As someone who relies on Facebook advertising and PPC ads in general, you should already know the importance of creating a pre-launch checklist using spreadsheets. It gives you a clear view of all the tasks that you need to do prior to your campaign.

We have compiled a list of task groups that we think you should definitely include in your Facebook advertising checklist in order to succeed on the platform. This guide will give you an idea of how to create a well-organised Facebook campaign checklist.

The first thing that you need to do is to identify all the tasks that you need to be done then organise them into groups. If you’re part of an agency, you will then need to contact all the different people that will handle each task. These include graphic designers, content creators, and the client(s) themselves, of course.

Why Facebook ads?

The reasons for which a company might rely on Facebook advertising are many, with the primary reason being the fact that Facebook roughly has 2.89 billion active users. With such a number under the platform’s belt, it’s impossible for you to not get noticed with Facebook advertising. It is natural for you to be concerned about figuring out how to reach the right people at the right time instead.

Facebook ads are relatively affordable in comparison to other online means. On average, you’re expected to pay around $7.19 per 1000 impressions on the platform and around $0.97 per click. These ads are very much capable of dramatically increasing awareness of your brand simply due to the sheer number of users spending hours on a daily basis on the platform.

Then there is the fact that Facebook ads are measurable. In other words, there is little to no guesswork involved with running an advertising campaign on Facebook. Using the campaign manager, you will have access to the number of taps, impressions, and conversions without any issue.

Finally, there’s the fact that Facebook ads come in different forms and shapes, including slideshows. In other words, you can appeal to a wide range of audiences using the same platform.

Now that we have explained the potential behind advertising on Facebook, it’s time to go through the different task groups that you should include in your Facebook advertising checklist before initiating any campaign.

Facebook advertising checklist: Facebook assets

In case this is your first time running ads on Facebook, you will need to go through a few initial steps first. For starters, you need to have:

• An Ad Account
• A Facebook Page named after your brand
• A payment method

All set up and ready to go. And of course, in case you’re not planning to run the campaigns by yourself, you need to have a person or a marketing agency ready to run things.

Facebook pixel

The Facebook Pixel is an important step. That’s because it allows you to closely monitor anyone who visits your site, with a focus on conversions. Using it, you will be able to both measure and optimise your campaign audiences.

In order to set it up, you need to add a strain of code to your website’s backend. After you install it, make sure to check if it works properly by trying all the different events on your website. In order to make this task easier, we recommend that you check out Facebook Pixel Helper. It’s a Google Chrome extension that helps you to verify whether all the desired events register correctly or not.

You should include the following tasks under the title “Facebook Pixel” in your spreadsheet:

• Do we have a Facebook Pixel installed?
• PageView
• ViewContent
• InitiateCheckout
• Purchase
• Is the Pixel installed properly?

Facebook advertising checklist: Ad copy

Another important aspect of a functional Facebook ad is the Ad copy. Not only do you need to craft a copy that is engaging enough, but you should also be careful with what you say and how you say it. This is in reference to Facebook’s rigid guidelines, which in case broken, will lead to your ad being disapproved by Facebook.

Make sure to check Facebook’s rules in regard to ad copy before publishing anything.

Facebook cdvertising checklist: Creatives

Creatives refer to the different visual elements that you might use in your ads, and these include banners, images, videos, gifs, and more. They’re crucial to the success of an ad, especially on a platform such as Facebook, where people have a short attention span due to the amount of content they are bombarded with in their feeds.

First off, you need to make sure that your creatives are compatible with the ad format(s) that you’re going with. You will also need to keep an eye on the amount of text contained within your creatives. Facebook recommends no more than 20% of the text on an image, for example. Of course, you can go past that, but it would significantly hurt the delivery of your ads.

Audience segmentation

You might have created the best ad copy out there and managed to design the most attractive, attention-grabbing creatives out there. But these won’t guarantee you a successful ad campaign if you aren’t targeting the right people.

Take your time to list the different audience groups that you wish to reach through your ads, then decide on what approach (or approaches) you will take to reach said groups.

High-level targeting

You can use high-level targeting, which is based on personal details surrounding audience members. These include age, language, gender, and interests. Facebook has a plethora of options already available to you when it comes to interests. You would preferably want to target people with interests that are related to your brand or business in one way or another.

You can also target people based on which country, state, county, or even city they are from and more. Not only are you able to target people who live in a specific location, but you can also reach out to people who have recently visited that location.

Lookalike audiences

Your second option is lookalike audiences. This option allows you to find new people who share similar qualities to your source audience. These can include anything from demographics and interests to behaviours and actions.

Custom audiences

Your third approach is Custom Audiences. This option enables you to retarget past or current promotions using data from your website, app, interactions, and more. For instance, with the help of Facebook Pixel, you can build a custom audience that is entirely based on data fed to you from people who visit your website. This allows you to retarget people who perhaps haven’t completed a sign-up or purchase, urging them to go back and finish what they started.

Then there are app users, which you can only access by registering your app on Facebook and setting up the SDK. The latter gives you the ability to gather important data about the people who use your app and rely on both Facebook lookalike and custom audiences, and you can target these people.

Bid & budget

You might be wondering how exactly does Facebook spend your marketing budget? Well, they have a wide variety of auction options in place that cover placing bids, setting budget limits, and more.

Each campaign has its own objective, and each objective has a specific budget attached to it. You can choose to set the budget for each individual ad manually. Alternatively, you can have Facebook optimise your whole ad campaign’s budget depending on the performance of the different ads that you have set up.

iOS 14 update

Apple’s iOS 14 update completely changed how Facebook ads work for users of Apple products. It basically introduced a number of new security measures that affect how you could obtain and process events, even through elaborate instruments such as Facebook Pixel.

Users are given an option to opt-out of any data tracking measurements on their iPhones. That significantly reduces the accuracy of reporting app and site conversions.

Here are a few tips for adapting to this update:

• Make sure that your domain is verified. Apple cares about this a lot
• Get an idea of how many leads and purchases you are getting from Ios devices
• Pick which conversions events you would focus on
• Create an additional layer on your landing page to get more concrete data about what happens
• Closely study the new security measures and try exploring alternative targeting or bidding strategies that are more suited to them

Facebook advertising checklist

So now that we have gotten all those tasks out of the way, see below an example of a checklist that you can create using Google Sheets. Obviously, feel free to edit it as you please.

Here’s the solution if you’re not into checklists

Let us take care of the heavy lifting for you! Just get in touch today, and one of our Facebook Ads experts will contact you shortly.

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Facebook advertising checklist – FAQ