Ugly Shirts Fortune Lesson 6 Create Your Facebook Ad Campaign

 

Now that we have a list of Facebook pages that we will be running our ads to, we will create our ads using the Facebook Ads Manager.

But first, let me give you a quick understanding of what a Facebook ad campaign looks like.

There are three levels in a Facebook ad campaign structure: the campaign level, the ad set level, and the ad level.

The campaign level

To understand what a campaign is, we must first understand the purpose of a Facebook ad. Advertisers can use Facebook ads to accomplish 3 main objectives:

1. Awareness

Some people run ads to build their brand, or to maximize the number of people that visit their Facebook page.

This is not what we want to do in this case, because these types of ads focus on making sure a lot of people see the Page without paying attention to how interested the audience actually is with the content. There’s no point if a lot of people see your Facebook page – what you need is a lot of interested people to see your shirt.

2. Consideration

The second way Facebook ads can be used is to get people to think about your products and look for more information about it. This ad type is made to get people to interact with you, like your post, share it or download an app.

As we want people to engage with our shirt, tag their friends who are interested in it and share the post around, this is the type of ad we want. The more friends they tag, the more people will see your post. Since their friends tagged them, there is also a high chance that these people also like the same topic. These friends then share it to even more people – and the thing goes viral.

Another piece of good news is that the more people show interest in your ad (by liking, sharing or commenting), the cheaper your Facebook ads will become. That’s a win on both sides.

3. Conversion

Facebook ads can also be tailored towards conversion. This type of ad aims to increase sales or sign ups on your website.

However, we don’t want to use this because besides trying to get people to buy our shirt, we also want them to share it with their friends and make it go viral. As a result, the previous objective (Consideration Ads) will be more suitable for our goal.

Now that we understand the 3 different objectives of Facebook ads, a campaign is basically a way for you to choose which objective you want your ad to achieve.

We will choose one advertising objective for each of our campaigns. In our case, we will run a Page Post Engagement campaign. (A Page Post Engagement campaign is a type of Consideration campaign).

A campaign contains one or more ad sets.

The ad set level

Okay, so you’ve chosen your campaign objective. Now, you need to select the details of your ad campaign. This is what you will do at the ad set level.

Here, we will define our targeting (eg. do you target men or women, army veterans or dog lovers), budget, schedule, bidding and ad placement.

The ad set level is very important because making sure the right people see your ad is the key to a successful advertisement.

The ad level

At the ad level, you tell Facebook exactly what you want these people to see. Is it a picture, a link to your website or an interesting article?

In our case, our ad will be the page post that links to our Teespring shirt that we set up in the previous lesson. We will create only one ad for each ad set.

Now, let’s dive in.

 

Create ad campaign

We will use the Facebook Ads Manager to create our ad campaign.

To get to your Facebook Ads Manager, you can click on the drop-down arrow in the upper-right corner of your Facebook account and choose “Manage Ads” from the drop-down.

Alternatively, you can head over to this page.

You will be brought to your Facebook Ad Accounts page where there will be a quick overview of your ad account(s). Now, click on your ad account name to head over to the Ads Manager:

Create your Ad Campaign

To get started with creating an ad campaign, simply click the prominent green “Create” button in the upper-left corner of your Ads Manager dashboard.

If this is your first time using the Ads Manager, you will see a prompt to allow you to choose from 3 marketing objectives to create your ads:

We’ll choose Consideration > Engagement.

Once you have picked “Engagement’’, scroll down on the page. Make sure the “Post engagement’’ tab is selected.

Next, we will enter our campaign name. The campaign name can be anything; just pick a short name to help you identify which shirt the campaign is for in the future. In this example, we will use “Baptized By Fire’’ for our ad campaign.

Next, click on the “Set Up Ad Account’’ button to move on to the next step.

On the next page, choose your Account Country, Currency and Time Zone.

As all your ad billings and reporting data will be recorded in the currency you pick, it’s recommended to pick US Dollars even if that’s not your local currency.

