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5 Tips for Optimising Facebook Ads Campaigns

Posted By Guest Blogger 10th of September 2015 General 0 Comments

This is a guest contribution from Luke Moulton.

Blogging about something you’re passionate about? chances are there are others just as passionate as you, and chances are, a high percentage of these people hang out on Facebook and share the stuff they’re passionate about. Using Facebook ads to reach your target audience can get people Liking and sharing your content, and kick-start your traffic if you’re just starting out.

If you’ve dabbled with Facebook ads and not seen much success or traction, here are a couple of techniques to try to improve performance.

1. Laser Focus on Your Target Audience

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make with Facebook ads is to go too broad with their audience targeting. You probably have a good idea of your target demographic. For example: new mums living in Los Angeles. So when you setup a Facebook Ad Set, make sure you target your audience accordingly.

5 Tips for Optimising Facebook Ads Campaigns

Recently I was helping an Australian e-commerce client with his Facebook ads campaigns. He has a range of items that are season and weather-dependent. Digging into his campaigns, I found that performance varied for cities in the north of the country compared to the south. Given it was winter in Australia when he was thinking of advertising, he was wasting money trying to promote warmer climate items to those in the southern states (remember, we’re in the Southern Hemisphere). Segmenting his campaigns down into regions (such as cities or states) help him to target products according to the weather in that region.

2. Boost Facebook Posts that are already getting traction

You may already have a healthy bunch of Facebook followers who share and like your content. When you notice a new piece of content you’ve posted getting more traction than usual, this is a good indication that the content could be popular to a broader audience.

This is a great opportunity to broaden you follower base.

5 Tips for Optimising Facebook Ads Campaigns

The trick that will ensure you get maximum engagement for you spend is to boost your post to “Friends of people who like your page” AND share a similar interest to what you blog about.

Doing this means that the “Friends of people who like your page” will see a little social proof on the ads that appear in their news feed. And social proof is a powerful motivator.

5 Tips for Optimising Facebook Ads Campaigns

3. Test vastly different images

Facebook is a very visual medium and the right image can make a huge difference in engagement and clicks to your ads. When you setup a new campaign, make sure you test at least 2 different ads that are identical except for the image.

Try adding a call to action to your image, making sure you your copy takes up 20% or less of the image space, as specified in Facebook Ads terms and conditions.

4. Setup Facebook conversion tracking

Wether you’re building an email list or selling product, Facebook conversion tracking gives you the ability to see which audience segments convert better, therefore giving you the ability to focus on getting more of those people to your website.

Running a Facebook ads report with Conversion metrics will show you (for example) which age range are converting best.

5 Tips for Optimising Facebook Ads Campaigns

In the example above, Women aged 55-64 are converting the best and costing the least. If you see something like this as an on-going trend, it can be worthwhile separating this audience out into their own Ad Set so you can try to better tailor your ads to this demographic.

5. Rotate your ads

If you’re targeting the same audience on an ongoing basis, eventually they are going to get sick of seeing the same ads week in week out. Try to set a monthly schedule to refresh your ads, or focus more on promoting your better performing posts.

Luke Moulton is a digital marketer specialising in Facebook Ads campaign management. Checkout more tips on his blog at Plankton Digital.

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This post was written by a guest contributor. Please see their details in the post above.
Comments
  1. Hi Luke, when I first began testing Facebook ads, I never bothered about conversion tracking. Conversion tracking is really helpful in that you can see which campaigns are converting. The only caveat is that don’t shut the ads based on conversion tracking alone. Give some time to all campaigns and if the 3 campaigns out of 5 aren’t converting then shut them down.

    • You’re tight Joseph. You really do need to give ads a chance to perform before shutting them down. There are some good “statistical significance” tools around to help with this.

  2. Rawand says: 09/10/2015 at 7:24 pm

    Hi luke, this is a great post. I noticed if I repeat a good campaign with a very similar story I cant get the same good result like the first one.

  3. Great to read a blog post with has fresh Facebook advertising insights and which is not just a rehash of the old stuff which has been published many times before at many places.

    These points made me realize the mistakes I have been making all along, and I am sure these tips will improve my return from Facebook advertising. Thanks Luke.

  4. Number 2 is new to me. No brainer when you think about it actually. Thanks!

  5. This combined with good knowledge of Google Analytics can make a real difference for your return on investment. Thank you for sharing your experience.

  6. I love the idea of boosting posts with juice, Luke. Facebook suggests this regularly if you spot the nudge through your side page. I’ve FB advertised in the past but did little legwork/thinking before placing the ad. Get super laser targeted. I did know to run my ads in India since I have many Indian readers on BFP. Now it takes a bit more clarity and focus to yield steady returns.

    Thanks Luke!

    Ryan

  7. Interesting and useful BUT in these days the most important tip is to: “Keep Mobile and Desktop Ads Separate”! Use separate ad sets for mobile and desktop so you can optimize your ads, bids and conversions based on device. Ads and calls to action are likely to perform differently on desktop versus mobile, and any ad setup should take that into account.

    • Good point Laura, and an oversight on my behalf. Always run Desktop and Mobile separately… and Newsfeed vs right hand side too.

  8. Hi Luke,
    Thank you for your awesome article on Optimising Facebook Ads Campaigns. Hope you write more.
    Cheers!

  9. I think boosting posts that are already getting traction is probably the killer point in this post. I have been doing it for a long time myself and I can promise it works like magic… almost. Thanks a lot for sharing.

  10. Hey Luke, Thanks for such an informative post. I have seen many new and old companies now putting more attention on Facebook ads. It looks that there is opportunity and depth in facebook advertising. Will look to follow your tips for sure. Thanks again

  11. Hi Luke,

    these are great tips for optimising facebook ads but that’ll be great if you share some tips on how to generate leads from facebook ads.

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