Facebook Ad Test Setup: Author Gold Short Story Award – Final Push

A detailed record of the ad campaign design, settings, final ad copy, and rationale

Hi Friends,

Before I dive in, I need to be clear that I am not a Facebook Ads expert and this is also a learning experience for me.

Still, I wanted to share some of what I’m doing behind the scenes at Author Gold.

This is your chance to see a Facebook Ad campaign in action -

• if you’ve wondered what it looks like to set up an ad campaign for Facebook,

• what the Meta Ads Manager interface looks like,

• what steps are involved, and

• what decision-points or rationale you have to make while designing your ads.

The purpose of this FB Ad campaign is two-fold: first, to bring short story writers to the Author Gold Writing Contest landing page, and second to test two possible psychological drivers motivating my audience to submit their story to the writing contest.

And, like the good researcher I am, I logged every step and produced a detailed report.

You will get to see my thought process around how to use paid ads strategically to learn what messaging works to reach your ideal target audience.

• With a budget of $10/day for only 2 days, this is a lightning-fast, tiny campaign.

• When you’re learning a system like FB ads, starting with a low-risk test — like this one — is a great way to do it. I only need to generate four contest entries to break even.

Most importantly I’ll learn a lot about how to set up FB ad campaigns for the future, and I’ll figure out which emotional messaging may work better for promoting future contests.

You all get to follow along with me for the ride, if you wish!