In a saturated digital advertising marketplace, it’s more important than ever for brands to stand out from the crowd. Facebook ads are a great way for companies to achieve this because users are much more likely to see and engage with an ad on this platform than they are on other sites or apps.
Facebook offers advertisers the ability to target specific audiences based on a variety of factors such as age, location, interests, and even likes. When used correctly, these features can make your advertising campaign much more effective. Here are 19 ways you can improve your Facebook ads campaigns:
See: The Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn Lead Generation For Your Business
In the past few years, Facebook ads have become one of the most popular and affordable ways to advertise online. Their targeting options, dynamic ads, and cost-per-click system make them an ideal marketing platform for businesses of all types. But not every Facebook ad campaign is successful.
Many brands fail to see a return on their investment with these ads. However, it’s not impossible to build a successful ad campaign with Facebook. It just takes some planning, testing, and tweaking to get there.
Here are 19 tips on how you can improve your Facebook ad campaigns so that you start seeing a ROI (return on investment) instead of spending money on ads that don’t produce results.
1. Create a solid ad foundation before you launch your campaign.
Before you launch your Facebook ad campaign, make sure that you take the time to get all of the necessary information and features for your ads lined out. This includes creating your ad images, setting up your ad headlines, determining your ad length and schedule, and selecting your ad objective.
These details may not seem crucial at first, but they have a huge impact on the success of your ad campaign. Having all of this information organized and ready before you launch your ads will make it much easier to make changes and updates as you go along.
2. Use dynamic ads to increase ROI.
Dynamic ads are a feature within Facebook ads that allow you to automatically create variations of your ad image and copy based on the user’s demographics and interests. This means that with just one single ad, you have the ability to reach an entirely new audience that may not have seen your original ad.
This is a great way to make use of your ad budget and reach more customers with the same ads. While you don’t want to create so many variations that the ads become confusing and unappealing, using dynamic ads allows you to reach a wider audience with the same budget you started with.
3. Don’t rely on click-through rate to determine ad success.
Click-through rate (CTR) is one of the most common ways to determine the success of an ad campaign. But this metric can be misleading. The fact is that some of your customers may not click on your ad, but they may still be interested in your product.
Facebook has a built-in tracking system that allows you to see how many people have seen your ad, how many people have clicked on your ad, and (most importantly) how many people have taken the desired action that you want them to take.
If you use CTR as your only metric, you may be missing out on valuable information that will help you improve your ad campaign and reach more customers.
4. Be intentional with your ad targeting.
The easiest way to turn off your potential customers is to show your ad to people who have no interest in your product. When creating your ad targeting, you want to be as specific as possible. This means finding appropriate and relevant interests, demographics, and locations for your ads.
It also means avoiding irrelevant and unrelated interests and keywords. There are two different ad formats that can help you be more specific with your targeting: the focus targeting and exclusion targeting.
Focus targeting allows you to narrow down your ad to a very specific group of people by entering their related interests, demographics, and/or locations. Exclusion targeting allows you to completely exclude a certain group of people from seeing your ad.
5. Leverage Facebook’s brand awareness ads.
Not all of your ad campaigns will lead to direct sales. Some of your campaigns will lead to brand awareness and engagement. Facebook has a built-in ad format that allows you to promote your brand, build your audience, and increase your website traffic without needing to drive leads and direct sales.
This ad format is the best option for businesses that want to boost their brand and website traffic, but don’t want to rely on sales generated from Facebook. However, it’s important to note that these ads are not cheap.
6. Try different ad types to find the best ROI.
Depending on your product and industry, certain ad types and audiences will perform better than others. It’s important to experiment with different ad types to find the best fit for your product.
One way to do this is to create three different ads and then rotate them each week. This will allow you to test three different ad types without spending too much money. After a few weeks, you should have a clear idea of what ad type and audience performs best. From there, you can create a new ad campaign with that ad type as the main focus.
