Facebook is the goliath of social media, with over 35% of the global population currently active on the platform (2021 stats), there is immense opportunity for businesses to find success in advertising. Facebooks ads optimisation in 2021 is an important strategy that can make the difference for a successful advertising campaign. There is nothing more frustrating for a business owner, small businesses and big businesses alike, to notice a poor return on ad spend (ROAS), therefore, by optimising your Facebook ads, you give yourself a better chance of getting more conversions via a successful campaign. So, what makes Facebook such a great social media platform for businesses to convert and how can you optimise your ads to run a successful campaign in 2021?
Facebook’s Capabilities for Advertising
Facebook really is a platform that has everything, due to its sheer magnitude of active users, companies look to utilising the platform to help their businesses better convert and see success…and it works. Facebook advertising, as reported in March 2020, was the biggest revenue source for any leading online and tech company, the company generated 98% of its revenue through its advertising streams. To put this into perspective, Facebook generated, as of March 2020, $17 billion in revenue. So, why are companies spending so much money on Facebook advertising?
The short answer is…because it works. If your Facebook ad campaigns are properly set up and optimised, your company can also be highly successful in their marketing efforts via ad campaigns on Facebook. The platform has a multitude of features that acts as a breeding ground for successful advertising.
1. Ad Targeting
The ad targeting capabilities is one of, if not the best out of all social media platforms. The vast number of users that Facebook holds provides the ability for highly specific ad targeting, allowing businesses to reach the exact audience and demographic that they need. With filters from age, interests, behaviour and much much more, Facebook provides the opportunity for you to display your ads to the right people. The better you know your customers, the better you can optimise your ads.
2. Cheap
Facebook is one of the cheapest social media advertising platforms, especially compared to traditional advertising in the form of print, television and so on. With a small budget, your ads can reach 1000s of potential customers and clients.
3. Fast Results
From the moment your campaign is active and approved, you can start seeing results of your ads being seen by many people according to your specific audience targeting.
4. Measurable
Facebook provides a comprehensive user dashboard that allows you to measure and analyse your campaigns and seeing your ROAS. This keeps you up-to-date and on top of both successful and failing campaigns, allowing you to make relevant changes when necessary.
5. Drives Traffic
Your Facebook ads will drive traffic to your website and due to its cost-effectiveness, you will see an increase in website visitors at a great price. This can also support remarketing and repeat customers to your website that will benefit your business in the future.
These 5 reasons are merely a few examples of many more reasons why Facebook advertising is so beneficial and must be undertaken by businesses (if your target audience can be found on Facebook).
However, no of the above matters if you do not properly optimise your Facebook ads, you will be merely “throwing money down the drain” or so to speak. Therefore, how does Facebook ad optimisation work?
How to Optimise your Ads for Facebook?
As beneficial as Facebook may be for businesses to advertise, it can also be a very easy place to spend money with little-to-no results if not done correctly. There is a very real and negative reason as to why 98% of Facebook’s revenue has come through their advertising platform. Facebook is such an easy, if not the easiest, place to quickly run an ad. It can be effortless, seamless and instant, almost as if you are playing a game without really knowing the outcome. However, this is how companies fail to gain much significant success and conversions through Facebook advertising.
If you do not optimise your ad campaigns then you are setting them up for failure, which is not a reflection of how good Facebook advertising can be for your company. Facebook ad optimisation is a matter of ad campaign setup and ad data analysis. What steps can you take to ensure your Facebook ads are optimised?
1. Big Data
When you run advertising campaigns on Facebook, your ads go through a series of learning and understanding to be best optimised for ad bidding. However, if you have little to low data, then your ads may always be in the “learning” stage and not become fully optimised. Therefore, how do your ads become more optimised? The answer is data. The more data you have collected translates to a better understanding for Facebook’s bidding algorithms and the more optimised your campaigns will be, which means your ROAS and conversion will be better.
The solution, typically when we provide a pay per click ads service for clients, we take a big portion of the client’s budget for the first month and run it over a few days with a much higher average daily budget. In doing so, we are able to collect a lot more data and a lot faster, which helps optimise the campaign for the future, this optimisation tactic can help you increase your ad conversions and your overall conversion rate optimisation (CRO).
2. Adjustments
Your advertising campaigns need to be continuously monitored and enhanced to ensure the best results. By analyses your data, you can look for areas of weakness, for example, if a certain age group in your demographic targeting is not performing too well. By removing these weaknesses and adjusting your Facebook ad targeting, you can ensure a more optimised campaign, which focuses on reaching demographics where you are seeing results according to your analytics.
