How to improve your Facebook ads

Are you running Facebook ads, but not achieving the results you want? Not sure what you can change to improve results?

We understand that you will be investing a lot of money in your Facebook ads, and as a result will expect a good return. You can follow these simple steps to improve your Facebook ads and achieve better results.

Know your customers

The first thing you need to do when creating an ad campaign is think about your customers. After all, they are the people that will be clicking your ad. If your ad isn’t interesting to them, they’re not going to click, and you’re not going to see any results.

To find out what your customers are interested in, create a buyer persona. This will make it easier for you to tailor your ads. To gather insight into your customers, you’ll have to undertake market research, surveys and interviews. Sometimes it’s even a good idea to create a negative persona - the type of customer you don’t want. That way, you have clear idea of who you are and are not targeting, and what their interests are. Your Facebook ads will therefore become far more personalised.

A/B test

If you’re only ever running one advertisement, you’ll never know if you could have more success if the ad looked different. That’s where A/B testing comes in. This allows you to test different ads and measure the results. The best way to approach A/B testing is by first changing the images. Choose a minimum five different images, and note which one has the most response. From there, you can refine elements such as headers and text. This way, you’ll have a better understanding of ads your customers are responding to, and won’t have to spend money on ads that aren’t producing results. AdEspresso found they had success testing two different ads, and were able to find which option worked best, and saved a tonne of money in the process:

Use videos

Facebook ads don’t just have to be static images. It’s well known that Facebook ads with videos perform far better than those without. Video has a high engagement metric on Facebook, so why not take advantage of it?

Videos with high engagement will also help to boost your Relevance Score. This is a score on a scale of 1 to 10 that shows how relevant your ad is to the target audience. The more positive responses to an ad, the higher the score will be. So why is this score even important? The higher the score, the lower the cost of the ad. That’s a great motivator to make sure your ads receive high engagement. Having a video ad is the best way to increase your engagement.

Narrow your audience

Is your click-through rate under 1%? You can improve this by splitting up your large target audience into micro-audiences. This means you can narrow down your age groups, interests or locations. This is a great option for those who have a product or service that targets a specific age group or local stores that can target a certain location. The more you define your audience, the easier it is to achieve a high click-through rate.

Just make sure you have done your customer research before narrowing down your target audience. You don’t want to run the risk of completely excluding a large proportion of your customers.  

Content

Sometimes your ads are failing because of their content. The text of your ad should clearly communicate to your audience what you’re selling. Is your call to action clear? Does it make your viewers want to click your ad and visit your website? If not, it may be best to reword your ad to achieve a higher click-through rate.

You’ll also find more success with your ad if the content speaks directly to the audience. Rather than referencing “people”, it is often better to make reference to “you” instead. For example, the text might read “People feel better after a holiday at the beach.” Instead, try “You will feel better after a holiday at the beach.” Directly speaking to the audience makes the ad more relatable.

However, if you’re going to try this option, make sure you don’t breach Facebook’s advertising policies. Facebook bans ads from using personal attributes. This means you’re not allowed to target personal attributes or characteristics of a group, or use the word “other” to reference a personal characteristic. You can still follow these rules and use a bit of creativity to come up with compelling text for your ad. Hootsuite’s Facebook ad is a great example of text that speaks directly to the audience:

Retargeting

Using retargeting on Facebook, you can target your ads to users who visited your website but did not make a conversion. To do this, you need to have a site-tracking tag on your website. This allows you to track the users who visit your website. Users will have a cookie placed in their browser. Your Facebook ads can then target users with that cookie.

Why should you bother with retargeting? People who have already visited your website have already shown an interest in your brand. It is far easier to target these users, rather than a user who has never heard of your brand. Targeting repeat visitors or customers means you can increase your conversions. This is also a great strategy if you’ve got a sale, promotion or giveaway occurring, as your customers will want to take advantage of a good deal.  

Following these tips, you will be able to improve your Facebook ads, and notice higher click through rates, traffic flow, conversions and sales.