How to Plan and Launch a Successful Meta Ads Campaign, Part 3

Target audience

The second primary consideration of a digital ads campaign is target audience. This is who you want to reach, and more likely than not, engage with in your campaign. The more specific the better, and as Seth Godin says, you want to find your minimum viable audience, or “1000 true fans”. You should think about who is most relevant in terms of basic demographics such as age range, gender, and location. You can also think about education level, household income, and professional attributes such as job type, industry and years of experience. Finally, it is usually helpful to think about interests and psychographic characteristics as well, such as “loves outdoor activity” or “enjoys cooking”. 

Let’s start outlining your audience. It’s best to start simple, with your gut feelings and a common sense approach. Who do you want to speak to in your campaign? Who is most likely to be interested? Ideally, it makes sense to segment your audience into at least 2-3 segments, based on awareness/loyalty level, product/service type, or just difference in audience attributes. It’s also fine to start with your overall target audience.

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Flight (Timeline)

Flight is likely the most straightforward component to grasp, but one of the trickiest to get perfectly right. Your flight dates are the time period in which your ads campaign is live and serving impressions to your target audience. You want to have a sense of when you would like to launch the campaign, and for how long you want it to run. It is often a best practice to launch a campaign around a related and ideally high-profile event or time period, such as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. You may also be interested in more of an “evergreen” campaign, or one that is always on and not tied to a specific period of time. 

Flight dates, or the timeline of your campaign, is pretty straightforward and shouldn’t be overthought. As we stated earlier, it's likely best to align your campaign with a key date or event that matters to your organization. When is your product/service most in need, and/or most culturally relevant?

Are there any key dates or milestones coming up that make sense to launch a campaign around? How long do you want to run your campaign for? When in doubt, 2-3 weeks is a good test campaign timeline to start with.

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Platforms/channels

Platforms and channels represent the app, tool or destination with which you will launch your ads and reach your target audience. Common digital ads channels are Facebook, Instagram, Google, and LinkedIn, to name a few. LinkedIn is one of the best platforms for B2B advertisers because of their massive and granular dataset of professional attributes with which to leverage in campaign targeting and optimization. Conversely, for brands or orgs looking to reach consumers, the other channels listed as well as SnapChat, Pinterest, and increasingly, TikTok are common destinations. Snapchat and TikTok have younger, more tech-savvy users while Facebook and Linkedin are frequented by older generations and people currently in the workforce. Instagram is a mix of both.

One easy dichotomy to choose your primary platform is the following: if you are B2C (Business to Consumer), go with Facebook/Instagram; if you’re B2B (Business to Business), go with LinkedIn. B2B companies sell to other businesses, so the rich and extensive professional data available to advertisers on LinkedIn is apt. 

Any idea which platform would be best for your campaign?