There is an inherent complexity to Facebook ads that can leave many advertisers feeling overwhelmed or at least worried that they are not checking all of the right boxes when it comes to proper management. However, managing a Facebook ad account doesn’t have to be overly complex and there are many principles that, if you make them habit, will make life easier for you in the long run.
- They organize campaigns by objective, not audience
Let’s start at the highest level: the account as a whole. Facebook ad account structure is incredibly important for its long-term health, reporting visibility, and ease of optimization. If you properly plan how you want your campaigns organized, everything else should fall into place.
- They keep their audiences refined
Many folks will combine multiple audiences into one ad set. Facebook encourages this consolidation as it makes for a bigger audience which gets you out of the learning period faster. However I like to take a more refined approach, particularly with smaller budgets. This allows me to have tighter control on optimizations which I will discuss further in the post.
- They consolidate their conversion goals
It should be noted that I’m not dissuading testing multiple promotions against one another, but I’m suggesting that if you do, that you make sure there is a common conversion goal associated with each—for example, a common custom conversion event parameter in the thank you page URL—so that you have one conversion for any current or new ebook conversion actions.
- They make reporting easier for themselves
Ensuring there is an alignment between a campaign’s goal and the ad that it subsequently leads to is paramount. If you are running a campaign with the objective of driving website traffic, you can essentially swap ads in and out that lead to whichever pages you desire. But if your objective is to drive leads or specific actions, there is inherently going to be more complexity. This is one of the primary reasons why I choose to structure accounts in the manner that I explained above. A direct line from campaign to conversion goal is the easiest way to make sure everything is easy to read and report on.
