We all know it: walking through a busy downtown street and being approached by a haggard homeless man begging for a buck.

Or vacationing in a developing country like Mexico or Thailand and while browsing through the local markets, you get jostled to try on some knock-off Crocs or buy charred chicken skewers that have probably been cold since 10AM.

It’s all around us: horrible marketing!

And the digital world is no different.

Banner ads slapped across your favorite blogs, pop-ups telling you about the new Matt Damon movie fighting the Wall of China, even ads in your Messenger inbox, the one place you thought was private and safe!

Quality over quantity, becoming apart of the environment, and not disrupting the medium, is vital.

That’s probably why Facebook Ads have become the bread & butter of online advertising, because advertisers have gotten savvy and realized they can make social-like ads that are playful, witty, emotional, or just down right compelling.

That said, “vision without strategy becomes an illusion,” so having an effective, smart approach becomes the cart before the horse. I’ve gotten dozens of questions on campaign strategy and thought I’d summarize it here.

Facebook’s recommendation (as of January, 2019) is to simplify your account and have the following 3 ad sets (i.e. “campaigns”) in a general campaign:

• 1 Broad Targeting: Age 18+, male & female, no interests picked
• 1 Lookalike Audience: a “seed” audience and targeting people who look like them
• 1 Interest-Based Audience: specific targeting with age, sex, and interests defined

The reason why this structure is most effective is because Facebook’s algorithm-driven advertising system uses machine learning to feed ads to a huge selection of people then naturally pares down to serve ads only to people who are clicking through or converting.

Hence, your broad targeting set often brings in the greatest volume of conversions because it has the most budget, and thus data, to inform Facebook who is the best person to engage (view, click, or convert) with the ad.

The other 2 sets are meant to be experimental and give you a chance to test audiences who you assume will convert, but you need results to prove it.

Now, what about retargeting ads?

Facebook recommends creating an entirely separate campaign for retargeting ads so to not cloud your general campaign.

Since you’re sending ads to prospective customers who have visited your website before, abandoned cart, or read a particular blog article, you can have higher confidence that they’ll convert.

After all, it’s safe to assume that they’re at least curious, in-market, and showing greater intent than a completely “cold” potential customer who might have never heard of your company before.

The next time you’re running Facebook ads, why not consider the above structure?

As they say, always be mindful of what is within or outside your control and do everything possible to optimize “the within.”

Thus, make your creative thoughtful, unique, and audience relevant and make sure to have enough spend ($50-$100 per ad set is sufficient) to drive enough impressions and hence, give that enigmatic algorithm enough conversion data to give you a true cost per result (CPR) and cost per acquisition (CPA).

To reduce workload and get the best CPA, consider turning on Facebook’s Campaign Budget Optimization and Auto-Placements.

Have further questions? Comment below or message me, I’m happy to help and guide you in the right direction.

~JK