Facebook Ads are a really useful way to help you drive your business forward. Like our SEO services, they can be a game-changer for your business if done correctly. Are you struggling with creating successful Facebook ads and looking for tips? If so you are in the right place, keep reading!!
1. Copy
A few questions you should ask yourself when trying to enhance the quality of your copy:
Does your copy speak to your target audience?
Is your target audience hot, warm or cold, and is your copy tailored to them?
These are important questions to ask yourself when reviewing the text of your ad before you hit publish. It is vital to keep your audience in mind when creating an ad. For example, if you aren’t sure whether to use emojis or how formal to be, determine how your audience speak and go from there. There is no one template or layout when it comes to the copy on your ad that is guaranteed to be successful for all our businesses. However, there are some general factors that can impact the performance of your ad.
- ALWAYS proofread before you click publish. This may sound like a given, but you would not believe the number of ads businesses post with typos. This can come across as unprofessional and can also distract the reader from the message you are trying to convey.
- It is good practice to place your call to action at the top or near the top of your ad as this way it doesn’t get lost after all your text.
Have you ever been stuck deciding on which heading or copy would be most effective for your ad? because I know I have!
Well, Facebook makes this easy for us with it’s split testing feature that gives you the option to test multiple texts. You can add up to 5 variations, and Facebook will try them out for you. This is very helpful because as Jon Loomer advises in one of his blogs on Facebook ads, “the key is to experiment”.
Image of split testing
2. Creativity and Ad Format
Be creative with your ads and ensure you use clear Images and videos that will grab the attention of your audience. Don’t be afraid to incorporate a bit of humour in your ad. Humor is a tried and tested strategy that we all know works so why not make your Facebook ads stand out with a joke or play on words.
Liptons of Clones are great at this….
Recommended dimensions for images in your ads:
1). Facebook Feed placements = square 1:1 for images & vertical 4:5 for videos
2). Facebook Story placements = Recommended image size: 1080 x 1920 (but keep your text within 1080 x 1420)
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3). Facebook Carousel images = 1:1
4). Facebook In-stream video = horizontal 16:9
I’ve seen many blog posts and videos that claim the best format to use for Facebook ads is the video as it grabs people’s attention but it’s important to remember each format serves a different purpose.
Keep in mind what outcome you are hoping for from your ad when deciding on a format.
For example, links are usually the best for driving traffic to say your website, and carousels are useful when showing a couple of product options.
Even though there is no longer a limit on the amount of text on an ad image, Facebook still recommends not going overboard on text to instead keep it “short, clear and concise”. They have said you will get more distribution if you limit the text in your image. See more on this topic at the Facebook business page
Would you believe 90 million small businesses use Facebook? This means you have a lot of competition for your audience’s attention so make sure your ads stand out.
3. Bidding
Are you using the manual bidding options or Facebook’s auto-bidding option?
Your answer may be affecting the success of your ads. If you are manually bidding make sure you fully understand the different options and are using the correct one for your desired outcome.
Manual bidding options
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- Cost cap = using the bid amount as its average cost, Facebook will try to get you as many results as it can.
- Bid cap = Facebook won’t bid more than this amount
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Automatic bidding
Facebook finds the lowest cost for the objective you have chosen to bid on using its algorithm. It is a good idea to use automatic bidding when you are looking for maximum reach or impressions but have a limited budget.
Here’s a link to a very helpful guide Facebook has made on bid strategies which details which strategy works best for your goals. I would recommend giving this a read especially if you are manually bidding.
If you are new to Facebook advertising or haven’t been working with it for a long time, I recommend leaving the bidding to Facebook by using automatic bidding. Facebook has a lot of data and has been doing this for years so why not utilize their expertise when they are available to you.
4. Ad Frequency
Frequency = Total impressions ÷ people reached
Watch your budgets on small audiences as too high of a frequency can end up just being a waste of money and may actually lead to negative responses. If you think about it doesn’t it annoy you when you are on Facebook and keep seeing the same ad over and over again. Don’t get me wrong a certain amount of ad repetition is great, as people may need a reminder of your business and may not always buy from you the first time they see it but it does hit a point where it’s too much.
Unfortunately, when it comes to ad frequency there is no ideal frequency I can recommend you try to aim for and this is mainly because each business and their target audience is different. It also comes down to what you are trying to achieve with your ad such as an increase in brand awareness, drive traffic to your page or website or increase sales. Some ads require a lot of repetition and others not as much.
5. Optimization
When creating a Facebook ad your optimization choice plays a significant role in the success of your ad. You should take time at this stage of creating your ad to think about it’s objective and then choose to optimize for the option that will help you achieve this.
There are many different actions you can choose to optimize for such as landing page views, conversion, engagement or a click but remember the objective you choose at the campaign level will determine your choices. Some of these options like optimizing for landing page views or conversions you must have the Facebook pixel installed in your website first.
To learn more about the Facebook pixel check our presentation on the power of the Facebook pixel. https://youtu.be/BAccXW28fnk
Or if you are unsure on whether your website has the Facebook pixel installed or you want to see if your competitors are using it check out this video.
6. Ad Placements
Have you ever looked at the ad placement options when setting up your campaign?
If not as default your ad sets will run on Facebooks automatic placements as opposed to the edit placements option. This is because Facebook says that running your ads to all placements ensure better results. Although I have noticed that a lot of marketers including myself tend to think this isn’t always the case and it’s mainly recommended as it leads to more money for Facebook.
