Enhance your Facebook ads (and make them work)

Enhance your Facebook ads (and make them work)Facebook advertising is becoming increasingly popular, and with the vast amount of advertising options out there today this can become difficult to master as well on top of everything else. What many new marketers are finding hard is creating compelling Facebook ads that actually convert and deliver results. In this article Cody Stallard talks us through how to make your Facebook Adverts work! Cody is an Online Marketing & SEO enthusiast for SMEs.  Cody is now working as the Community Manager for The Wholesale Forums (The UK’s leading networking community & independent advice forum for trade buyers and suppliers). 

Generating results is what any marketer should be focusing on. And, if you’re not generating results then you need to create an audit and find what the issue is. It is estimated that around 90% of marketers use Facebook ads, which is such a huge percentage, however do they all generate the results they want? Hmmm.

I’m going to help you today with just some of the mistakes made when using Facebook Ads and how to improve them.

Bidding (amount and option)

You can’t just throw money at something and expect it to work. Unfortunately it’s not that easy; otherwise everyone would be doing this and getting amazing results every time. Sure, you can throw money at Google Ads and Facebook ads, and get great traffic, however you may also get a tremendous amount of bounce backs from your site, and no converting customers.

However, if your ads are not generating enough impressions or clicks then you will need to take a look at your bidding section and make some improvements here.

There are only two areas you need to look at.

The first is ‘Bid amount’, and the second is ‘When you are charged’.

Let’s look at your Bid amount.

I can probably guarantee that many of you will have clicked the ‘Automatic’ option for ‘Bid amount’, after all Facebook will help you get more clicks at the best price…

That’s not true. Obviously any advertising tools will want to charge you more because they’ll get more money in the long run by promising results. You then end up generating little to no results this way.

Unless you’re generating a terrific amount of results using the automatic option I’d suggest selecting the ‘Manual’ option.

Once you’ve done this you can decide how much you want to pay per click. However, take into account the suggested bid. Sometimes you may not generate great results even though you had bid within the suggested amount. It may be worth it to bid a little higher than suggested.

The second area to look at is when you are charged. There is an option to pay per click, or impression. These two you can really play around with. It’s all about what works for you. It’s always best to try two different ads using both options as a test to see what works well.

If you are still generating very low results there could be a number of areas you need to look at elsewhere, for example your targeting may be too precise, meaning you’re focusing on such a niche area.  This is what we’ll look at in the Targeting section.

Targeting

Targeting is one that many of us get wrong once in a while. By targeting who you feel is more suited to your niche can end up meaning you’re targeting pretty much no one. Or people that aren’t really interested in what it is you have to offer.

What you don’t want - this goes the same if you use AdWords - is people clicking on your ad for the pure sake of it and not converting. You’ll end up losing money instead of making it.

To target your ads correctly you need to take a look at who your customers are and what they want.

You can find these demographics – such as Age, Gender, Location, and Language & Interests - via your Facebook Insights (Audience Insights) & Google Analytics.

Once you’ve analysed who your audience are you should be able to fill in the following details without hesitation.

This is just some of the basic information you can gather from Facebook Insights, however to find more information about your audience, use Facebook Audience Insights, which allows you to input various information about your desired target audience to provide yo u with useful demographics to help decide who you should be targeting.

For example, take a look at the images below. Anything before the ages 25 and after 54 generates low results. We should filter these from our target audience in our ad settings.

You can also find out what other pages your audiences have ‘liked’ or are most relevant, thus helping you find their interests and knowing who and what to target.

You can access Audience Insights this by logging into your Business Manager, click the three lines next to ‘Business Manager’, go to ‘All tools’ and then Audience Insights.

Okay, you’ve found out about your target audience, however I mentioned earlier that if you’re still not generating the results you want this may be down to your targeting. Try to loosen up a bit in this section.

Great Quality Ads

Just like AdWords your ads need to be the best. You need to ensure they stand out from the rest of the crowd, especially your competitors. This all lies down to how your ad looks and what keywords and copy you’re using.

Facebook is a very visual social network, and its no wonder when you consider 350 million new photos are added to Facebook each day.

Just by taking a look at what others are doing, saying and using in their ads can help determine what is good quality and what is bad.

For example, have you seen a Facebook ad that has no creative in it? Maybe you have some really nice images you could use that are visually appealing…

Perhaps the creative used is low resolution.

What type of ads and what style is being used the most? Perhaps switch this up a bit and have an ad that is different to the norm. We all love to see something different from the rest, and this alone will be refreshing enough to get some clicks coming.

Can you include a call-to-action within the image? Can you remove a lot of text from your ad?

Too much text makes the ad ugly, and this can also limit your Facebook reach. Did you know it takes 2 seconds for a reader to look/ click on your ad? 1.5 seconds is dedicated to visuals, 0.5 is dedicated to your copy.

When focusing on your copy, you can use the data found earlier on about your customers and target audience to write compelling copy to encourage them to click on your ad.

What is it they want, and that you can offer?

Here are Facebook’s ad guidelines for you to follow.

It’s best to note that of April 2016 Facebook changed its 20% rule for pictures in its ads. What this means now is you can use as much text as you like, but it may be limited to who it can reach.

Split Testing Ads

Split testing otherwise known as A/B Testing allows you to analyze any underperforming ads. Just as you would do with Google AdWords, testing 2 variations of the same ad will ensure you get the results you want. What is great is you can split test your Facebook posts and ads.

When you do split testing ads you will need to take a look at the underperforming ad to determine what may have gone wrong and which ad provided the best results according to your goals.

For example, Advert A may be similar to Advert B, but with a different creative. If advert A is the best performing ad you can infer that the image on advert B was the fault as to why that one did not perform well.

Remember, Facebook is a platform that focuses on visuals, and the right appealing visual attracts the right customers. However, there are other factors as to why the ad may not be delivering the best results. The ad copy could be to blame too.

Also, take into account that even though one ad may have provided great results this time, it doesn’t mean it’s going to provide the same results the next time you use it.

What to look for in A/B testing

1) When posting, you need to focus on what the purpose is and what you expect to gain. Answering any questions determines what you share and how you do it.

2) You don’t need to change much in your split test ads; only focus on changing one or two elements so you have a better idea of what created the engagement.

You can see from the above image that the copy has changed for ad B, meaning that the copy is being tested.

3) Test images, headlines, copy and CTA.

4) Experiment with Audience targeting. As mentioned previously throughout this article being too niche in your audience targeting can result in little to no results. No, results, no conversion.

5) Track your results. I tend to use Bit.ly due to its tracking element, and it’s free to use.

Conclusion

It is all trial and error; however if you’re following the tips and advice throughout this article, focus on targeting your audience, and split testing your ads you should have a much better understanding of what should work for you.