Most campaign problems are cheaper to catch before launch than after spend starts.
A pre-launch checklist is not about slowing things down. It is about making sure the obvious failure modes — wrong destination, missing tracking, unclear intent — are ruled out before a budget is exposed to them. The list stays short so it actually runs every time, instead of becoming a document no one opens.
The checklist
The same pass runs for every new paid campaign on a CampaignBench-owned account.
| Before launch | What good looks like |
|---|---|
| Intent written down | A one-line hypothesis and a success measure |
| Destination | Correct page, live, with current offer and disclosure |
| Tracking | Conversions or key events recorded correctly |
| Naming | Follows the convention so reporting sorts cleanly |
| Budget & pacing | Daily limit and pacing match the plan |
| Audience & targeting | Matches the stated intent, no leftover test settings |
| Review date | A date set to judge the result |
Write the intent before the settings
The most useful line on the checklist is the first one. A campaign with a written hypothesis can be judged later against what it was supposed to do; a campaign without one can only be judged against a feeling.
If you cannot write the success measure before launch, the campaign is not ready to launch.
After it goes live
Launching is not the end of the checklist — it is the start of the review loop. The campaign gets a quick check shortly after launch to confirm delivery and tracking are behaving, and then it waits for its review date instead of being tinkered with mid-flight.
Kept this way, a new campaign starts inside the same governance the rest of the account already uses: a written intent, a clean destination, correct tracking, and a date to come back and decide what happens next.