7. Don’t just rely on the Audience Network for ads.
The Audience Network is Facebook’s network of publishers and websites that allow you to advertise on their websites and apps. While these are great for driving brand awareness and website traffic, they are typically not the best option for lead generation or direct sales. However, if you want to advertise on other apps, like Pinterest or Instagram, you’ll need to use the Audience Network.
These types of ads are best for driving brand awareness, website traffic, and gathering customer insights. Generally, these don’t perform as well for lead generation and direct sales compared to standard Facebook ads.
8. Track the key metrics that matter most for your business.
If you don’t track the key metrics of your Facebook ad campaigns, you have no way of knowing which ads are working and which are not. This means that you have no way of creating a successful ad campaign in the future. To track these metrics, you’ll need to use a Facebook Ad tracking tool.
There are a couple different tools out there that will track these metrics and make it easy for you to determine the success of your ad campaigns. It’s recommended that you use more than one tool to track your metrics so you have a clear picture of your ad success.
9. Combine Facebook Ads with Other Marketing Strategies
Facebook ads are a great way to market your products, services, and brand. However, they are not the only marketing strategy you should be using. In fact, it’s best to combine your Facebook ad campaigns with other marketing strategies. This will help you reach more people and make the most out of your ad budget.
One of the most popular ways to combine Facebook ad campaigns with other marketing strategies is to run retargeting campaigns on Facebook with retargeting ads. This allows you to bring back past website visitors and increase your lead generation with a relatively small ad spend.
You can also use email marketing campaigns to promote your Facebook ads to help increase their reach and engagement.
10. Define a Clear Objective for Your Campaign
When first creating your ad campaign, you’ll need to make a decision about your ad objective. This is the single most important feature of your ad campaign since it determines who your ad will be shown to and what it will be trying to accomplish. Facebook allows you to choose from four different ad objectives:
- Get more people to like your page
- Get more people to visit your website
- Get people to click on an offer
- Get people to make a purchase
Depending on your business and your goals, there may be more than one ad objective that would work well for you. It’s important to choose an ad objective that helps you reach your business goals while also fitting within Facebook’s ad guidelines.
11. Use Facebook ads to find out what works and what doesn’t
Before you start creating Facebook ad campaigns, you want to figure out what works, so you can build your campaigns around those successful ads. You’ll want to start with the different types of ads that Facebook offers. You can find these under the “Ad Types” section of the Ad Creation tool.
We recommend starting with the “Sponsored Posts” ad campaign type. This is the most common type of ad and also the cheapest. You can use sponsored posts for almost anything, and you have the option to target specific pages (which is helpful when you’re first starting out).
As you create more ads and start running them, you can use the “Campaign Optimizer” section of the Ad Creation tool to see which ads are performing the best. You can use this information to create more ads like the successful ones and ditch the ones that aren’t working so well.
12. Don’t just stop at one ad campaign
When building your ad campaigns, make sure you don’t just focus on one type of ad. You want to build an ad campaign that includes different types of ads and targeting options so that you have a variety of options to try out with your ads.
This way if one type of ad isn’t doing as well as you’d like, you can swap it out for another ad campaign with a different ad type. While sponsored posts are a great place to start, they are a very general ad type that can be used for almost anything.
If you only use sponsored posts, you’re only targeting a very large and diverse audience. This makes it harder to find success with your ads. So, don’t just focus on one ad campaign; expand your ad types as you create more campaigns to increase your chances of success.
13. Facebook ad manager has a lot of options – use them!
The ad manager has a lot of targeting options, which can be very helpful to find the right audience for your ads. You can use the ad manager to find specific people based on location, interests, and other demographics and combine them for even more specific targeting options.
The ad manager also lets you exclude certain pages and audiences from seeing your ads. This is helpful when you want to avoid targeting pages that are unlikely to buy from you. For example, if you sell beauty products, you probably don’t want to target pages that are focused on health and fitness.
14. Make sure you’re using the right audience targeting
As we mentioned above, the ad manager lets you target audiences based on a lot of different factors. Sometimes, brands target audiences that have nothing to do with their products or services.
