Have you tried the new Facebook Ads interface? Are you interested in getting more bang for your buck when it comes to advertising? This article will show you twelve ways to enhance your Facebook Ads.
Tip 1: Take Advantage of Targeting by Gender
Social Fresh found that just 34 percent of respondents target by gender “always” or “often,” making it the ninth most used criteria overall. This may be a missed opportunity, said Michael Lazerow, CMO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, who advised, “We see big differences in performance based on gender, so not segmenting by this variable and controlling your budget accordingly is definitely sub-optimal.”
Tip 2: Enjoy Higher CTR with Sponsored Stories
Sponsored Stories can counter a decline in organic impressions, while increasing engagement rates and amplifying your word of mouth. Facebook does this by taking your existing content and fan actions, then promoting it to their friends.
Content-focused and dissimilar in appearance from traditional ads, Sponsored Stories enjoy a higher click-through rate (CTR) and user engagement. Their format also allows marketers to scale back on the amount of creative they need to produce to keep ads fresh.
Tip 3: Refresh Facebook Ad Creative 2-3 Times Per Week
Thirty-seven percent of advertisers refresh their ad creative once every 5-14 days, while another 20 percent only change it up as often as every 15-29 days. Overall, two-thirds of marketers ran their ads more than three days. This simply isn’t enough to keep ads from becoming stale.
Data shows that the average Facebook ad has a peak CTR in the first 72 hours after going live. Advertisers pay a higher CPC as click-throughs decline, making this a costly mistake. Social has a voracious appetite for creative, and ads need to be refreshed 2-3 times per week.
Tip 4: Try Ad Management Software for Scaling Campaigns
Utilizing ad management software, offered by many Facebook ad API partners, can help marketers manage campaigns at scale. Yet 85 percent of survey respondents aren’t using any type of ad management software, said Social Fresh.
Nanigans Inc., the predictive lifetime value company offering Software-as-a-Service for social and mobile performance marketing at scale, recently released a benchmark report for retailers advertising on Facebook. The report showcases strong engagement and return with retailers achieving 3.75X higher click-through rates than a year ago and averaging 152% return-on-investment (ROI).
“Incremental sales have become core to retailer Facebook advertising goals, and measuring the true ROI of these efforts is being increasingly demanded,” shared Marc Grabowski, COO of Nanigans. “While every retailer has a unique customer base and their results and strategies vary, we’re excited to offer a benchmark report specific to the sector with meaningful metrics and actionable strategy recommendations.”
Tip 5: Use Third-Party Analytics to Measure What Happens After the Click
ROI and analytics were the biggest Facebook ad challenges identified by marketers, together representing 68 percent of the marketers’ greatest concerns. Yet almost two-thirds of marketers aren’t using third-party analytics, says Social Fresh. No mature digital advertiser in search or display should spend without having analytics to track what happens after a visitor clicks on an ad, which is what third party analytics are designed to measure.
Tip 6: Try CPM Pricing Option for Smaller Audiences
While Facebook does offer multiple ad pricing options, an overwhelming majority of advertisers prefer CPC (cost-per-click), where they see an average rate of $0.80 per click.
However, marketers who are targeting smaller or local audiences should give the CPM (cost-per-thousand-views) model a try. CPM is useful in audiences under 1,000, where Facebook’s ad algorithm has trouble matching inventory.
Tip 7: Point Ads to a Page or App on Facebook.com for Lower CPC, Higher ROI
Taking users off Facebook warrants a CPC an average of 50 percent higher, compared to ads that keep users within the social site’s ecosystem. Facebook has also said that when ads point to Facebook.com, they see a 50 percent improvement on ROI.
Tip 8: Use Geo-Targeting with Local Creative
The average human attention span is about 30 seconds. You can increase the performance of your Facebook Ads by targeting a local audience and serving an image of a local landmark or including the city name in the ad copy. By injecting the city name in the ad image in conjunction with the geo-targeting, the ads were more appealing and relevant.
Tip 9: Use Retargeting Campaigns
Retargeting on Facebook works the same way as other retargeting. If a visitor comes to your site and learns about your products, but leaves before purchasing, you can display your ads on Facebook later. This helps bring your visitors back to your site and keeps your brand top of mind.
For example a travel site could serve ads about a flight to Hawaii to someone who almost bought a flight on their site. Reports from Facebook reveal that retargeting ads garner 10-15x higher CTR than standard Facebook Ads.
Tip 10: Use Both News Feed and Right-hand Side Ads
While the latest trend is to place Facebook ads in the News Feed only, you shouldn’t ignore the RHS (Right Hand Side) ads. According to Nanigans, 57% of retail desktop spend is delivered in the News Feed, yet RHS ads continue to deliver strong ROI (228%), showcasing support for a strategy coupling media buys in both delivery locations. In the same report, Nanigans stated that despite having 28X higher CTRs, ads in the News Feed have a 15% lower ROI as compared to RHS ads.
Tip 11: Create Custom Audiences
With Custom Audiences, marketers can turn first time customers into repeat customers by using their contact info to target them with customized advertisements. By the same token marketers can also use Custom Audiences to exclude current customers if their objective is acquire new customers.
Getting started with Custom Audiences is as simple as uploading a list of email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs or app user IDs with Power Editor. These individuals can then be targeted with ads for a Facebook page, website, or mobile app.
Tip 12: Target Influencers on Facebook
Reaching friends of friends and leveraging word of mouth is one of the major advantages of advertising on Facebook. Yet, very few advertisers try and target the individuals who are influencing their friends the most. By targeting influencers (those who create posts that receive a high number of likes, comments or shares from friends) with sponsored stories or news feed ads, marketers can see a 20-30x higher CTR. The challenge lies in identifying and building a list of influencers to target.
