Confirm" to submit the ad.
Repeat the same steps as necessary to add any more ads.
Creating the Remaining Adsets for Your First Campaign
You've prepared enough audiences, angles and ads to set up more than one adset, so now let's set up the rest of those adsets! There are 2 ways to create a new adset:
1)Click on the "Ad Sets" tab and then the "Create" button, :
But I prefer the second way, because then I wouldn't need to fill out all the information again if a lot of it is the same as an existing adset.
2)Copy an existing adset and edit as necessary.
-Click on the "Ad Sets" tab, find the ad set you want to copy and put your cursor over the ad set name to bring up the links below, and click the "Duplicate" link. (Tip: If you have a lot of campaigns with a lot of adsets and want to find an adset faster, go to the "Campaigns" tab, select the campaign the original adset is in, then go to the "Ad Sets" tab and only the adsets for that particular campaign will be displayed.)
-In the new window that pops up, you'll be able to specify which campaign you want to copy into (the original campaign, another existing campaign, or a new campaign), as well as the number of copies you want to make. You can explore the split-test option and the "compare a new ad set to your original ad set" options later, but for now just leave them deselected.
IMPORTANT: Leave this option checkmarked: "Show existing reactions, comments and shares on new ads" (I'll explain why later).
Then click "Duplicate".
-Now go to the "Ad Sets" tab, put your cursor on the Ad Set Name you've just copied, and click the "Edit" link. (Note: The new copy will have the name of your original ad set plus "Copy" at the end - be sure you're choosing the copy and not the original ad set! I've made that mistake by accident too many times to count!)
Then just edit the settings of this new ad set as desired, paying special attention to the adset name and audience targeting, then click on "Publish" at the bottom.
-Lastly, you may want to change the ads that are in this new adset copy, by deleting and/or adding ads. To do this, click on the "Ad Sets" tab, checkmark the adset you're wanting to change ads for, then click on the "Ads" tab to see the ads for that adset:
To delete an ad: Checkmark the ad you're wanting to delete and click on the garbage can icon:
To add an ad, click "+ Create" and specify all the ad details.
-Repeat all the steps in this section to create any remaining adsets.
IMPORTANT: When Using the Same Ad in Multiple Adsets
Remember how when we were duplicating an ad set above, I asked you to checkmark the option checkmarked: "Show existing reactions, comments and shares on new ads"?
Oftentimes, you'll want to have the same ad in multiple adsets. The most common scenario being that you want to test the same ad with different audiences. The other common scenario is if you're wanting to have several copies of the same ad in the same adset to test different pools of the same audience (I'll go into this in the test and optimization lessons - you can just ignore this for now).
Many new advertisers would just click "Create" to create a new ad with the exact same text, headline, image/video etc. etc. But if you do this, then the old and new ads would be two completely separate entities, where each will collect its separate engagements (likes, comments & shares). But there's a better way: DUPLICATE the ad instead of creating new ones!
You can duplicate an ad however many times you want, and ALL the engagement from ALL the copies, received in the past and into the future, will show up in ALL copies.
So let's say you have 10 copies of the same ad, and each ad was "liked" 3 times. If you created each copy as a new ad, each ad would show 3 likes. But if you had created those ads by duplicating an existing ad, then all 10 copies would show 30 likes. (The same goes for comments and shares - if a user comments on one copy of that ad it will show up in all 10.)
This is desirable for at least two reasons I could think of: 1)Facebook "favors" ads with more engagement so you can potentially be rewarded with better reach and lower cost, and 2)users tend to respond better to ads that have lots of reactions and shares and positive comments, or "social proof" (assuming the reactions and comments are positive - otherwise they can work against you).
It's easy to duplicate an ad: Simply go the "Ad Sets" tab, put your cursor on the ad name of the ad you're wanting to duplicate to bring up the links below, and click "Duplicate":
Then just follow the instructions in the pop-up window - it's pretty self-explanatory.
Verify Your Billing Information is Correct
Make sure your billing information is correct. And to be safe, the paypal/card you're using should have enough limit to sustain a month's worth of advertising. You can likely get away with less if you find out details on how often FB charges for ads - just make sure there will never be any failed payments, or your account can come under scrutiny and even get banned. To check your billing settings, go to Business Tools > Billing:
To find out more on how and when FB will charge you, see:
https://www.facebook.com/business/he...92465934137726
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That should be it! Congratulations on setting up your first Facebook ad campaign! Now you wait for the ads to get approved and then gather some data. We'll be talking about testing and optimization once we have some data.
