Is Facebook’s Reach and Frequency Campaign Option Right for You?

So, you’ve decided to run a paid Facebook campaign. You want it to be powerful and impactful. You want it to reach the right audience at the right time. One of the first steps in achieving these goals is determining what kind of Facebook campaign to run. Here we’ll dive into Facebook’s Reach and Frequency (R&F) campaign option to help you decide whether this campaign type can help you achieve your marketing objectives!

Reach and Frequency Campaigns: What You Need to Know

If your goal is awareness, then you may want to consider a R&F campaign since it is specifically designed to reach people. In the U.S., you must have a minimum audience of 200,000 people in order to run a R&F campaign, so if you are looking for eyeballs, this is for you. R&F campaigns are also well-suited for video creative. They can help you achieve KPIs like video views and/or impressions. For example, Catalyst managed a client R&F campaign that achieved over 12 million video views and nearly 65 million impressions, earning the campaign recognition in Facebook’s Video Ad Creative Spotlight!

R&F campaigns also provide you with control over the frequency at which your ads are served. You define this in Power Editor. When setting up this type of campaign in Power Editor, you define how often your audience sees your ads. Facebook then adjusts the reach based on this preference, the amount you want to spend on each ad set, and your other audience settings. Multiple ad sets at different frequencies allow you to control the campaign pace and the audience who sees the ads.

Facebook Reach & Frequency Setup

If you need to manage budgets on a daily basis, then a R&F campaign may not be right for you. R&F campaigns do not allow for daily management. Instead, the system manages your spend until your campaign hits your ad sets’ caps.  Facebook also does not let you pause the campaign mid-flight for any reason for longer than 24 hours, so you have to delete your ad sets and re-reserve your buys if you need to make an unexpected, indefinite stop.

Another important caveat: R&F campaigns work by reserving audiences. Given this fact, it is difficult to make adjustments to your audience mid-stream.

Facebook Reach & Frequency Confirmation

Lastly, like all forms of advertising, marketers should carefully assess their budget and objectives before moving forward with a R&F campaign. R&F campaigns typically require a significant investment in order to reach the minimum audience. Additionally, R&F campaigns can deliver cost-effective CPMs, but may drive up other KPIs like CPCs and CPEs, so it’s important to align your campaign type with your campaign objectives.

If you do decide to run a R&F campaign, you may also want to consider running a Nielsen Brand Lift Study concurrently. These studies are part of an increasingly popular wave of social measure measurement that assesses more than standard campaign KPIs; they provide insights into additional areas like perception, lift, and brand loyalty. If your R&F campaign meets the study budget or audience minimums, then the study can serve as a pulse check on how audiences view your brand. For example, through a Brand Lift study, one of Catalyst’s clients discovered that there was an uptick in ad recall within a specific demographic!

Brand Lift from Facebook's Reach & Frequency Campaign Option

Final Thoughts

Does it seem like a R&F campaign is a good fit for your brand, client, or marketing goals? If not, there are many other Facebook campaign options to help you drive performance and success. Ultimately, marketers need to evaluate their marketing goals, campaign objectives, and budget to determine what campaign type will have the greatest impact on their business.

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