With this approach, you also need to be careful as to not overly trim your audience and make it too specific to the extent that you are not performing as well as you should be.
3. Multiple Objectives
Facebook offers a whole world of advertising types, from single images, carousels, lead generation forms, messenger ads a more. Therefore, by switching up your objectives and approach you may in fact see different performance levels. For example, there have been many cases where companies have switched to using a lead gen objective approach and saw a huge increase in conversion rates.
4. Testing Bid Strategies
By diversifying your bidding strategies, you can optimise the correct approach that works for your campaign. You should by no means be fixed on one strategy but test various approaches until you find the most efficient one for your business.
Especially when starting a campaign, we would recommend a value-based or lowest cost bidding strategy. This allows you to indicate which metric, clicks, leads, conversions, etc, that you wish to optimise for, and Facebook will attempt to maximise that within your set budget. This can be helpful at the early stages of a new campaign and if you see success, you can slowly scale up your budget.
Alternatively, value-based bidding strategies allow you to outline a value per conversion and you can set a minimum ROAS threshold. Facebook’s algorithm will optimise your campaign to meet what you have set and try to maximise volume while meeting/exceeding your ROAS.
5. A/B Variation Testing
Test your ad creatives, yes this is a known fact by now, by switching up your ad creatives, your images, videos, or whatever creative you are using, you can compare the success rate between both ads and see which ones perform better. Users respond differently depending on your ad creative and it can have a huge impact on the success of your campaign. Performing A/B variation testing with ad creatives is one of the easiest and most effective ways you can optimise your advertising campaign on Facebook.
Beyond changing the creative you can also switch up the ad format. Try out a carousel ad instead of just singular creatives, or even a video. By testing these formats, you will be sure to see a variation in engagement and response to your ads, which can help your ad optimisation across the entire campaign.
6. Mobile User Experience Optimisation
More likely than not, your users will be scrolling and finding your ads via their mobiles. Mobile usage has overtaken desktop usage for half a decade now and this trend will continue increasing. Mobile optimisation is a must, you can optimise your campaigns every day and put a lot of work into creating the best Facebook campaign, but if your endpoints are not optimised, especially for mobile, then you will be sending a lot of people to a website that will likely not convert.
If your mobile experienced is not optimised then all the money spent on Facebook advertising will wasted, it is a simple as that. You have to give your users a great experience on mobile, so they are likely to convert, to fill out that form or buy your product. Some key areas for mobile user experience (UX) optimisation are:
- Fast-loading websites
- Reduced number of clicks
- Easy website navigation
- User-friendly design
7. Reduce Friction
In addition to mobile UX optimisation, reducing friction on your website can also provide a seamless and efficient experience for your users, making it simple and easy to convert. Are your website’s conversion funnels optimised? Do you use an email system to collate data and remarket? There are many ways your website can increase your Facebook advertising optimisation. By offering various channels and approaches to capture leads and to drive sales, you diversify your means of sales.
However, the UX must be frictionless, not too many invasive pop-ups and ads that may deter users, simple, low click-to-conversion journeys can provide an excellent opportunity to increase your conversions.
8. End Destination Testing
Many times, the best approach is via a different route, by testing the journey of the user, using different endpoints to your advertising campaigns, can provide a more cost-efficient and better optimised ad campaign. You do not always have to send users straight to a product page, or to a form.
For example, sending users to general shop pages can increase your add-to-cart quantity significantly, even if purchases are not completed, you can remarket to those potential customers and see great results.
Heatmaps can provide an informed indicator and analysis of your user’s experience, where they click, what they read and how they navigate across your website. By optimising this experience, you can be sure to provide the best route for a high ROAS.
The Facebook Ad Optimisation Experience
It is pivotal to understand that your Facebook ad campaign and its success can be boiled down to a couple of key areas that need to be optimised. You need to focus on the initial setup of your ad campaign, your audience targeting, ad creatives and bidding, then you need to collect and analyse as much data as you can and then reflect those results onto your campaign, keeping what works and removing what does not. Simultaneously, you need to make sure your website experience is seamless for each user, easy to use, clear, and optimised to convert.
By covering these areas, you will have highly optimised your Facebook ad campaign and have it set up for success. It is important to keep monitoring and tracking your campaigns, testing, and changing them according to the data. Facebook provides the world’s largest user base for a social media company, so it is up to you to best utilise that.
