2 Tips to Avoid the Set It and Forget It Facebook Mentality

Facebook is a great advertising tool. The ads have the ability to be visually stunning, it provides a fabulous space to let your brand’s personality really shine, and the targeting is so intense that I often think of Facebook as the CIA of the internet.

Ok well, Facebook knows that I just spent $250 on Amazon. But who doesn’t need stainless steel mixing bowls and a 50 pack of batteries?????

Facebook also has the wonderful capability of doing EXACTLY what you tell it to do, and while that may feel great for some advertisers, my type A personality simply does not let that fly. I like to run my Facebook ads in the same style that I run my other online efforts, I want to have the ability to do what I want with the ads and have control over as much management as possible.

I am the Cat Woman of the advertising world.

So, with that in mind, here are a few tips on how to avoid the, ‘set it and forget it’ Facebook mentality and give you some grip on optimizing for performance.

When Starting a Brand New Campaign – Opt for Clicks to Website instead of Conversions

When setting up a campaign, Facebook gives you tons of options to choose from depending on what your goals are. One of those is optimizing for conversions. The way Facebook displays those ads is it shows your ad to people Facebook thinks will convert. It also uses a Cost per Impression model instead of CPC. The reason I opt out of this style of campaign to start is because of those aforementioned two reasons.

When I drive people to the website, I get to cast a wider net and open myself up to the possibility of more conversions. By seeing who in my audience converts and who doesn’t, in the future, I can choose the campaign style of optimizing for conversions. This strategy allows me to use the highest converting audience segment from my website traffic campaign.

This is what I’m going for.

I also really dislike using Cost Per Impression models to start. When starting up a new campaign, bid management is crucial. Maybe your creative or message is a little bit off on your ad. When using a Cost Per Impression model if users saw your ad and didn’t take action, that’s a charge. With website traffic, I can see that Click Through Rate is low, change my creative or messaging, and I haven’t blown through the budget since no one is taking action.

Go with a Lifetime Budget vs. Daily Budget

Remember when I said Facebook is super great at doing EXACTLY what you tell it to do? Well if you give Facebook $40 to spend every day (especially if you’re running on a CPM model!!) Facebook is going to do its absolute best to spend that $40. And guess what, that means you could end up wasting some dollar, dollar bills y’all.

If you give Facebook the money, Facebook gonna try and spend that money.

The best thing about using a lifetime budget is that you can day part. With a lifetime budget, you can schedule your ads throughout the day, and turn them off when you know people aren’t likely to make a purchase. With a daily budget, that bad boy is going to run all day (and night) long.  I feel lifetime budgets help me control the frequency of my ads a lot better. I don’t want to show my ad so often people get ad fatigue, but I also want to make sure the frequency is high enough to cause retention.

So if you’re like me, and want to be a little more hands on deck with your Facebook campaigns, this is a great place to start. Good luck everyone, may your ROAS be high and your CPC be low.