Amy
FB Beginner Tutorial: Index
@vortex I have a question please. When we make all these ad variations, does the post engagement count per Ad variation? Or is it per Ad-set? Should we then start a PPE campaign to to each of those ad variations before running "normal" conversions campaign?
How to then transfer those engagements to the conversions campaign?
Originally Posted by roiter123
The post engagement is per ad. Let's say you're running the same ad in multiple campaigns or adsets - to test different audiences for example - you'd definitely want the engagement to accumulate, instead of having each ad in each campaign accumulate its own engagement (because then the engagement would be scattered).
To be clear, let's say you have the same ad in campaign 1, campaign 2, and campaign 3. The ad gets 10 likes from each campaign. You'd of course want the ad in all 3 campaigns to show 30 likes, instead of having each ad show 10 likes.
To do this, when setting up the campaigns, simply COPY the ad over from the original campaign, instead of creating a new ad.
That way the post ID of the ad would be the same, and all instances of the ad would accumulate and show the same engagement.
Hope that's clear! If not, please ask further questions.
Amy
Originally Posted by vortex
Maybe the answer can be slightly biased if you're running an affiliate offer and you only have 1 GEO to target. But personally I run my own product and I decide of which GEO's I send traffic to it.
So maybe pick some cheap GEO?
Originally Posted by roiter123
And yes picking some cheap geo can help to achieve this. Say you're targeting the US, there are lots of cheap geos that also speak English - India, Pakistan, Nigeria and the Philippines being the biggest ones (here's a list if you need more).
Chances are though you'll get comments like "ooh I want one!" and "too bad I can't afford this", instead of genuine and positive customer feedback - but then those are hard to come by anyways (even if you were targeting your main geo; for those you can ask/bribe your customers/family/friends that have used your product to leave a nice comment on your best-converting ad).
(One warning though: Call me paranoid, but I believe that running engagement campaigns that target countries outside of locations where I'm making most of my conversions, can raise suspicion. This is why I haven't been targeting cheap geos for that purpose in a while (as FB got smarter and smarter). I would still set up engagement campaigns, but would target the same geo I'm getting conversions in.
If you're promoting your own business, and not afraid to attract attention and manual reviews, you probably have nothing to worry about. I'm probably just paranoid.)
You can start an Engagement campaign, run $5-10 to each ad, then start a Conversions campaign and copy those ads over.
Or, do it the other way around: Start a Conversion campaign first, find a winning ad, then copy it into an Engagement campaign to get more engagement. (And obviously you can continue to run the same ad in the Conversions campaign - the same likes+comments+shares from the Engagement campaign will show up for the same ad in the Conversions campaign.)
Or you can do both: i.e. Start Engagement camp and run $5-10 to each ad, copy the hopeful ones with acceptable CTR/CPC into a Conversions camp, uncover the best converting ads, then turn those ads back on in the Engagement camp to rack up even more engagement.
Amy
UPDATE: Added detailed instructions on how to add remaining ads to the adset, and how to create the remaining adsets. Also explained the importance of duplicating an ad rather than creating a new ad with the same everything.
Amy
Wow Amy -- this tutorial is such a massive undertaking and you are killing it!! Many, many thanks.
A quick question about the kinds of landing pages Facebook allows -- Is it true that you can use a lander with a branded image (like, for a sweeps offer), no cloaking needed?
Thanks again for this impressive guide!
Originally Posted by devdev
Regarding your question: If by 'branded image' you mean a brand name logo, then I'm sure FB will not allow that. But I'll ask our in-house FB sweeps expert to answer this one!
Amy
Originally Posted by vortex
So no it's not allowed, when having commercial purposes. If you find a way to poor it into a subtle prelander, you might get away for a while. If people hit the spam button often ofcourse it will be a short journey, but thats also possible when leaving out the branded logo's.
Thanks a lot Amy and @stickupkid! That's what I assumed -- that branded logos should be avoided on the prelander.
But I read Amy's 'Sweepstakes 101 - Part 8 - Peter's System' and he says the following:
"Get 3 things right:
Brand image on the top.
Questions in the middle.
Social proof on the bottom.
Boom done."
So that sounds like he IS using a branded logo at the top of the prelander, like Aldi etc. Or am I misunderstanding?
GEN11c: Setting Up Your FB Campaign - Ad-Level Options
Originally Posted by devdev
You can also just put ALDI in blue letter with a similar font, if you want to stick more to the law ofcourse. Less aggressive, but maybe also less trustworthy towards consumers.
Originally Posted by devdev
As for the brand name, @stickupkid makes a great suggestion (he IS the expert on running sweeps on FB!): You don't necessarily have to use the brand logo. Just mentioning the brand name in a catchy font and biggish font size should do the trick.
Amy
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