Last month I wrote about my first top 10 tips to get a better return on your Facebook ads – here are my next and final top 10 tips to help you get a better return on your Facebook advertising:
11. Use a relevant landing page
When someone clicks on your ad, whatever you do, don’t send them to the home page of your Web site. Trust me the person will just take a blank look and go somewhere else.
You have a split second to capture their attention so make sure the content of your Facebook ad is aligned with the content of the landing page and the page tells the person what to do next.
You will be literally throwing your money away if you do not have a converting landing page to direct your targeted Facebook traffic.
Sending people to a page which specifically relates to your ad will give you a higher ad relevance score, and over time you’ll pay less per click. Over the last couple of years, Facebook ads have become more competitive and consequently more expensive, so it makes a lot of sense to do this.
12. Think carefully about your headline
After the image or video, the headline is the next most important part of the ad so it really needs to pack a punch. Whatever headline you use, make sure it covers at least a couple of these factors:
- Gives direction – tells people what you want them to do,
- Ask a questions – do you want to lose weight? Do you want to be in the shape of your life? Always wanted to try Pilates?
- Focus on benefits, not the product or service – tell people the great rewards they will reap by using your services or buying your product, don’t make it a hard sales push,
- Keep it simple.
13. What’s in it for me?
Always have a great offer with your Facebook ad – a discount, a giveaway, a great bargain – make it an offer too good to refuse.
Consider mentioning your price upfront – you only want people clicking through to your ad who are comfortable paying the price for your service so consider adding this in as well.
Oh and an insider’s tip, use the word “free” if you can – everyone loves getting something for nothing.
14. Test, test and test again
Never assume anything. Always test everything. No matter what your level of expertise is or how long you’ve been advertising on Facebook, always test both your ad’s design and its targeting.
Every time you create a new campaign, take the time to come up with at least four different Facebook ad designs and then test each one. For example, you might test two different images with two different copy texts (so two images and two different copies which gives you four variations).
Carefully track the results as some ads will work better than others. Pause the ones that aren’t working and create similar ads to the ones that are giving you a better return.
15 Carousel Ads
According to a recent report, carousel ads are 10 times better at getting people to click through compared to static sponsored posts on Facebook.
Carousel ads, which lets you show multiple images and ultimately a link to some action, are driving 10 times more traffic to advertisers’ websites, according to data compiled by Kinetic Social, a social marketing tech firm.
While many businesses use carousel ads solely to promote products, the ads also provide an excellent opportunity to showcase your brand’s unique narrative and make you stand out from your competitors.
Just some pointers to make them succeed:
- Make the first image really jump out at the reader,
- Keep the reader engaged by using great images,
- Write copy that really draws in your audience – tell a story,
- Do not give a conclusion or ending. Instead lure users into clicking the “learn more“ button, so they can finish the story on your custom landing page.
The purpose of carousel ads is to increase awareness and engagement. However, the ultimate goal is to get the audience to continue the experience and click through to your landing page.
With today’s cluttered ad space, it’s getting harder to stand out. If you want to build a breakthrough carousel ad, start by creating an engaging story that takes your audience along for the ride.
16. Instagram
Instagram is only growing in popularity and aligns strongly to the fitness and sports industry. To take advantage of this, you can use your Facebook ads on Instagram too. This means you can easily expand your successful Facebook ad campaigns to reach an entirely new set of potential customers on Instagram.
First make sure you connect your Instagram account to your Facebook business page.
Then you select your ad type, your audience, use compelling visuals to catch people’s attention and include a call to action. Make sure you use popular or trending hashtags where relevant.
With the emergence of Instagram ads, you can build a rapport with your audience in a whole new way. Once you attract an audience with your ads, it’s important to keep your followers engaged. With the right approach to Instagram marketing, you can drive great results for your brand and truly stand out on this platform (I will be writing another blog on Instagram in the future so watch this space).
17 Setting a budget
The cost of your Facebook ads depends upon the size of your audience and budget. You are in complete control of how much you spend on advertising by setting a daily budget or a lifetime budget for your ads.
For most ads, the minimum amount you can pay ranges from $1 to $5 per day. You might need to spend more based on what you are advertising for and how big your audience is.
To decide on what to spend, you need to think about what you initially want to achieve through Facebook advertising – leads, likes, Web site clicks and so forth. Ultimately you need to make the decision but you always want to ensure you are making more money than what you are spending.
There are two different methods for campaign budgets in Facebook – a lifetime budget or a daily budget. Using a daily budget requires more maintenance on your end and limits your targeting options as you cannot choose the time of day or day of the week on which to show your ads. So an insider’s tip, use a lifetime budget for greater flexibility with scheduling your ads.
Bid a few cents higher than the lowest “recommended bid” and continually strive to improve your ads and CTR (click through rate) over time.
A daily budget of at least $10 is a good place to start from, then once you determine that your campaign is profitable you can scale up your budget.
18 Measuring the return
It is important to keep track on how your ads perform to see if you are getting the return on your investment.
If you are tracking leads or sales, it is a lot easier to track as you simply look at the conversions made and compare the money you made to how much you spent. If you made more in sales than what you spent, then the campaign was a success.
But when you spend money on an ad campaign with the goal of increasing long term engagement with your audience rather than immediate sales, the results can be more difficult to measure.
The key to tracking return on your Facebook ads is in Facebook Insights located at the top of the page in between the Settings and Activity tabs.
Facebook Insights tell you a lot about the social impact of your campaigns. They include detailed numbers that explain what’s happening on your Facebook page, such as how many likes you received in a week (and how that number compares to the week before) and engagement (likes, shares, comments) on individual posts.
Through Insights, review which of your recent likes were organic and which came from ad campaigns. Then compare paid likes to the campaigns happening at the time to evaluate their contribution to new likes—thus, their social ROI value.
For example if you spent $10 and received 245 likes (245 divided by 10), you basically received 24.5 likes per dollar. Was it worth it? How many of those “likes” converted to actual leads and eventually sales?
When you evaluate your paid likes, reach and engagement versus what you accrue organically, you’re able to determine which campaigns were most effective and assess the amount of social impact from them which helps you better plan for future ads.
19. Use the “Learn More” button
When creating ads for the Facebook News Feed, you get the chance to include one of seven buttons with your ad. Always choose a button instead of no button. If in doubt as to which button to use, try the “Learn More” button as there seems to be growing evidence that it’s the best option for engagement.
Adding a button enhances the call-to-action and primes the reader to take action. As for which button works best, you might notice one fits your niche particularly well (“Book Now,” for instance when you are holding an event or open day).
20. Keep things fresh
Just like you would encourage people to change their workouts and keep variety in their training you need to do the same for your ads.
When you are running Facebook ads, keep checking the reports to see how they are performing. Like any form of advertising, even if your ads have been initially successful, after a while people will get sick of seeing them and eventually they won’t even notice them or worse yet, hide all the ads from your page.
As for how long to run ad ad, well there is no “one size fits all” but I would suggest a week to no more than two weeks (again test on different time frames to see if it makes any difference). Check how your ads are performing every day and if you notice a big drop with the engagement, chances are you need new ads to replace those that burn out.
So as you can see, there are a lot of little tricks and tips when putting together your Facebook ads but when they are done well, they are a relatively cheap and effective way to reach your marketing goals.