Running an ad campaign through Facebook seems like it should be an easy task; but, as many digital marketers know, that is not the case. Competing against all of the noise your audience sees on Facebook makes it difficult to cut through and get them to click on your ad.
There is no one way to run a successful Facebook ad campaign, but there are a few things you can do to make sure your campaign pays off.
Disclaimer: All Facebook ad campaign examples mentioned below were run through the clicks-to-website objective.
A good incentive is one of the key aspects of a successful Facebook campaign. You can follow any of the other tips I cover in this article; but if your offer is a flop, then these other tips will never help.
Example #1. We once ran an ad campaign for a client in the education industry in which we offered 5% off the cost of tuition as an incentive.
Although some people who saw the ad used the coupon code, many showed little to no interest. Some even voiced complaints in the ad comments; they felt that the offer was too small to continue with the purchasing experience.
The incentive for the target audience to use our clients for their educational needs was too low, and therefore very few people seized the opportunity.
This resulted in a high CPA and a low ROI.
Example #2. We then ran another campaign, but this time we offered a 10% discount. The difference was immediately astounding. Many more people clicked on our ads and used the coupon code for a tuition discount.
Our CPA decreased by 76%, and our ROI increased 12 times.
If you are trying to target a new audience or customers with whom you have not yet established company loyalty, it is imperative that you have a strong incentive as part of your offer.
You can significantly improve the outcome of your Facebook campaign simply by focusing on an appropriately targeted audience. You might feel that if you cast a large net you will be afforded more opportunities, but that is not always the case.
For a client in the education space, we launched a campaign targeting their current customers who were ready to renew their training. We also targeted a group of potential customers. Though much smaller in scope, the former group was much more receptive to our campaign than the ladder.
The reason for this dramatic difference was targeting.
With our smaller group of targeted customers, we knew three important things about them:
In comparison, we knew very little about the audience of potential customers outside of the fact that their professions might necessitate the training our client offers.
When you focus your ad campaign on a smaller and more targeted audience, it can really pay off. It is important to realize, however, that even though the more targeted audience worked well in this particular example, you must test different audiences to find which work best for your specific campaign.
It is important that you have a well-targeted audience, but if you want to cut even more unnecessary spend, you must provide the campaign with additional targeting parameters. One area in which it is usually beneficial to add targeting is device and placement.
Start by running your campaign on all placements and devices if you are unsure of which work best for your particular ad. Throughout your campaign, check the placement and device breakdown through the Facebook Ads Manager. It will breakdown all of your stats by desktop newsfeed, desktop right column, mobile newsfeed, and audience network.
Most of the time, it will be apparent which areas are getting the most clicks for your offer.
We have found that mobile newsfeeds gets the most clicks.
Narrowing your campaign on one or two specific placements that resulted in higher click-through-rates and relevance scores could lower your CPC and CPA. Targeting what works always pays off when done correctly.
Timing is everything, especially when it comes to running a Facebook campaign. There are two important considerations to keep in mind when handling timing:
For one campaign in the e-learning vertical, it was imperative that we choose the right time of the month to run our ad.
This involved doing some further research into our target audience.
We discovered that employers of our target audience notifies them about the deadline to complete the training. We also found that our target audience tends to wait until the last minute to complete the training.
Using this information, we determined that our target audience was most likely to see our ad, click, and purchase if we ran it at the end of the month.
It’s one thing to get your audience to click on your ad; getting them to convert is another story. An appropriate and effective landing page paired with a strong offer can mean the difference between a potential customer making a purchase or leaving your website immediately.
For an example, let’s go back to our client in the education industry. We tested many different landing pages: the home page, the registration page, etc., and found that visitors to these pages were not converting as well as they should have been. We therefore knew that the pages needed improvement.
We decided to create a landing page that we would use specifically for Facebook Offers and that we could update with each new campaign.
On the landing page, we included links to register and to get more information about the company and the offer.
With a landing page that provided this useful and targeted information, we more than doubled the conversion rates for the offer.
A specific and targeted landing page helps potential customers make informed decisions when considering your offer, makes for a better buying experience, and improves conversion rates.
It is also important that you test other aspects of your ad, specifically the ad copy and creative. You might think your audience will react in a certain way to your ad; however, in reality, they may have a completely different reaction.
Ad Copy
One word can make all the difference in your ad copy, and with all the different combinations of words you can use in your ads, it is important that you test different copies whenever possible.
In an offer run for a client in the medical field, we ran two ad copies in one campaign. One included the word “nursing” and the other did not. While you may not think that one word could make much of a difference, the ad containing “nursing” had a 46% higher CTR than the ad without. This is because the ad copy was more relevant to our target audience: nurses.
Creative
A picture speaks a thousand words. In your Facebook ad, the image you include is going to be what draws the eye to your ad and away from the cat video your potential customer is probably watching.
You may think that the brighter and more eye-catching the image, the better it will perform; but that is not always the case. In a Facebook campaign for one of our clients, we created two ads for testing: a clean ad with high-contrast and a muted ad with a realistic photograph.
Originally, we thought a high-contrast ad would bring in more clicks. However, after running our ad for a few days, we found, to our surprise, that the second ad was performing much better.
No matter what you are testing in your ads, it is important that you do not try to test everything at once. If you A/B test both your image and your creative in two different ads, you won’t know which aspect made one more effective than the other.
Take the time to split-test one thing at a time so you can find and achieve the most successful outcome.
The final and one of the most important aspects of running a successful Facebook ad campaign is monitoring. Just because your ad is functioning well one day doesn’t mean that will stay the same every day. Often, when running a campaign for a long time, you will need to redefine aspects of your ad.
Viewers may grow tired of seeing your ad and give negative feedback, bringing the relevance score down and the cost up. In order to prevent further damage to your ad set, you will need to monitor the ad frequently so you can identify and fix these problems. This will help your ad run successfully for its full run and increase the effectiveness of your offer.
All of these seven tips can help your Facebook ad campaign become a successful one. Do you have any additional tips for running a successful Facebook ad campaign? Let us know in the comments below.
