When Facebook rolled out it’s new Power Editor interface, it introduced a new level to Facebook ads: the ad sets. Here is a sample structure of a campaign and how I’d recommend separating your ads into ad sets:
Campaign: Guide to List Building
What’s the goal of this campaign? To get people to sign up to receive my free guide to list building using Facebook ads.
Objective (a term used by Facebook to help you optimize your campaign): website conversions. In this case, my “conversion” is a sign-up to my list.
Ad Sets: Women and Men
Why these ad sets? Because I want to test out who responds to my offer better, men or women. Once I’m running these two ad sets side by side, I’ll be able to see whether women or men are more likely to click on my ad by looking at the CTR (click-through rate) of the ads as well as the cost per conversion, or the cost per email sign up.
Ads: 1A – 1B – 2A – 2B
What do the letters mean? I use letters and numbers to indicate which images and which ad copy (a.k.a. the ad’s text) is include in each ad. Letters are images and numbers are ad copy.
I always like to start small, testing out one piece of copy and two different images (ad 1A and ad 1B). After a day or two, I take the more successful image and use it with new ad copy, creating 4 ads in total (ad 2A and ad 2B). That way I’m testing which copy works best while using the image that proved to be the most successful.
Grab some inspiration for your campaigns
Here are two of the ads I was running recently for Erin Stutland’s free workout challenge. After only about a day of running these ads, one ad got a lot more likes and shares than the other:
Ad 1B had a lot more likes and shares than than Ad 1A. So I took image B and tested it out with different sets of copy to see if I could increase the CTR even more.
(Disclaimer: an ad is successful not only because of the ad copy and the image, but also because of the target audience you determine your ads should be shown to. Click here to learn more about targeting your Facebook ads.)
So that’s one example of an Facebook ads campaign structure. Because of how confusing the whole ad sets thing can be, here are a few other examples of ways to split up your ads into different ad sets:
In both of the above campaigns, you can see that I’ve got the same ads in each ad set. Like I mentioned above, ad sets allow you to test out which target audience responds the best to your ads without having to take the time to create even more ads.
What kind of structures do you currently have set up in your campaigns?
Everyone’s got different ways of dividing up their Facebook ad campaigns. But beyond that, the number of ways you can label and name your ads is literally infinite! My letters-and-numbers system is working for me for now, I’m but I’m always interested in hearing how other people organize their own campaigns. If you’ve got any ads running right now, or you’re planning to set some up, take a second and jump into the comments to tell me a bit about your campaign, who you’re targeting and how you’re labeling your ads. If you need some feedback, just say the word and I’ll try my best to help you out!
Hi Claire,
I just joined your email list yesterday because of an Anne Samoilov’s podcast episode about Facebook ads. I really love your teaching style. Your advice is easy to understand and Facebook ads seem less intimidating. I diving in this month and running campaigns for to build my list. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I’m going to give you a shout out on an upcoming podcast. Keep up the great work. By the way, I love the look of your site.
To your success,
Stacie Walker
Stacie, you just made my day. I’m really happy to hear that FB ads feel less intimidating with a bit of guidance – that’s EXACTLY what I’m going for. And how about Anne’s results? Talk about a star student.
Definitely looking forward to checking out your podcast! Let me know if there’s anything that I can help you with. :)
Hi Claire!
The men/women split is a definite must when i’m testing ads. Sometimes the same audience split by men/women will have vastly differently results with the same ad.
I’ve actually started starting with a desktop/mobile split on my audiences for newsfeed ads because of how differently they react. I then use the FB report page to pull out how those segments did for men/women. This has worked to shortcut the testing of different segments up front.
What do you think? Is that a viable way to do it
PS Love the site redesign :) My wife uses the same theme for her business and I think it makes super easy for readers.
-Tony
Hey Tony!
1. So glad you like the redesign – I totally agree, it’s way easier to read and generally more pleasing to the eye. Your wife has excellent taste. :)
2. As for using the FB reports to figure out the best performing audience, that’s definitely the best way to go for things like gender, location, etc. Saves you lots of time for sure!
Love to hear you’re diving into the reports. There’s some pretty juicy data in there, huh?
Keep me posted about your best performing campaigns!
Claire
Hi Claire!
I came across this article and even though its over a year old, I figured you might be able to help me!
My company is trying to create it’s first Instagram Ad Campaign via FB (the Power Editor tool). We are not good with stuff like this, but our goal for this first campaign on Instagram is to do a carousel scrolling ad with our website’s apparel to a specific audience. We are in the beginning stages to create the ad and came across the set up questions such as “Ad Set Name”. We don’t even know where to begin!
Can you help?
Thanks,
Team SGP
Hi Carly! It doesn’t matter what you name your ad sets, it’s only visible to you. I name them based on my target audience. Does that answer your question? Even though it doesn’t cover carousel ads, my free guide should get you through all the basic questions of setting up a campaign. You can grab it here: clairepells.com/guide
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