Paid advertising

Paid is the fastest way to buy a result and the fastest way to buy nothing. The difference is mostly discipline before launch.

Before spending

• Know the ceiling. Maximum acceptable acquisition cost, derived from margin and payback period, not from what feels affordable.
• Conversion tracking verified end to end, with a test conversion confirmed in the platform. Optimizing against broken tracking teaches the algorithm the wrong thing, and that damage persists.
• The destination is ready. Paid traffic to a page that does not convert is a donation. Fix the page first, it is cheaper.

Structure

Structure follows intent, since intent determines what a click is worth.

• Search, separate by intent tier: brand, high-intent problem terms, category terms, broad research. Never one budget across all four; the broad terms will consume it.
• Social, structure by audience, since creative fatigue and audience saturation are the two variables and you need to see them separately.
• Enough volume per campaign to exit the learning phase. Over-segmentation starves every campaign of the data it needs.

Naming conventions

Decide the convention before the first campaign, because renaming later breaks historical reporting on every platform.

A workable pattern encodes, in fixed order: channel, objective, audience or intent tier, geography, and creative theme, separated consistently, with no spaces. It should be possible to filter a report by any one of those segments without opening a campaign.

Apply it to every level: campaign, ad set, and ad. Inconsistent naming is why cross-channel reporting takes a week to assemble and why nobody trusts it when it arrives.

Creative

Creative is the biggest lever on paid social and the most neglected.