Creating an Evergreen FB Ad Campaign

Facebook marketers have a universal sentiment – no matter how effective their campaigns are, they have a short shelf life. Why is this so? Basically it boils down to showing the same advertisement to the same audience until they’re no longer effective. The fans in a Facebook page may seem dynamic. There are new fans who join the page while others opt to leave; however, the majority of the audience stay the same. When you run a new Facebook ad, everybody sees them for the first time and acts on it. Run the same ad for a few weeks and everybody has seen them many times over to no positive effect. Is the campaign effective? Yes, to the new fans who enter your audience but not so much to those who have seen them multiple times without doing any action.

The key then is focusing on the fresh audience. This way, you can create a campaign that will remain effective over a long period of time. How do you do this?

1. Create a Plan

• Create some sort of opt-in. Let your users subscribe to a newsletter, PDF, eBook or other freebies.

• Present the group with an upsell. After they have subscribed, present a series of ads to entice them to buy your product. You can use this process for a period of 28 days where you show the group four different ads. You may use this schedule as a guide:

• • Days 1 to 4 – Introduce content 1
• • Days 5 to 8 – Introduce content 2
• • Days 9 to 12 – Introduce product overview
• • Days 13 to 16 – Introduce benefit 1
• • Days 17 to 20 – Introduce benefit 2
• • Days 21 to 24 – Introduce benefit 3
• • Days 25 to 28 – Introduce benefit 4

By doing this, your subscribers are sent on a nurture sequence that will hopefully yield a sale. The ads are fresh because you change them every four days. If they don’t convert after 28 days, you may send them on their way. This method ensures that you have fresh audience for your campaign.

2. Feed Your Funnel

The funnel is the path through which your leads enter. Before formulating a plan, it’s imperative that you have people to target. Do not forget that you are targeting people who have already signed up for something and that you are promoting a product that is somehow related. If what you’re generating is an insignificant number from which you target your leads, it’s a wasted effort. Make sure you have a significant number of entrants in your funnel.

3. Multiple Website Custom Audiences

When targeting subscribers, do not limit yourself to targeting email custom audiences because doing so is not reliable. The email address users provide when they opt-in matches with a Facebook profile to target about 50% of the time and this leaves out the other 50% of possible customers. Furthermore, an email custom audience becomes static when you don’t have a third party tool. You will end up manually updating the list.

Actually, you don’t need an email custom audience list. What you need instead is website custom audience. Based on this plan, you want to target people who have already subscribed to a particular list. If a visitor ventures into the thank you page that shows up after subscribing, you can deduce that he is a registered. By creating a website custom audience of those who have visited the thank you page, you then create an audience among those who have registered.

You can create several variations of the website custom audience. Aside from those who have opted in, you can also create a WCA for those who have already bought the product. Those who have already bought your product are then excluded from your nurture sequence and are instead given content more apt for their needs.

4. Create Seven Ad Sets

Create your campaign before you create your ad sets.

• Name the Ad Set – When naming the ad set, use words that will describe the uniqueness of this particular ad set. If, let’s say, the ad set is meant for those who have registered during the past four days, you may call it, “Opt-in Registrants Day 1-4”.

• Save your Budget – Your budget depend on how much you want to spend and the size of your audience.

• Set the Schedule – This depends on your preference. Some wants to do it daily to allow making adjustments whenever necessary. Some also choose an end date while others do not.

• Edit the audience – In editing the audience, you can customize who will see your particular content. If you want to talk to people who have registered during the past four days so you can sell them your product, target them exclusively. By default, your home country is selected when targeting but with custom audiences, you can bypass this so you can reach everyone within that audience, regardless of their location.

• Choose your placement – You may choose from Mobile News Feed, Audience Network, Desktop News Feed, Desktop Right Column and Instagram. The choice is entirely up to you.

• Set optimization and pricing – By default, Facebook wants you to optimize for Link Clicks or Conversions but you may choose not to follow. You may want to choose Daily Unique Reach instead. This will enable you to show your ad to everyone within that audience but only once per day.

• Audience variations – You may create seven ad sets in all. They are identical save for the targeting. Duplicate the first ad set six times by simply clicking the “duplicate” icon. Make sure to change the ad set names to show the particular audience you wish to target.

5. Create seven ads

Look back on your goals and remember that you want to show different ads every four days. You will then create seven different ads and assign each one to a different ad set. An ideal scenario is having the first two ads are blog posts related to the opt-in and product you’re hoping to sell. Doing this will engage your audience a bit more before you move in for the sale. Then, run an ad that provides a general overview of the product. Finally, run a series of ads that highlights the benefits of buying the product. This is just a suggestion as there are many approaches you can make.

6. Monitor ads effectiveness

When you already have the campaign up and running, you can’t just sit back and relax. You have to monitor the performance of each Facebook advertisement. In doing so, remember the following:

• If your goal for all your ads is to generate sales, expect that the first ad won’t be as effective. You are still getting your feet wet, so to speak.
• Each ad may have a different purpose. If this is the case, measure the result based on the purpose. It’s not always about generating sales.
• Make changes whenever appropriate.