Advertising on Facebook has come a long way.
No longer the new kid on the block, Facebook has matured into a marketer’s dream platform for reaching any number of audiences with its various advertising options. Of course, that doesn’t mean that from time-to-time it won’t make a few changes to keep things fresh, often to marketers’ dismay. To help, we’ve compiled a list of the five best practices for Facebook advertising to maintain success in tandem with its constant changes.
1. Start your social media ad campaign with a goal in mind.
At the heart of any Facebook ad campaign is a campaign goal, which ideally will relate back to your brand’s overall business goals such as driving brand awareness or acquiring leads. Facebook offers many campaign goal settings such as optimizing for page likes or driving consumers to click through to your website. Without a goal in mind, one can easily get lost in the plethora of campaign options social media platforms offer.
2. Break out available platforms into separate ad groups to better optimize and manage performance.
If one is planning to run an ad campaign in multiple places such as in Newsfeed, on the right column of the Newsfeed, or on platforms that Facebook offers such as Instagram or the Audience Network, break out the different platforms being utilized into separate ad groups for more granular reporting and optimizations. Moreover, develop ads and ad copy that fit within said platform. Newsfeed ads don’t always translate over into Instagram. Be cautious of which platforms are included in targeting and ensure they fit in with the brand’s overall business goals. If Newsfeed ads are performing better than right column ads, allocate budget accordingly or pause right column ads outright. These various platforms (shown below) offer advertisers many options to test out where their target audience is most likely to engage with their brand’s message.
3. Experiment with different ad types.
To keep up with consumers’ lack of attention span in the digital age, social media platforms are constantly searching for the latest and greatest ad format that will catch the attention of audiences and ultimately drive them to take an action. For example, Facebook recently released lead ads, allowing advertisers to integrate a form within an ad itself. Moreover, the form pre-populates with known personal information about the consumer from his or her Facebook profile, which makes it even easier for a consumer to convert. If your brand is looking to drive users to conversion, lead ads are a recommended tactic to integrate into your Facebook advertising strategy.
4. Never underestimate the power of a Split Test.
A split test compares the performance of two ads that differ in the slightest way such as different images, ad copy or targeting parameters. Split tests give your campaigns a higher likelihood to engage with consumers and allow you to deduce what ad(s) better resonate with your target audience. Facebook is an ideal ad platform to conduct split tests because of its many ad options, granular targeting parameters, and ease of implementation. Moreover, if one is looking to set up a split test, Power Editor is a great tool to utilize to speed up implementation time and precisely review ads prior to launch.
5. Pause low-performing ads to give top-performing assets maximum reach.
Once Facebook’s algorithm identifies a top-performer, it will continue to serve that ad at a higher propensity than your other ads running alongside it. To capitalize on this, pause lower-performing ads to give your top-performing ads maximum reach. On the flipside, once your top-performing ad has reached ad fatigue due to the increased frequencies, pause the top-performer and turn on the lower-performers to give them a chance to perform on their own. This is a great way to implement creative refreshes on Facebook without actually having to go through the entire process of developing new ads and ad copy.