As Brett McHale, the founder of Empiric Marketing says “Don’t Just Set it and Forget it”. This is especially important if you go for automatic placements, ensure to regularly check to see how the different placements are performing throughout the lifetime of the campaign. If you notice certain placements aren’t performing well you can always go into the ad set and pause down placements. Facebook’s algorithm does optimise for the best one but will spend some of your money on the others. Therefore, tweaking them a little will ensure your money is being used to its full potential.
Saying this, it is important to give Facebook’s algorithm the opportunity to learn and then optimise for the placement that gives you the most results for the lowest cost online with your chosen bid strategy before you start pausing placements.
When it comes to placement options we are no longer limited to just the Facebook platform!!
Some of the placement options:
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- Facebook ad placements – If you are a newbie when it comes to placement options ensure to choose all devices under device types so you can see all the options available as there are some differences between mobile and desktop only options.
- Facebook messenger ad placements – I’m sure you have noticed the ads that come up on messenger (if not check out the pic below). This option is well known but did you know when you choose messenger as your objective at campaign level you have the option to send sponsored message ads. This gives you the chance to directly interact and re-engage existing customers or enquirers that have messaged you in the past.
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- Instagram ad placement – Thanks to Facebook buying Instagram in 2012 us as Facebook advertisers can all easily expand our reach to the nearly 1 billion active monthly users on Instagram too. There are two options to choose from when doing this, advertising within the Instagram news feed or within the stories.
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Did you know that Instagram is the second most popular social media platform and 73% of social media marketers use it? If this amount of social media marketers are using Instagram I hope you are too.
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- Facebook audience network ad placement – This gives you the opportunity to expand your audience beyond social media to the mobile app and website users.
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Four display options:
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- Native ads match in with the look and feel of the app or website it is displayed on.
- Banner ads appear at the top or bottom of your device screen in a rectangular shape.
- Interstitial ads are full-screen interactive and usually, video ads that appear in between the content of the app. For example, between game levels.
- Reward video ads are also full-screen video ads but are optional to watch in full to earn in-app rewards.
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To ensure your ads don’t appear on any irrelevant apps and to reduce the number of wasted clicks, exclude specific categories of websites and apps by adding them to the block list.
7. Website performance
If you are losing conversion or aren’t getting the results from your Facebook ads that you were expecting it is worth looking at your website’s performance. You could have the best ad ever targeting the right audience but if they click onto your website to make a purchase and it fails to load, crashes or even loads very slowly this will impact their trust and will most likely result in them leaving your site.
Personally, when I click on a link to a site if it doesn’t pop up quickly or crashes I leave and look somewhere else. I don’t waste time trying it again or contacting the business in another way. Has this ever happened to you as a consumer, if so t what was your first instinct? I bet it wasn’t to keep trying to make the purchase.
If you are experiencing trouble with your website and can’t seem to solve the issues try using some of Facebooks features instead such as an instant experience or a Facebook lead form. Don’t let a poor performing website affect your sales.8. Purchase intent
Are you selling a product or service that is only desired when it is needed?
For example, you only look for a builder when you are thinking of building something. It is rare that people see an ad for a builder and then decide to build an extension on their house. This is the same with a plumber, carpenter or even a baby clothes shop. If your business falls into this category it is very important to be able to reach people that have already shown they are interested in what you are selling. You can do this by remarketing to people who have viewed your website, added a product to their cart but have yet to purchase it or have visited certain product pages using the Facebook pixel (as mentioned above).
Why limit your advertising to just Facebook, try running google ads on search terms along with your Facebook ads to increase traffic to your website.Remarketing to and keeping your existing customers happy is easier than trying to target new customers so keep this in mind when deciding on your next marketing strategy. If you think about it it makes total sense because if they are an existing customer you have already gained their trust and therefore they are more likely to buy from you again.
9. Email List
We often forget about our email list when running Facebook ads as many people consider them to be separate methods of advertising. Well, this is a big mistake as combining the two improves the performance of both methods.
Why would you not target the people on your email list with your Facebook ads? These people have already shown an interest in your business by signing up to your email list so are they not the perfect people to target or even to base your lookalike audience on.
You can do this by saving your email list as a CSV file and uploading it to create a new custom audience in the audience section on your Facebook ad. Facebook then match the people on your email list to users in their system and use them to create an audience for your ad. Inorder to do this you must have at least 100 contacts on your list.
Always have a campaign running with the objective to grow your email list as our customers always have the option to unsubscribe from our emails. Our email lists are a huge asset to our businesses so it is worth investing in them.
10. Budgets
Last but not least is budgets, it is important to keep an eye on your budgets and ensure your budget isn’t too high or low for your audience size. Consider the size of your target audience when deciding your budget and save higher budgets for your ads aimed at larger audiences.
If your budget is too big for your volume this can result in frequency being far too high, ads reaching people less likely to act or an increase in your CPM. So it is important to remember there is such a thing as too high of a budget for a campaign or ad set. When your budget is too high you are just wasting your money.
However, if your budget is too low your ad is less likely to generate positive results. This is because Facebook can’t reach the volume it needs to properly optimise. Your ad needs volume to exit the learning phase and reach its full potential.
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- Overall budget for your campaign
- Individual budgets for your ad sets
- Daily budgets
- Lifetime budgets
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I hope you learned something new and that this post helps you to improve the performance of your Facebook ads. If you have any further questions on Facebook advertising please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can do this by filling out our “Request a Callback” form or popping us an email.
To find out about the Facebook advertising services we offer check out the link below.
https://webworks.ie/Digital-Marketing/Facebook-Marketing