Getting the reporting data in US dollars is easier for you in the long term as you don’t have to keep converting currency exchange rates when you are comparing ad cost and profit. I do the same, even though I live outside the US because this makes it super simple for me to know whether my campaign is running at green or red.

Even if you are not a US citizen and not using a United Sates credit card, there is nothing to worry about. Facebook will charge your ad spend in USD equivalent to your local currency. Your bank will do the conversion for you.

When you are done, click “Continue’’ at the bottom of the working space to move on to the next step. On the next screen, we’ll set up our ad set.

 

Set up ad sets

Once you have your campaign defined, you need to set up your “Ad Set.”

The Ad Set is located directly beneath the campaign. Our targeting, budget, schedule, bidding, and ad placement is designated at the ad set level.

We will segment the ad sets in the order of platform and age group.

We want to create the following ad sets:

#1. On Mobile, Age 25-34

#2. On Mobile, Age 35-44

#3. On Mobile, Age 45-54

We will set $10 as the daily budget on each ad set and let them run for 500 impressions to collect data. That’s the $30 I’ve been talking about – $10 x 3 ad sets = $30

Why 3 ad sets in the testing phase? To locate the age group that gives us the best ROI.

People react differently when they read a message on a t-shirt. Their behavior is affected by many things – age, gender, race, country and so on.

A quote on a t-shirt that resonates to a middle aged man might not resonate with a young man in his 20s. That’s why we need to break down the target audience into small chunks; the purpose being to determine audience’s responsiveness to each ad set.

Remember, this is where we will be culling our ad sets, keeping the producers and killing off the non-responsive audience.

Once we have gathered enough data on the ad sets, we can prune them and scale those that give us the best ROI.

I only run ads on Mobile in the testing phase. Once the shirt proves itself as a winner, I’ll run them on Desktop as well.

The reason I only test them on Mobile? They are cheaper. Facebook has a lot of ad inventory for mobile ads as 90% of Facebook daily active users access it via mobile devices (cell phones and tablets). By running ads to mobile devices, I get to cover most of the Facebook users during my testing phase at a cheaper rate.

Alright, enough theory. Let’s get started setting up our first ad set on the work space.

First, we want to name our ad set.

In the “Ad Set Name’’ field, give your ad set a name.

I like to name my ad set by the platform + gender + age group format.

In this example, our ad set will be targeting males between 25 to 35 years old using Facebook via mobiles devices. We will name our ad set “Mobile Men 25-35”

Next, we will set up the Audience section on the ad set workspace.

We’ll select the country that we want to target as well as the age group, gender and language.

Custom Audience: Ignore this field. Just leave it blank.

Location: United States

Age: 25-34

Gender: Choose Men. It depends on your niche. If your niche is predominantly women (like nurses), you will want to choose women. Since firefighters are mostly men, we’ll choose men here.

Language: English (All)

When you are done, scroll down on the same working space and you will see the next field: Detailed Targeting.

In the “Detailed Targeting” field, you will enter all of the Facebook pages that you have compiled.

The “Detailed Targeting- Include people who match” field allows us to type in the names of the Facebook pages we’ve decided to target.

In this example, we will be entering 4 firefighter pages we have complied:

• Firefighter.com
• FirefighterNation.com and FireRescue Maganzine
• Firehouse.com
• FireRescue1

When I am finished, my work space will look something like this:

Once you have yours typed in, there is one more thing you want to do before moving on to the next field; and this is super important.

You see, from my experience running my ads, I realized that when I tell Facebook to run ads to the fans of a specific Facebook page, they will show it not just to the page’s fans.

Instead, those ads also target other Facebook users that comment on a friend’s post, talk about it on Facebook Messenger and interact with the topic in other subtle ways.

The problem with this is that my target audience grows and the actual targeting accuracy is diluted. I’ve also found that having too many “somewhat interested” people reduces the all-important quality score because my ad will receive fewer clicks. The fact that a firefighter’s doctor liked his client’s fire department page doesn’t mean he’ll buy a firefighter shirt.

