For the uninitiated, Facebook advertising can be a daunting place, made only worse when your campaigns are not generating good results. No matter the budget you put into your campaign, sometimes it’s clear that an overarching change in strategy is necessary. The problem is, how do we implement that change? How best can we optimise our advertising campaign to ensure strong, positive results across all our ads?
In this blog, we will delve into our top tips and tricks for enhancing your next Facebook ads campaign, as well as taking full advantage of the various marketing tools Ads Manager can offer you. By implementing our advice, you will be able to maximise your campaigns chances of getting results, such as generating more link clicks, engagements, traffic, followers and/or sales from your business’ Facebook page.
1) A/B TESTING
Too often, social media advertisers throw extensive budget towards a campaign objective before truly understanding what is the best audience to target, and what creative would work effectively to maximise engagement among the business’ target demographic. Facebook, like many social media advertising platforms, allows marketers to dip their toe in the water first, before proceeding with an ads campaign.
A/B testing, or split testing, is a term used to describe the process of running tests to see which ad connects better with your audience. By comparing the success of ads, you can experiment with a number of variables, such as different audiences, imagery, or social copy, to understand what variables would work for your campaign and those that wouldn’t. The experimental, test and learn phase of the campaign gives you real insight using Facebook’s algorithm, spending only a small amount of your overall budget to generate feedback early on. This leads to greater recommendations both for your campaign, and your wider advertising strategy going forwards.
In recent years, A/B testing has grown as a marketing method, because it gives the advertiser an accurate picture of what types of ads will maximise results, instead of retrospectively learning what could have improved your ad performance (by which point, it’s too late).
Your Facebook ad campaign strategy should always be examined ahead of time, with A/B testing and learnings from previous campaigns brought into consideration when drafting a proposal or setting up the ads.
2) RETARGETING
Facebook offers a huge list of demographics and user behaviours to focus on when creating your audiences. These can be anything from age and gender, to their food and drink interests, as well as what they’re searching online (i.e. “Black Friday deals”).
Instead of trying to expand your Facebook ads audience further, why not consider specifically targeting those already interacting with your business. By focusing your ad sets on ‘retargeting’, you may be able to gain greater engagement and direct sales.
The first step to achieving this is to set up your Facebook Pixel, a piece of code that you place on your company website that allows you to collect data and track conversions from Facebook ads. Once implemented, any conversions as a result of a consumer clicking your ad and being directed to the business page should be visible on Ads Manager, unless they have specific IOS settings on their iPhone preventing reporting for security purposes.
With the Pixel set up, users can click on ‘custom audiences’ with Facebook offering users a variety of options for targeting recent website visitors, recently engages users and so on. By focusing ads back on those interacting with your business and products already, it makes sense to assume that direct sales will go up. Users already interacting with your business are more likely to purchase, and repurchase, from your business should an ad placement be shown on their Facebook feed.
3) TRY LOOKALIKE AUDIENCES
Another useful tool created by Facebook for advertisers is the ability to focus ads at a ‘lookalike audience’.
Lookalike audiences created by Facebook’s software, based on information that you provide to the platform. Once you have created a custom audience based on those already interacting with your account, Facebook will create ‘lookalikes’ – online users not yet engaging with your account, but similar in terms of their online behaviour and purchasing history. For example, if you’re a chocolate brand looking to target lookalikes, Facebook will collect data on users buying chocolate online, liking and sharing posts relating to chocolate, but not yet engaging with your business.
This marketing tool allows you to reach new audiences, but looking only at those most likely to buy from your Facebook ads. This avoids time wasting, as Facebook does the research and groundwork for you. Lookalike audiences can be a great, alternative method to gaining new customers both in the short term, and creating returning customers for the future.
4) ENHANCE YOUR CREATIVE
If new audiences don’t work, perhaps poor ad results is simply a reflection on your creative. Are your ads not generating high engagement, are users commenting their confusion or disapproval at what they are seeing? Rethink your creative content to try and get more from your next Facebook ad campaign.
Ads, whether it be a still asset or video content, need to be as stimulating as possible. The imagery must be appealing if you want to increase engagement. Try working alongside your creative team (in-house or out-source) to work on new ideas for creative. It’s also always worth reporting on the best performing creative each month or quarter, to understand what kind of content resonates well with people, and what content can or should be avoided in future planning.
Fresh content, instead of relying on a stock photo or old imagery, always scores better with Facebook users, and once they are engaged and hooked in, they’re more likely to follow the call to action for your ad.
5) VIDEO CONTENT
If you haven’t already, your next advertising strategy should certainly consider video content to improve results.
Marketing research suggests video content scores higher engagement than still assets. By creating and sharing a video, your business has a great opportunity to tell a story, without losing the users focus. Sentimental video content, or content with striking visuals and good music, gives the user a positive perception of your brand and the work it does, making them more likely to click through and find out more.
For reaching new audiences, video content can prove really insightful for the user, and saves them the effort of having to read a company or product bio. For ads campaigns struggling to drive engagement and traffic to the website, try optimising with an informative but emotive video to drive both interest and ad performance.
6) REVISE YOUR AD COPY
New audiences, alongside new creative, should also be supported with revised ads copy.
The body of text and headline supporting your ads should not get bogged down in dulling details or the overuse of jargon. The supportive text should always be concise and to the point, offering your audience a clear description of what it is you’re promoting, alongside a clear call to action (i.e. “Buy our new shampoo by clicking the link below”).
If users are left confused or uncertain what your ad is, and what you’re asking of them, then the supportive copy is simply not doing its job. Users should first be impressed with the visual alongside the copy (as discussed above) and then feel clear what it is the ad is asking of them. Are you asking them to click the link below, follow your page or buy a product? If the ad isn’t clear, your target audience will be unclear too.
By reimagining your ads focus, tweaking your audiences and making your creative content more visually striking, you can refresh your ad strategy completely, whilst maximising results and hitting your business objectives.
For more interesting articles from us check out these posts:
- Get ahead with Paid Social Media Advertising
- Top Tips For Small Businesses Considering Social Media Advertising
- The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising
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