How To Optimize Your Facebook Ads
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If you want to get bigger and quicker results on Facebook, you may want to consider paying for advertising. Although you can absolutely incorporate an organic strategy that can go viral, organic doesn’t always deliver results as much as we want them to. If you want to learn more about different ways that you can advertise on Facebook you could check out my free guide on how to transform your business on Facebook.
Advertising on Facebook allows you to generate higher reach and engagement for your posts. However, that’s only if you know what you’re doing. According to a recent survey of more than 2,600 small business owners who use Weebly, a do-it-yourself web design company, at least 62% say that their paid ads on Facebook are missing the target. In another study conducted by Manta, a small business directory, they discovered that more than 50% of business owners had produced little return on their ad spend. And among those who did earn money at least 40% just earned $100, or less in profits.
Facebook advertising is a tricky game, and you may be wondering why some of your ads aren’t working. Today we’re going to look at these tips and analyzing the different aspects of your Facebook ad campaign so you can turn them around.
Tip one, ensure that you have the right objective. The first step in designing a Facebook ad campaign is to choose your objective. In Ads Manager or Power Editor, there are several options for your campaign goals. From generating traffic to gathering leads choosing the right goal is important because of how ads are structured. Facebook will show your ads to the target audience that is most likely to act on your objective. Let’s say you want to produce higher sales in your store using ads. The usual route some people take is to settle on the conversions goal. But this type of objective is optimized for increasing web conversions versus actual sales in your stores. The right goals to choose is the store visits objective. This goal will be more optimized to reach those who are more likely to visit your store and interact with it. Review your objectives, and try to figure out if you chose the right ones.
Tip two, allocate lead time before you measure your performance. After publishing your Facebook Ad, there’s that temptation to check your performance after a few hours to see if you’ll jump for joy at your results. Don’t start your celebratory dance just yet. Facebook needs more time to optimize the ads to achieve your objectives. Your Facebook results in the first few hours or even days are highly misleading. When you look at the results graph, you’ll notice that cost lines fluctuate wildly during the early stages of pushing it live. At the same time, the performance line continues to climb and will eventually taper off. Try giving your ads a couple of days before you check their initial performance. If you want to know how to measure an ad’s performance, you can check out my free guide on social media metrics titled; Numbers Tell a Story Social Media Metrics Made Easy. This free guide will teach you which metrics are important for you to track.
Tip three, make sure your ads pass the creative check. Facebook is very strict when it comes to publishing ads that need to pass the creative check. They lock into the specific units that make promises about sensitive topics. Money, health, government, sensitive topics. Keep your ads on the right side of the law. Facebook stops running an ad once you don’t follow their policies. And at worst, can even shut down your ad account causing you to lose all of your data. Avoid getting the boot by keeping yourself up to date on the platforms every-changing terms and conditions. These are designed to keep the best user experience for everyone. If your ad violates any terms, Facebook will terminate it. At the same time, the platform is sensitive to text overlays. The more text you have on your image, the less reach it will have. Images with more than 20% text are more likely to taper off and won’t run as efficiently. To avoid this use Facebook’s overlay tool. This allows you to upload an image to identify how much text is in it and Facebook will prompt if you pass, or fail. If you do fail, edit the image and resubmit until you reach an image text okay. If you want to check this tool out, look at this link.
Tip four, analyze your campaign costs.In running Facebook ads, you’re competing against other advertisers who are targeting the same audience. Your bids and the cost that comes with it always changes. If you keep your budget too low, other businesses might outbid you. This means your ads are dead in the water. At the same time, you may discover that you’re not setting enough money to fund specific goals such as lead generation, or video views. If you have less money devoted, your ads won’t run. Often, you’ll be notified when you’ve set an ad budget too low. Use Facebook’s suggested settings when crafting ads so you won’t encounter this problem. If you like, set it manually, the keys to gently put more money into your bids to get your ads running.
Tip number five, evaluate the creative elements of your ad. When there are so many ads competing for attention in the newsfeed, the content that gets the most thumb stopping power gets noticed the most. To make the most of your ad, make sure that it’s optimized and create for your target audience. Use the image copy and caption to inspire your audience to take the action you want. If your ads aren’t performing as expected check how it compares to the other materials. Is it something similar? Already been done before? Nothing new? The best way to determine which creative material works best for you is through AB testing. This is great for long campaigns, at least three to four weeks. The idea is to run different sets of ads with different creative output, but the same message. For example, you run one static photo ad versus one video ad. After three to five days evaluate their metrics. The best among the two ad sets will then be used for the duration of the campaign. It ensures that you get your money’s worth and that you created the right ad in the first place.
Troubleshooting your ads is something you should implement during and after each campaign. It enables you to rescue your Facebook ads and ultimately, generate more bang for your buck.