Whether you have been running ads on Facebook for a while or you just want to get started, these tips will help you ensure that you are making the most of the money you are spending on your Facebook Ads.
Over the past 6 years, I have spent over $3 million on Facebook Ads for both my own businesses and those of my clients. I have seen the changes of what is working and what isn’t and I have learnt the best way to get the maximum results from your Facebook Ad spend.
If you want to ensure that the money you are spending on your ads will give you meaningful results, here are my top 12 tips.
1. Install the Facebook Pixel
Ensure you have the Facebook pixel installed on all pages of your website. Don’t forget any 3rd party applications you use for landing pages such as LeadPages, Infusionsoft and Ontraport. You will also need to insert the pixel code on these pages. This way you are able to track all visits and create audiences based on all traffic to your website.
2. Create Custom Conversions & Events
Create custom conversions or events for all the actual conversions that take place in your business, whether it be email subscribers opting in on your website or actual sales on your website. Even if you aren’t running ad campaigns yet for these conversions you want them set up now so that any conversions that you get in the future will be tracked from all activity on your ads now. For example you may be running a campaign to get email subscribers now but hopefully those subscribers will turn into purchasers in the future. If you have your custom conversion created now, the ad reporting on this current campaign will tell you in the future what ads brought in prospective purchasers that then turned into sales.
3. Edit Ad Placements
Select your ad placements in each ad set and don’t go with the automatic placements option. Start off with Facebook feeds option only.
4. Optimise Ads For Instagram
If you want to run Instagram ads make sure they are separated out into a different ad set with different ads as you want to optimise your ads specifically for Instagram. You need a square image and don’t include website links in the text of the ad as they aren’t clickable when they are included in the text.
5. Creative Images & Test Different Options
Choose an image that stands out in the newsfeed and don’t assume you know what image will work the best. Test different images to see what works best. I can’t tell you how many times a client has asked me to use a certain image and when I have suggested we try different options, in many cases it is one of the different options that works better.
6. Ensure your Ad and Landing Page match with the same message
You want to ensure you have similar copy, images, headline, colours and language between your ad and your landing page. In other words you want both your ad and your landing page to look and feel the same.
Your landing page must also closely match the offer that is presented in the ad. You should always ensure you aren’t misleading Facebook users by showing them one thing in the ad and then sending them to a landing page that offers something different.
7. Test, test and then do more testing
Test everything from your images, text and targeting. I also highly recommend testing a video ad. In a lot of a cases video ads can work better however in some instances images will out perform the video. You need to test it and see what works best for your audience and your offer.
8. Retargeting your audience
Retargeting is one of the best ways to get a great return on your ad spend. You want to be showing ads to users that have visited your website in the past or have taken specific actions on your website. If you are selling something on your website, showing ads to people that reached the cart page but then didn’t complete the purchase (abandoned carts) can by highly effective, especially for ecommerce based businesses.
9. Exclude those that have already taken action
Exclude those users that have already taken the desired action. For example, if you are promoting a product for sale in your ads, you want to create an audience of people that have already purchased that product and then exclude that audience from seeing the ad. You don’t want to be wasting your advertising budget showing people your ad when they have already purchased what you are offering.
10. Be Patient
Be patient and give your campaign time to work and give yourself time to test different options. You don’t have to have a big advertising budget. You can get started for as little as $5 per day but you can’t just run your ads for a couple of days and decide they aren’t working. There are so many things you need to test and amend in order to get the ads to work effectively so give yourself time to do this testing.
11. Track the metrics that count
The ultimate metric you want to be using for the success of your campaigns is sales. While engagement, page likes and clicks are great you are running a business and sales is the ultimate goal. You more than likely won’t get the sale straight away from your ads but you want to have a complete strategy in place that will ultimately lead people from clicking on your ad to then purchasing what you offer at some time in the future.
Check sales conversions that come through from past campaigns to get a good idea of how you are funnelling prospective customers into your business and which ones are actually converting into sales. You may have run a campaign 6 months ago that has just resulted in sales. Go into your ads manager and customise your reporting columns to bring up those conversion results.
12. Use lookalike audiences
Facebook can create an audience of people that have similar features to a source audience. This advanced targeting option is one of the most effective ways to target a new audience with your ads. For example, you may have a list of past purchasers that you can upload into Facebook. You can then create a lookalike audience from this list and Facebook will pull together a new audience for you to target with your ads. Facebook does this by determining all the similar traits that your list of purchasers has and then goes out and looks for other people that have those same traits. As it is an audience that is very similar to people that have already purchased from you than it is likely that this lookalike audience will also purchase from you.
If you would like any assistance with your Facebook Advertising campaigns then please get in touch. I offer complete management of campaigns or I can teach you how to run your own successful campaigns.
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