If you’re running any kind of ad campaign on Facebook or Instagram, you could be spending way more money than you need to. Before you start running any new campaigns, take a few minutes to read through this to make sure your ads are as optimized as possible.
Are your ad conversions where they should be? Are you paying too much for each click? This guide will help.
Overview
Get Your Goals Straight Before You Begin
If you don’t know what you’re hoping to get out of your campaign before you start building it, you’re at risk of making missteps that could negatively affect your results – thus causing you to waste money. You can use Facebook ads to:
- Build your fan base: If you’re looking to increase the number of people who like your page, there’s an ad type specifically for that. You should focus on getting likes only from highly targeted users, so you’ll need to target people who like your competitors’ pages, those with similar interests to your target persona, and using a custom audience to target email subscribers who aren’t already fans of your page.
- Generate more fan engagement: If you want to get people more active on your page, there are a number of ad types you can use, including link ads, video ads, and photo ads. Regardless of which ad type you choose to use, focus on creatives that are highly visual. Start by advertising directly to your audience of fans. If you don’t have fans built up yet, set you ad targeting to match your customer personas.
- Generate sales: If you’re in B2C, use page post ads to promote your products and services in the news feed with large images. If you’re in B2B, use a combination of news feed and right-hand column ads to generate leads. Once you’ve got them in your funnel, you can take the necessary steps to nurture them through the pipeline. In either case, you’re trying to get more traffic to your website or landing page. Target based on interests, age, and gender (if you’re marketing a gender-specific product.)
- Get people to install your mobile app: There’s an ad type dedicated to motivating this action. Run the ad once the app has been published in the app store and ready for people to install it. Use screenshots of the app as part of your creative, and implement Facebook event tracking. Set targeting to match those who are your target app user.
- Get more people to use your mobile app: Setup a mobile app engagement ad campaign. This targets people who have already installed your app, so you need to be specific and direct users where you want them to go. It’s good idea to use custom audience targeting here. Make sure you’ve got Facebook event tracking setup in the app so you can keep an eye on what users are doing, to target them better.
Segment Your Audience
Facebook is capable of reaching millions of people, and though you’d like to reach as many as possible, it doesn’t matter if they’re not interested in what you have to offer. That’s why it helps to break your audience down into smaller segments, so you be sure you’re reaching that target audience of people who are interested, and most likely to buy. You can run simultaneous campaigns to each segment to determine which segments respond better.
Run Mobile and Desktops Ads Separately
Because calls to action are likely to perform differently on mobile than they are on desktop, I recommend people always separate their ad campaigns accordingly, even if they’re aiming to achieve the same goal.
This tactic ensures you can optimize your ads for each platform, choosing only the ad formats that you believe will be most effective with each audience. And, you can ensure your bids and conversions are optimized based on device type as well.
Use Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences
Custom audiences are completely within your control, and you can set up as many as you need, depending on the goals of your campaign. For example, you can create a custom audience of email subscribers to advertise special deals to, or to encourage them to become your fan on Facebook. You can create a custom audience made only of people who’ve purchased from your company in the past to help encourage repeat purchases, and so on.
Lookalike audiences, on the other hand, help expose you to more people who match the target audience you’re looking to connect with. They share similar interests and demographics as the people who already like your page, or already your customers.
To create your own audiences, login to your Facebook ads manager account and click “Audiences > Choose Audience > Lookalike Audience.” From there, you’ll be able to choose the source of the audience, such as the people who’ve already liked your Facebook page, or people who’ve visited the Thank You page on your website. Then you’ll choose your target audience size. The smaller you choose, the more targeted it will be.
Keep Copy Short and Simple
Ad copy needs to be short, simple, and to the point. Focus more on your call to action, because if that’s not what it should be, you’ll have a hard time convincing people to click your ad. It’s a good idea to have a few variants of your ad copy and calls to action for split-testing purposes.
Split Test Your Ads and Landing Pages
Beyond the ad’s copy, you should also have variants of images you use with the ads, since no two people will respond to your imagery the same way. Run small scale campaigns with each ad variant and see which one your audience responds to the best. Run a larger scale campaign with that ad to see if you get the same results. Beyond the ads themselves, split-test your landing pages to make sure you’ve created the best possible scenario for your audience.
Make Use of Carousel Ads
If you want to use more than one image in an ad – particularly when it comes to showcasing the products you have available in your store, this type of ad is a great choice. You can use it to cross-sell complimentary products, or re-target customers who abandoned their shopping carts.
A variation of this type of ad is the multiple product ad – which allows you to showcase more than one product within a single ad. Or, you can show multiple benefits of a single product. Studies show these ads have a more efficient cost per acquisition, saving up you up to 35% in cost per click because they increase engagement. Not only this, but they can also increase your click through rates up to 300%.
Set Up the Facebook Pixel
With the Facebook pixel, you can track events that happen on your website, to translate that to offline activity. You can find out how well your ads are converting to drive traffic, and then see what that traffic is doing on your website.
Lots of people who visit your website are going to be in the research phase. They want to learn more about the products and services and make sure they are getting the best. By the time they’re ready to make a purchase, they may have forgotten about you. The Facebook Remarketing pixel allows you to target anyone who’s visited your website but didn’t convert with ads. This way, you remain fresh in the mind when they’re ready to buy.
To set up the Remarketing pixel, login to your Facebook ads manager. Click “Audiences > Custom Audiences > Website Traffic.” Then, you can start the process of creating your remarketing pixel.
You’ll install the code in the footer of your website, and in a couple of days, you’ll have data you can use to target people with Facebook ads.
Schedule and Rotate Your Ads
If you’ve opted for the lifetime budget rather than the daily budget, you’ll have the option to segment your ads by days and hours. Using this approach means you’ll need to consider the total budget of your ad set. If this is your first ad campaign, or previous campaigns haven’t given you a successful performance pattern over time, I recommend avoiding this option. But, if you’ve had success in the past, you can set your ads to run on the days and times you know it will be successful. You can find this option in the “Budget and Schedule” section of your ad set.
Facebook Ads Can Be Hit or Miss
Don’t be discouraged if you see an ad you thought would be a hit doesn’t perform like you thought it would. Targeting is important, but getting too targeted could drive the cost per click up. Targeting too loosely could keep the cost down, but dilute your audience. It takes experimentation to strike the right balance – and the more you know about your ideal target audience, the better.
Tell me more about the Facebook ad campaigns you run in the comments below.
