Is there a universal marketing model you can apply to your Facebook ad campaigns? Will it produce spectacular results? Unfortunately, I have to worry – there is no golden mean. But by running your campaigns according to certain patterns and tests you can improve your results and significantly increase your ROAS!
From this article you will learn:
- – What’s changing in Facebook ads in 2022
- – What targets to choose for advertising campaigns
- – How advertising creatives work in campaigns
- – On the importance of testing advertising campaigns
Facebook advertising – does it still make sense?
Given the rising costs, increased competition and diminishing ad targeting options, you may be wondering if Facebook ads should still be part of your marketing strategy. Let’s be honest – Facebook is still the largest social media platform in Poland, and the people you want to reach with your product are on it.
Increases in ad costs are due to nothing more than more and more advertisers, and even though we have more places to display our ads each year, costs will continue to rise. As the stakes get higher and the competition gets better, it takes concrete action to win the race. The key at this point is to think about how the brand communication you are advertising looks, whether you can improve the design of your graphic materials, and whether your content is written in the language of benefits.
Remember, something that worked a few months ago may not be as effective today. Probably never before has marketing been as dynamic as it is now. Starting in 2020, we need to adapt communications very dynamically. When the situation with the pandemic had calmed down and marketers were able to apply new communication strategies, the war in Ukraine started – which had to cause further changes in communication.
Facebook’s privacy policy changes – famous iOS 14
Another reason for rising ad costs is changing privacy laws that affect user data. Facebook has phased out more targeting options by interest, so our reach options have changed.
Set your advertising campaigns to other goals!
You will probably be disappointed that in most cases your ads with the goal of conversion to purchase will not sell. Despite a perfect communication strategy, top-notch graphic materials and ideal texts in your ads, the campaign will not achieve the intended effect. The reason will be the data, or rather the lack of it – Facebook’s algorithm will work blindly and unfortunately, usually without results. You need to change your approach to marketing and start looking at campaigns in a different way. Since we no longer have the ability to target freely, we as marketers need to apply a sales funnel and help the Facebook algorithm learn how to make things work and campaigns sell.
If your pixel has little data, you don’t have enough website traffic, and your Facebook profile doesn’t have tens of thousands of fans – think about brand awareness campaigns to get your best posts seen more often. You probably also spend a lot of time creating amazing content with great graphics and videos, but you’re not reaching the right audience with it. A brand awareness campaign to showcase these videos and posts can have a huge impact on increasing the visibility of your products or services and that’s already a good step towards sales.
You can also consider campaigns for actions, such as activity or video views, which aim to encourage more people to interact with your page and your posts. In any of these scenarios, you will provide Facebook with more data about users that you can then use in targeting ads at the next stage of the sales funnel, which should positively impact sales of your services or products.
Collect user data – it’s important
Facebook can track everything users do on its platform – this means that metrics such as clicks, CTR and cost per click are very accurate.
Unfortunately, the privacy policy changes have depleted the ability to report on conversions and build target groups that require data from your website or landing page. Facebook has partially lost information about what happens on your website after a link is clicked, making it unable to always determine if a person has converted. However, with help come web analytics tools and the most well-known Google Analytics, which will help you track what happens on your website and determine your conversion rate. Make sure your data is accurate and remember to add UTM parameters to your links. You are allowed to track which ad campaign leads to conversions at a lower cost.
Collect data wherever possible. Remember: the more data you have, the better campaign results you will achieve. Accurate data will allow you to reach users at the right stage of their purchase path. Think about how you can attract new customers – perhaps instead of starting with a sales campaign, it’s worth offering specific value. A free ebook or special offer to new customers will help them get to know your brand better. At this stage, try to collect data – in exchange for access to knowledge, you can get e.g. an e-mail address or a phone number – and this is already a big step in preparing subsequent campaigns.
WIn the advertising campaigns we run for Happy Parrots partners, we achieve the highest ROAS on audiences that already know the brand well – but we wouldn’t have achieved this without a good strategy at the top of the sales funnel.
Refresh your Facebook ad creative at least once a month
One of the first things you can do when you start to see your ad costs increase is to refresh your ad creative. Facebook’s algorithm tends to favor new ads over older ones, and a fresh creative will attract more attention. A mistake that many companies and marketers make when it comes to their communication strategy is that they wait too long to create new creatives. Many brands wait until the cost of advertising starts to rise before they change their advertising, this can mean that the cost will rise much more than it needed to. For most ads, it is a good idea to check and refresh the creative about once a month even when the advertising message is the same. For ads with higher budgets, you may want to think about refreshing more frequently
If advertising costs are rising despite creative changes, perhaps the problem is poor communication and a failure to match the content of the ad to the stage of the user’s purchase path. Make sure the right audience is seeing the right messages and the overall creative is of very high quality.
As consumers become more demanding, as marketers we need to offer them more value to grab their attention. Nowadays, we have to test new groups and advertising creations extremely often in order to get their attention. At Happy Parrots we focus on testing and bold decisions – this is the only way we can build competitive advantages.
Sometimes it happens that despite taking care of all the steps described above, campaigns do not sell as we expect. Then it is best to look at the offer itself – whether it is attractive enough for the customers to decide to buy. Even the best advertising campaign may not be effective if the product or service itself is not attractive enough.
Images or video in Facebook ads?
Another question that often comes up is what is better for ads: static images or video content? The answer probably won’t surprise anyone: it depends. Some companies are better at using images in their ads, while others are more successful using videos.
We recommend ongoing testing with your audience to see which format works better.
Test, test and test some more!
Typically, in testing Facebook ad creatives, we focus on graphics, headlines, and text. It is also worth testing such things as emoticons in your campaign. Remember that Facebook users are surrounded by ads from all sides, which makes it harder to break through with your message. It seems that a good solution is to choose graphics in dynamic colors, but it is worth remembering who is our audience and whether such communication will be the right choice.
What else is worth testing?
Audience groups
It’s also worth testing different audiences using the options provided by Facebook, which still has powerful retargeting tools. You can build and test several custom audiences to determine which ones respond best to your ads.
Placement
Depending on your campaign goal, you can choose automatic or manual ad placement. In the case of automatic placement, Facebook, based on data from the campaign, will display the ads in different places where it can get better results. It is very important to check that all our graphics are properly aligned. There is nothing worse than a creative that is cut in half. In the case when we do not have proper dimensions of graphics or they are not adjusted e.g. to relations on Instagram, it may turn out that manual placement of ads will be a better solution. We should behave the same way when our budget is limited – let’s choose only the main location, such as the feed.
Campaign budget optimization
If your campaign has already achieved some results, try changing the budget optimization at the campaign level. Let Facebook’s algorithm work, the system will choose how to divide your campaign’s budget. The more data it receives, the better the optimizers will work and the system will choose the sets that deliver the results you want. This will save you a lot of time – but remember to keep your finger on the pulse. Algorithms are performing better and better, however, it is not a rule and sometimes advertiser’s intervention is advisable in order to achieve the best results.
Dynamic ads
Don’t have time to create different variations of ads? You can test dynamic Facebook ads, which allow you to create several versions of each element in your ad – headline, description and image. Based on this, Facebook’s algorithm will choose the best combination to meet the campaign’s goal. The downside of this solution is that you cannot analyze which combination achieved the best results.
Summary
Facebook is looking to take control in a significant way and recommends that most of what marketers do be automated. Algorithms work very well, but only when you give them enough data to learn. If your campaign isn’t performing satisfactorily, consider whether you have enough data – and whether other elements are set up correctly.
If you need help with your Facebook ad campaigns, or want to audit your ad account – contact Happy Parrots. We’ll be happy to help!
