As one of the top advertising platforms for B2C marketing, Facebook ads are an attractive buy for digital marketers. Their potential reach and low costs are just a few of the reasons that industries are scooping them up to connect with online audiences—healthcare included.
But if you’re just slapping together an image and some copy for your Facebook ads, you’re not laying the groundwork for maximum return on investment. Because of the social media platform’s ever-changing algorithm, optimizing your Facebook ads is crucial for getting the most bang for your buck.
At its most basic, the algorithm works like this: If your content gets clicks, shares and other engagement, it’ll appear in more News Feeds – and so will your future posts. But if your Facebook ads aren’t getting engagement, they’ll start appearing less (costing you more in the long run). You can keep track of the amount of times Facebook shows your ads by checking the Frequency metric in your ads manager.
Below, you’ll find four simple ways to optimize your Facebook ads for more exposure:
- Get organized. Desktop and mobile ads are two different beasts, so use Facebook’s ad sets to keep them distinct. Captions and call-to-actions that work on one platform may not be as effective on the other, and you don’t want your analytics to get muddled by mixing everything. Optimize your Facebook ads separately to ensure pure data.
- Test everything. With Facebook advertising, it’s easy to use different ad sets for some A/B split testing. Try out a different photo for each ad and see how each one performs. Have a new product or service line? Pit two video ads with the same CTA against each other and see which one comes out on top. Once you have some metrics, you can refine your marketing efforts and focus on the stronger ad recipe.
- Go granular. When optimizing your Facebook ads, you can segment audiences down to the “nitty gritty.” That includes everything from geographic locations and income levels to spending behavior and interests. By using Audience Insights, you can focus only on people who are likelier to be interested in your message; you won’t waste money trying to cast a wide net. Fun fact: If you have an email list, you can even use those emails to create a Custom Audience, a feature that lets you target your existing customers. Once you have that established, you can then create a Lookalike Audience of users who fit your current clients’ personas, thus increasing the likelihood of conversion.
- Rotate your ads. Your job isn’t done once you’ve published the ad. Each of your Facebook ads has an expiration date, so monitor their performance regularly. If you start seeing a consistent decrease in engagement, your creative may have run its course. The key is to keep monitoring your ads and keep updating them to stay top of mind.
Need help optimizing your Facebook ads? Wax Custom Communications can help. Call us at 305-350-5700 or email us to start making the most of Facebook’s powerful advertising tools.
