If you already know the basics of how to set up your Facebook Ads and what the various ad types are, here are some points to consider when creating, posting and monitoring your ads.
Brand Building can be just as important as Conversions.
Don’t be too hung up or focused on immediate conversions. According to Facebook research, “higher funnel” marketing, which emphasizes brand recognition and initial reach, is just as effective and cost-efficient in generating sales in the long term as immediate conversion or call to action ads. This brand messaging is more suited in the case of adults age 35-54, and less so for teenagers, who react better to direct response ads. This is worth keeping in mind when you set your advertising goals and audience targeting demographics early on.
Use Facebook Pixel to track and retarget your audience.
Pixel is essentially a snippet of code that tracks your customer’s behaviour directly related to your brand on Facebook, Instagram and your website, and then advertises to them when they are on Facebook. You have to add this code to your website from either Facebook Events Manager or Business Manager (if you want it for more than one ad account). It can work both ways in terms of retargeting someone on Facebook after they visited your site, or track their actions after visiting your site from Facebook. The latter can be extremely useful for tracking conversions, optimizing your ads, and creating new target audiences. One caveat though: iOS 14 prevents a lot of this tracking unless a few steps such as completing domain verification and planning to operate with eight “conversion events” per domain is put in place.
Try and find your optimal ad frequency.
It seems common sense that more ads equal more brand recognition, which in turn would lead to more sales. But there can be either a saturation point of over-advertising or, more likely, a low ROI after a certain inflexion point in the number of ads. This number would differ for every product, demographic and ad combination, so you would need to keep testing to find the optimal point where you’re not spending unnecessarily, or leaving conversions on the table.
A/B (Always Be) Testing.
Speaking of testing, this should be a constant in your advertising journey. New ads can be tested in their efficacy against controls, and it’s often even worth trying two versions of a similar ad before a larger launch. The ad creating form allows you the option to choose to make the first ad in a particular campaign the control for A/B Testing. It is worth taking advantage of this and Facebook’s integrated metrics systems to ensure you’re making the right changes to and decisions on your future ads.
Tracking Each Ad’s Performance.
Once you’re testing, you need to analyze and optimize. This is where the Facebook Ads Manager dashboard comes in. From here you can monitor the performance of each ad, and then decide where it is more efficient to put your advertising towards. This can of course get very intricate and detailed, so it may be worth starting with a few basic metrics and moving on from there.
