Are you stuck in a rut with Facebook Ads? The social media experts at Scooter Media are here to help!
The following six hacks are simple strategies that you can incorporate into your next Facebook Ads campaign to help move the needle and drive action for your business.
Audiences
You may already be pretty familiar with Facebook Audiences, and probably have a “go-to” saved audience for your brand that reaches users in specific locations and demographics. However, tapping into these lesser-known and less frequently used targeting options can help your Page reach different audiences and attract new fans:
- Customer List: emails from your subscribers, email list, past buyers;
- Facebook Page: users who visited your page, engaged with a post or ad, clicked the CTA button on your profile, sent you a message, and more;
- Video: people who watched a video on your Facebook or Instagram account;
- Instagram account: those who engaged with your Instagram account, visited your profile, sent a message, or saved an ad;
- Event: people who responded to your Facebook Event, visited the event page, entered the ticket flow, or abandoned ticket purchase
By incorporating one or more of these audiences, you can help your Facebook Ads reach those who are already engaged with your brand.
Lookalikes
For those not familiar, a lookalike audience is when Facebook takes a list of users and finds users that have similar attributes to create a new list of users who are likely to engage with your Page. You can then add this new list to target with your Facebook Ads, hitting a whole new group of users who maybe don’t like your Page or haven’t previously heard of your brand.
See all those custom audiences above? You can create a lookalike audience from any of them! The possibilities are truly endless with the audiences you can create using lookalikes.
Pixels
If you plan to target users who visit your website, it’s imperative to implement a Facebook Pixel. A Pixel is relatively simple to set up. Once added to your website, you can tap into a variety of targeting options including users who have been to your site — or even a specific page — shoppers who abandoned their cart, and more.
Expand Reach
If you have a fairly large Facebook Ads budget but often experience issues spending your full budget on campaigns, try checking this box at the ad set level:
Targeting Expansion, according to Facebook, “helps improve your campaign performance by allowing our system to reach a broader set of people than those you defined in the detailed targeting section.” If Facebook deems that you’ll get better results, they will set aside some of your budget and “split it between your selected audience and a broader audience.”
It’s easy to miss this check box when quickly setting up an ad; however, it can help lower your overall cost per impressions, thereby maximizing the effectiveness of your ads.
Dynamic Content
Instead of setting up an A/B test within Facebook, you now have the ability to test out multiple headlines and descriptions within one Facebook Ad. This only works for new ads created, not boosted posts. Add in a few options for copy and Facebook does the rest, optimizing the ad to more frequently display whichever text option is performing best.
Naming Convention
Perhaps this is the simplest hack we have, but implementing a naming convention across your Facebook ads will save a lot of headaches down the road. It’s now optional to name your campaigns in Facebook Ads; however, we highly suggest that you create a naming structure that you can use across your campaigns, ad sets and ads.
Some things to include in your campaign would be the date of the boosted post or ad, the campaign objective, and a description of the post or ad. Facebook Ads has an option to create a “Name Template” that gives you a great place to start.
Having a naming structure allows for better tracking and organization when looking at the campaign view in Facebook Ads. When it comes to the end of the month, your nicely named campaigns are what gets pulled into Facebook billing invoices. You and your client will know exactly how much was spent on each campaign, keeping things streamlined throughout the process.
Like we’ve said before, Facebook Ads aren’t going anywhere. With that in mind, it’s important for savvy social media marketers to apply these six strategies to help maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns and take their brand’s presence on Facebook to new heights.
Looking for more social media tips? You won’t want to miss our “Tips for Turning Employees into Brand Advocates on Social Media,” or our “5 Strategies for Writing Social Media Posts That Sizzle”!
