With all the privacy and algorithm updates, Facebook ads are still one of the most effective channels to reach potential high-value customers and drive sales for your business. Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms, with over 2.98 billion active users, ranging from standard users to business accounts.
Running a successful ad campaign on Facebook takes more than just creating an ad and pushing it live. To maximise your ROI, it’s important to understand how to optimise each ad campaign and carry out relevant research to meet customer and market demands.
The benefits of using Facebook Ads
- Reach specific demographics, interests, and behaviours
- Flexible budgets to suit any size of business or targets
- Track performance with insights and data
- Access to a large global user base
- Customisation whereby you can create ads tailored to your brand
- Remarketing options
- Choose from various formats like images, videos, or carousels
- Increased brand awareness and visibility
- Mobile optimisation
- A/B testing
How to Optimise Your Facebook Ads
Define clear objectives
Like any marketing campaign or strategy, you need to have specific goals in place to ensure you have something to work to and analyse. You may want to ask yourself questions such as are you looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive conversions?
Facebook allows you to select an objective that aligns with your business needs. Choosing the right objective will help optimise the ad delivery accordingly. This also relates to setting clear KPIs, such as increasing website traffic by 20% or reducing cost-per-acquisition (CPA) by a specific amount.
Detailed audience targeting
Facebook offers highly granular targeting options, allowing you to filter by location, age, gender, interests, and behaviours. For example, if you’re selling fitness products, you can target people interested in fitness, health, and related activities. This means that you are targeting specific people who are genuinely interested in your goods or services. There is also the feature ‘exclude’ to avoid showing ads to audiences who are unlikely to convert, preventing wasted ad spend.
Utilise custom and lookalike audiences
Retarget people who have already interacted with your business—such as website visitors, past customers, or people who have engaged with your Facebook page or app. By approaching these existing customers, you are engaging with those who trust your brand and it’s a simpler, more straightforward sale, especially if they are happy with your service and quality. Likewise, Facebook can create audiences similar to your best customers. These are people who share characteristics with your existing audience, making them more likely to engage with your brand.
Monitor performance and adapt your strategies
Whether it’s SEO, PPC or social ads, there are always key performances that you need to monitor and assess. Key metrics to watch include CTR (click-through rate), CPC (cost per click), CPA (cost per acquisition), and ROAS (return on ad spend). If an ad has a low CTR or high CPA, you then know to pause it and consider testing new creatives or adjusting targeting.
You should also work on optimising and targeting the highest-performing times. You will want to find out and analyse when your audience is most active and adjust your ad schedule to capitalise on those periods.
Get creative
One of the main benefits of Facebook ads is the creativity it allows you to have, from the content to the copy and creative tools. Here are the key ways in which you can get creative with your Facebook ads:
- Try different formats: Experiment with single images, carousel ads, and videos to see which format drives the most engagement and interactions.
- Test headlines and copy: Run multiple versions of the same ad with slight variations in the headline or copy. For example, test two different calls-to-action (CTAs) to see which one generates more conversions.
- Test visuals: Use different colours, fonts, and styles in images to see what resonates with your audience. Facebook’s dynamic creative tool can help automate this process and make each post unique.
Optimise for mobile
As most Facebook users access the platform on mobile devices, it’s absolutely essential that your ads fit mobile screens and have been optimised for mobile users. This can be done through the use of vertical or square videos and images that are optimised for small screens.
It’s also important that mobile users receive fast-loading landing pages. Facebook favours ads with faster-loading pages, which can also reduce bounce rates.
Choosing the right Ad format
- Single Image Ads: Great for promoting specific products or offers.
- Carousel Ads: Showcase multiple products, services, or features in a swipeable format, ideal for ecommerce brands.
- Video Ads: Excellent for storytelling and capturing attention quickly.
- Collection Ads: Combine images and video to create an immersive experience
Organise an ad schedule
By perfecting your ad schedule, you will ensure that all your posts are being published at the right date and time. Many scheduling platforms allow you to choose optimum times throughout the week or month.
