Paid social buys reach and outcomes on platforms where organic distribution is limited. Meta (Facebook/Instagram) dominates most Nepal SME budgets; LinkedIn and TikTok matter for specific audiences.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
- Describe paid social ad formats and campaign objectives.
- Use core, custom, and lookalike audiences appropriately.
- Set up a campaign with correct tracking and destinations.
- Compare ad sets using cost per result and lead quality.
Common Formats
- Image, video, carousel, collection/catalog
- Stories/Reels placements
- Lead forms (on-platform)
- Click-to-WhatsApp / Messenger destination ads for conversational sales
Campaign objectives
Meta groups objectives by what you want people to do:
| Objective | Use when you want… |
|---|---|
| Awareness | Many people to see and remember the brand |
| Traffic | Visits to a website or app |
| Engagement | Messages, video views, post engagement |
| Leads | Form fills or qualified enquiries |
| Sales | Purchases or other conversions on a site or app |
The platform optimizes for exactly what you choose, so a “traffic” campaign finds people who click, not necessarily people who buy.
Targeting Building Blocks
- Location, age, language
- Interests and detailed demographics (use carefully; test broadly)
- Custom audiences: site visitors (pixel), customer lists, video engagers
- Lookalike / similar audiences from high-quality seeds (buyers, not raw page likers)
- Advantage+/platform automation — still needs clean creative and conversion tracking
Three audience types
| Audience type | Built from | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Core | Location, age, language, interests | Cold prospecting |
| Custom | Website visitors, customer lists, engagers | Remarketing, upselling |
| Lookalike | People similar to a high-quality custom audience | Scaling to new prospects |
Campaign Setup Hygiene
- Match objective to outcome (messages, leads, purchases — not “traffic” if you need sales)
- Install pixel / Conversions API where possible; define events
- Send traffic to mobile-ready landing or WhatsApp with a scripted first reply
- Creative testing: hooks in the first 3 seconds of video
- Read results on CPA/cost per messaging conversation + lead quality
Nepal practice: For services and ecommerce, message objectives often outperform cold website traffic campaigns. Reply speed is part of ROAS — a cheap conversation that sits unanswered overnight is wasted spend.
Worked Example: Comparing Two Ad Sets
A language institute tests two audiences for two weeks with the same creative:
| Ad set | Spend (Rs.) | Conversations | Cost per conversation | Enrolments | Cost per enrolment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interest: “study abroad” | 20,000 | 200 | 100 | 6 | 3,333 |
| Lookalike of past students | 20,000 | 125 | 160 | 10 | 2,000 |
The interest audience looks cheaper per conversation, but the lookalike audience produces more enrolments at a lower cost per enrolment. Judge ad sets on the result that matters to the business, not the cheapest platform metric.
Case study: Click-to-WhatsApp vs landing page
An interior design studio in Lalitpur split budget 50/50 between traffic-to-site and message objective ads. Message ads produced more sales-qualified chats at similar spend because prospects skipped a slow portfolio site and asked budget questions in-thread. Site traffic ads still helped remarketing audiences — both stayed, with different KPIs.
Learn more: Facebook Ads services in Nepal.
Summary
Paid social buys reach and results on platforms where organic reach is limited. Success depends on choosing the objective that matches the real outcome, using the right mix of core, custom, and lookalike audiences, installing tracking, and sending people to a fast landing page or a staffed WhatsApp conversation. Ad sets should be judged on business results such as enrolments or sales, not just cheap clicks or conversations.
Key Takeaways
- Pick the campaign objective that matches the business outcome.
- Core audiences prospect; custom audiences remarket; lookalikes scale.
- Pixel or Conversions API tracking is essential for optimization.
- Compare ad sets on cost per real result and lead quality.
Discussion Questions
- Why might a “traffic” objective produce many clicks but few sales?
- What privacy issues arise when uploading customer lists for custom audiences?
- Why did message ads work better for the interior design studio?
Exam-Style Questions
Short answer
- List four paid social ad formats.
- Distinguish between custom and lookalike audiences.
- What is a click-to-WhatsApp ad?
- Why should the campaign objective match the desired outcome?
Long answer
- Explain how to plan and set up a paid social media campaign, including objectives, targeting, tracking, and creative.
- Two ad sets each spend Rs. 30,000. Ad set A gets 300 leads and 9 sales; ad set B gets 150 leads and 12 sales. Calculate cost per lead and cost per sale for each and recommend which to scale.
