As in many things, time is an important factor in successful Facebook Advertising Campaigns.
More time, less time, time to start showing ads, time to stop showing ads - there is a range of things to bear in mind when advertising on Facebook, all connected to time in some way, shape or form.
Now, some people might say that I am about to give away a little bit of the secret sauce of successfully marketing on Facebook with these tips.
I don't agree.
Facebook is a fantastic platform to grow your business with the right strategy and I would hope that in its own little way if this post, like our others, can help businesses understand this - it serves us all, agencies included.
Facebook is moving fast enough to warrant professional help.
So let's get started with the first tip.
Time to Setup
It takes time to set up a successful advertising campaign on Facebook. On average it takes our team 3 weeks from sign-off to collate the required info, plan the funnel stages, create the audiences, write the copy and design the ads.
Although that, of course, varies on scope and deliverables.
Now, setting up a campaign can obviously be done sooner than 3 weeks, but although you cannot ruin a campaign taking too long during this phase, you certainly can do that by rushing the job.
So take your time.
Time to Test
A surefire way to kill a Facebook Ad Campaign before it has even started is to not test it for long enough at the beginning of its life, or even worse, not test it at all.
Testing allows your team to better understand how the campaign audiences are responding, or not responding, to your creative before you throw big money at it.
This takes at least a week.
Essentially, to use a racing analogy, you need to work out which is the best horse to back and you cannot do that if your horse is still in the stables.
And it's not exactly worth doing that when it's in the home straight nearing the end of the race.
Time to Get Used to You
Unlike Google Adwords 'intent' model of Pay Per Click advertising which knows exactly what a buyer is looking for - because they have entered it in the search field - Facebook has to use it's 200 odd data points to guess.
They call it your 'expected action'.
But, it takes time to make the best guess and it measures this not in days, but in interactions. 50 interactions to be exact.
What does this mean for you? It means that you will not see the best results of your campaign until things settle down and you have passed that interaction milestone.
So stick with it and don't make changes until this happens.
Time to Refresh
We're bombarded with so many adverts these days, we are experts at ignoring them. Our brains tune them out, especially where we have seen them before. It is called 'ad blindness'.
Ignore this, your response rates will drop and costs will increase. Not a great combo!
So after a certain period of time, you need to refresh your ad creative to stop your audience ignoring them. On average, we'd suggest changing it up every month.
Time to Work
I've saved the best for last! Even though Facebook Ads are a paid model, as opposed to an inbound content marketing strategy, results are not immediate.
You still need to allow enough time to crack the funnel and get the best results. It is a process like anything else and needs to be given time to succeed.
As an example, we will not take on a client for anything less than 3 months. 6 months at a push.
Why?
Because it takes a lot of work to get campaigns off the ground and we want to give our clients the absolute best chance of getting results.
It is unrealistic to think real results can be achieved much sooner than that, before even contemplating how to successfully scale your campaigns.
A tip there is, don't scale too fast, but we'll keep the golden nugget of how to scale your facebook campaigns and others like it, for another ...time!
