Before you read this article listen to me carefully (with Liam Neeson’s voice in Taken)
- This article is for intermediate level on Facebook advertising.
- This article is too long.
- If you have another way to optimize Facebook ads share it with us and we will add it to the article under your name.
1) Define your goal before you start:
Before you are going to make a Facebook campaign you need to define your goal first, and Facebook is really helpful at this point because they ask you about your goal before you start your campaign.
Your advertising objective or goal is what you want people to do when they see your ads for instance: Increase website visits, increase Facebook page fans or increase post engagement (Like, share and comment)
So, what are the objectives of a campaign in Facebook:
See Facebook campaign objectives on the next image:
Boost your post: you will boost the engagement rate of your post that you’ve already created (or scheduled) on your page.
Promote your page: increase the number of page likes, your ad will appear to people who are likely to take the action of liking your page after increasing the number of fans your posts will reach your fan base and you can boost your posts to them.
Send people to your website: people will go to a specific destination URL on your website like home page, contact us page or your online store.
Increase conversions on your website: in this objective your ad will appear to people who are likely to do a specific action on your website (ex: register) in this objective you can track conversions but first you must add a code on your website.
Get installs of your app: you want to increase the number of mobile application’s number of installs, and you will use a link to the app store.
Increase engagement in your app: target people who have already installed your app and who you want to use your app more.
Raise attendance at your event: you will create an ad for an event that you have already created, people can add this event to your Facebook calendar and people will get reminders about your event.
Get people to claim your offer: you will create an ad with a discount or special deal you want to provide and you can decide how many people can claim the offer.
Get video views: increase video views.
For business (especially small business) we recommend to use website conversions because this objective will allow you to see how much a new lead costs.
2) Create a smaller audience target:
What is really important from your ad more than the number of potential reach is the actual reach, so, try to make a specific target audience and break up your audience into smaller groups in advertising.
We think that your potential reach will be so good if you target 100,000 : 250,000 (not so big or so small).
3) Use right column ad to brand awareness and newsfeed (desktop – mobile) for increasing sales:
When you are starting to make a Facebook campaign or any other marketing campaign you start thinking about the campaign objectives, is this campaign for brand awareness or generate leads, sales and footfall to your store?
Actually, we recommend to use the right column ad for brand awareness, you will get more impressions than the newsfeed (definitely less CTR), and use the newsfeed (desktop – mobile) for generating leads, sales and footfall to your store, you will get impressions less than the right column but higher CTR.
4) Separate your mobile ads from desktop ads:
When you are going to make a campaign try to make two separated ad sets (in the same campaign) one for a mobile newsfeed only and the other one for desktop newsfeed, why?
- This will help you to give more focus for mobile newsfeed than desktop newsfeed in bidding. (Because people are using Facebook from mobile more than desktop)
- This will help you to define what is more effective for you, desktop or mobile and you can define your target audience by the device.
- When you are using the OCPM model Facebook will optimize the impressions to mobile more than desktop.
5) Segment your audiences using ad sets:
No one will click on your ad if he hasn’t any interest in your subject, so you should make a segmentation of your target audience.
Let’s take an example, you are an owner of a sports website so you have different target segmentation (for instance football and basketball), you will start a campaign named sports with two different ad set (Not only a one ad set) for basketball and football, because people who have an interest in football maybe they don’t have an interest in basketball and vice versa.
So you will create a one campaign (sports) and divided it to two separated ad sets one for football and one for basketball.
This option will allow you to optimize your Facebook ads depends on the interests.
6) Use conversion pixel:
If your goal is to increase conversions (ex: registrations) on your website you should use conversion pixel on your website then you add it to Facebook ad.
How to use a conversion pixel: (Based on Facebook)
(A) Create a pixel:
Steps:
(A-1) Go to Ads Manager.
(A-2) Click conversion tracking on the left side.
(A-3) Click on create pixel.
(A-4) Choose the type of action that you want to measure.
(A-5) Click create pixel.
(A-6) Copy the code and add it to your website (or send it to your developer and he will paste the code). (Look at the next point to know how to paste it).
(B) Paste the pixel on your website:
Paste the code between <head> and </head> on the web page where you want to track conversions. (Confirmation page or thank you page)
Confirmation page: the page that people go to it after a specific action (register).
(C) Choose campaign objective:
When you are creating your Facebook campaign choose (increase conversions on your website) then paste your URL (the confirmation page) and choose your pixel code.
(D) Measure your success:
(D-1) Go to facebook.com/ads/manage/reporting
(D-2) Click on customize columns.
(D-3) Click on websites on the left column.
(D-4) Website actions.
(D-5) Remark on registrations then click apply.
7) Create a custom audience:
What is the custom audience?
Facebook defines custom audience as (people that visit your website – people who use your mobile app)
How can I create custom audience?
(7-1) Go to audiences on the left column on Facebook ads manager
(7-2) Create custom audience
(7-3) Click on website traffic
(7-4) Accept the terms
(7-5) Copy the code and replace it between <head> and </head> in your website
(7-6) Click on create audience
(7-7) Choose a website traffic option
(7-8) Write an appropriate description
(7-9) Click on create audience
(7-10) Facebook will thank you for creating a custom audience (finally, thanks god)
Lost? See the images below:
8) Calculate a cost per lead for Facebook advertising:
Every time that you create a Facebook campaign you will see that Facebook is calculating CPC (cost per click), CPM (cost per mile or thousand impressions) and these cost indexes are important, but the most important index is Cost Per Lead (CPL: the cost of acquiring a new sale).
Every time when I was with a group of marketers I heard them talking about how much should I spend on Facebook advertising?!
The answer is easy: spend less on each customer you get through Facebook ads.
You should care about cost per lead more than any other costs when you are making a lead generation marketing campaign.
So we need to calculate the cost per customer, but how?
It’s a simple equation:
Cost per lead = Ad spend / Total number of leads
So if your ad spend was $1,000 and the total number of leads equal $100, so the cost per lead will be $1,000 / $100 = $10
So you pay $10 to acquire a lead.
Try to use these steps and if you have another way to optimize Facebook ads write to us.