For example, a lot of beauty brands target men with their ads because they want more customers. The problem with this is that men are unlikely to buy beauty products, so targeting these audiences with your ads is a waste of money.
Make sure you’re targeting the right audiences or you’re wasting your money on ads that won’t produce any sales. Use the ad manager’s targeting options to find audiences that closely match your ideal customer. This will help you avoid wasting money on the wrong audiences.
15. Test different ad images
Ad images are an important part of Facebook’s ad platform, so it makes sense that you want to test different images to see which ads perform best. Facebook allows you to create ads with up to nine different images, which is helpful if you want to test many different images with one ad campaign.
When creating these ads, remember that you want to use images that are eye-catching and relevant to your product or service. You can use free stock images from sites like Unsplash and Pexels to create ads for your products and services.
You can also create original images for your ads with design software like Adobe Photoshop or Canva. If you don’t have the budget for design software or stock images, you can find free images online and use editing tools like Canva to spruce them up for your ad campaign.
16. Don’t rely on automatic targeting
Automatic targeting is one of the first ways brands choose to target audiences with their Facebook ads. This targeting option lets you select a demographic category and then shows your ad to anyone who falls into that category.
See: Facebook Marketplace Ads 2022
While automatic targeting is helpful if you’re not sure where to start and want to try a general audience, it can lead to lower engagement and a lower chance of success with your ads. If you use automatic targeting, you’re targeting a very wide audience of millions of people.
This means you’re reaching a lot of people, but you’re also limiting your ad campaign to only a few million people. Automatic targeting is helpful if you don’t know where to start, but it’s best to avoid it once you’re more familiar with how Facebook ads work.
17. Use the Right Audience Targeting
Audience targeting is one of the most important parts of your Facebook ad campaign. This is where you pick the people you want to see your ads and then Facebook shows those ads to those people.
It’s important to pick the right audiences because they’re the ones that see your ads and decide whether or not to click your ad or not.
When choosing your audiences, keep these things in mind:
- What are you trying to sell?
- Who is your ideal customer?
- What is your budget?
Different audiences have different buying habits, so you’ll want to find the right ones for your products and services. If you’re just starting out with Facebook ads, we recommend trying out a few different audiences to find out which ones work best for your business.
It’s important to test different audiences to see what works best for your ad campaigns because everyone is different.
18. Test different ad types: Sponsored Posts, Lead Ads and Canvas Ads
Sponsored Posts are the most common type of ad on Facebook and make up the majority of ads seen on the platform. These types of ads are designed to drive engagement (likes, comments, shares, etc.) and can be used to promote events, products, or services. On top of engagement, sponsored posts are also very cost-effective, with average costs between $0.50 to $1.50 per engagement.
They’re a great way to start your Facebook ad campaigns. Lead ads are more direct than sponsored posts. Lead ads are designed to collect email addresses from people who are interested in your product or service.
You can use lead ads to collect email addresses for newsletters, product updates, or sales. Canvas ads are an innovative ad type that lets you create interactive ads that people can swipe through. You can create a single ad that includes multiple images, videos, or other content. You can also create a carousel ad that displays two to five images.
19. Define a Real Objective for Your Campaigns
As you create your ad campaigns, make sure you define a real objective for your campaigns. What are you trying to accomplish with your Facebook ads? What are you trying to achieve with your ad spend?
See: Facebook Rules for Selling 2022: The Complete Guide
You want to have a goal in mind, so you can measure your success and know when you’ve achieved what you set out to do with your ads. If you’re just starting out with Facebook ads and you don’t have a lot of experience with them, it’s best to start with small goals.
Don’t shoot for the moon and try to make millions of dollars with your ads right away. Start small and grow your campaigns as you become more familiar with them.
Conclusion
Whether you’re just getting started with Facebook ads or you’ve been running campaigns for years, these are great strategies to try out and improve your campaigns. They’ll help you better understand how Facebook ads work, and they’ll help you create more effective ad campaigns. As you practice with these strategies and tweak your campaigns to improve performance, your ad campaigns will only get better.