Another problem of targeting fan pages is that we are at the mercy of the quality of their fan base. If their following wasn’t grown organically, their fan base likely has its share of bots and fake profiles. When targeting their following, the quality of the ad reach can be poor.

So how do you refine your audience to reach only the super-hot targets in your niche?

Use overlap targeting.

Here is a nice little image to show you how overlap targeting works:

Taking the example on the previous page, if I target protective services on Facebook, my potential ad reach is 8.3 million. If I target Firefighter.com, it is 6.6 million. But there’s a problem. The audience is too broad.

Not everyone in the protective services is a firefighter. And not all the people who liked firefighter.com is hardcore fan. To eliminate this problem, I tell Facebook to only target people who satisfy BOTH conditions.

By doing so, I weed out most of the fake accounts and “somewhat interested” people. The ad reach is now reduced to 1 million people. And of those 1 million people, the probability of any one of them being interested in my shirt is now much higher.

Nice and effective. Here’s how to put it to action:

On your current working space, click on “Narrow Audience” at the bottom of the Detailed Targeting section:

Once you do that, a new field pops out. It’s called “and must also match” field:

Next, click on “Browse” and then select “Demographics” from the drop down menu:

Then navigate to “Work” > “Industries” > “Protective Services”.

Select “Protective Services”.

When you are finished, here is what your workspace will look like:

As you can see from the screenshot above, I tell Facebook to target my ads to those who are interested in the Facebook pages I have compiled AND these people must ALSO work in the Protective Services.

According to Facebook, people with roles in protective services include security guards, sergeants, life guards, police officers, firefighter etc.

With this, we have found a way to laser focus our ad to our perfect audience on Facebook!

We start with the Facebook pages, and then add another broad interest to the search algorithm. If someone is a fan of a firefighter page and they work in the protective services industry, they’re extremely likely to be the perfect audience for our shirt.

This way, we end up with a narrow, more focused audience with more profit potential. That’s exactly how the overlap targeting strategy works.

One thing to note: you don’t necessarily have to overlap interests you have compiled with a job just like I have shown you in the example (Protective Services). You can overlap them with anything you see from the “Narrow Audience” drop down menu Facebook shows you.

There are so many ways you can do it. You can overlap your Interests with Demographics, other Interests, or user behaviors from what you can find from the drop down menu. Spend some time, study what options you have. Play around with them, and find out which works best.

Once you are finished with the targeting section, scroll down to the working space. Under the “Placement” section, select “Edit Placement”.

Do this next:

Device Types: Select “Mobile Only”.

Platforms: Select “Facebook Feeds”

Deselect “Instagram”

Deselect “Audience Network”

Deselect “Messenger”

We are targeting the Facebook Mobile news feed for this ad set.

The news feed ad is the most prominent of Facebook’s advertising placements. These ads show up seamlessly in a user’s feed along with the content that they see from their friends and the people that they follow.

Even though users are told that it’s a sponsored update with a disclaimer saying “Sponsored”, the posts still seem genuine since they can be liked and commented on like any other post.

According to a one billion-impression ad study by retargeting giant AdRoll, news feed ads have an incredible 49 times greater click-through rate than Facebook’s right-hand side ads. That’s awesome!

Instagram and Audience Network don’t work for my PPE ads, so I don’t use them. We will only target Mobile news feed and Desktop news feed for our t-shirt campaigns.

When we are creating ad sets for the Desktop platform, we will select “Desktop only”.

Next, we come to the “Budget & Schedule” section. We will set up a $10 daily budget.

Next, click on the “Continue” button on the bottom to move on to the ad creation working space.

 

Set up ad

We are now done with the ad set; now let us set up our ad. Under each ad set, we will create only one ad.

The moment you complete setting up your ad set and click on the “Continue’’ button on the ad set working space, you will open up the ad creation working space.

Here is what you ad creation working space will look like.

To start working on your ad, give it a name. I usually name my ad after the ad set name. I just go and copy my ad set name and paste it on the “Ad Name’’ field (like the one below- “Mobile Men 25-34”).

Next, under the “Identity’’ section, from the Facebook Page drop down menu, select the Facebook page you have created in lesson 3.

The Ads Manager allows us to turn a previously published post into an ad. In other words, the ad is simply your post. In this example, we first select our Facebook page (which, in our case is “We Love Firefighters”) and then select the post we set up earlier on our Facebook page.

Here is what our ad creation working space looks like after we have selected our post on our Facebook page:

Next, scroll down on the working space to create your Facebook pixel.

What is a Facebook Pixel?

To track conversion generated by our Facebook ad, we will need to create a Facebook pixel, which is a snippet of code that tells Facebook when a shirt has sold.

If you don’t already have a Facebook pixel, it’s easy to create one. Scroll down on your current working space, under the “Tracking’’ section, find the blue Facebook Pixel “Set Up” button, click on it.

On the next prompt, click “Continue”:

Next, select “Set up the Pixel Now”:

Choose “Add code using a Partner Integration” on the next prompt:

On the next prompt, scroll down from the “Choose a Partner” list, find the Teespring logo, click on it:

Next, click the “Continue” button:

On the next prompt, you will see a 2-step instruction on how to add your Facebook Pixel ID to your Teespring account.

Open a new tab on your web browser, implement the steps. Once you have done that, come back to your working space, click on the “continue” button:

On the next prompt, implement the remaining steps on your Teespring account. In fact, there are just 2 easy-steps: All you need to do is find your version of the number, then copy the number and insert it into your Teespring account.

When you are done, come back to your working space, click on the “Continue” button.

Done!

You have now successfully inserted your Facebook pixel to Teespring. The Facebook Pixel will be triggered every time a conversion is made (a conversion means you sell a shirt). The sales will then be recorded by Facebook.

You only need to do this once; no need to worry about that in future campaigns.

On the next prompt, Facebook lets you test if your Pixel is set up correctly. To do that, type your Teespring URL (the Teespring page where your t-shirt is sold) into the field, and then hit the “Send Test Traffic” button to test:

If your Pixel is set up correctly, it will tell you the Pixel is now “Active”; just like what you see on the screen capture below.

Next, click “Continue”.

On the next prompt, click “Continue” again:

Your setup is now completed. Click the “Close” button to close the pop up working space.

Next, close your ad creation workspace. Hit the “Publish” button at the bottom of your screen.

On the next prompt, add a payment method for your Facebook Ads account. Once you have done that, click on the “Continue” button to move on to creating your next ad set.

We will repeat the same process in setting up the rest of the ad sets and the ads that are attached to each one of them.

Remember that we want to create 3 ad sets. We have just created the first one, and all you have to do is just repeat the process to complete all 3 ad sets.

When you have completed creating all ad sets and the ads attached to each of them, you are now ready to launch your ad campaign.

Simply click the “Review and Publish” button at the top right corner of your Ads Manager dashboard, click “Upload” on the next prompt; and you’re done.

The Ads Manager will upload the campaign you have just created to Facebook for approval.

Congrats! You made it!

There’s nothing left to do now but wait for Facebook’s approval of the ad campaign. Sometimes it’s instant approval; sometimes it takes a couple of hours if it’s your first campaign. Just be patient; you will get an email notification when Facebook approves it.

Once your ad is live, you will let Facebook gather some data and analyze the metrics to decide on your next move. Just be patient; you want to give Facebook time to collect enough data to make an educated decision on your next move, and that will be after your ad has been served more than 500 times.

In the next lesson, I’ll show you the metrics we will analyze and how we will kill some ad sets and scale others to optimize profit.

Up to this point, the lessons have been quite hectic. It might be a tad difficult if it’s your first time doing this, but stay with me.

Trust me, once you get a hang of it, everything will be second nature. Been there, did the dirty work and now the Facebook Ad Manager is like my second home.

Feeling tired? Go out, take a walk, and come back later.

See you in the next lesson.