There’s no denying that Facebook Ads can boost your product or service. And if done properly, running the ads can be cost-effective too. The Facebook Ad platform has become quite the behemoth; in 2021 alone it generated $114.93 billion U.S. Dollars in ad revenue1
And for the most part, people are happy with it too. Choosing to omit Facebook from your paid social strategy means losing out on a huge share of the social media user base, along with some fairly advanced technological capabilities.
And let’s not forget that Facebook owns Instagram and Whatsapp too. From your Facebook Ad manager, you have the ability to publish paid content to all of those platforms. Those three platforms have a combined user base of 3.6 billion users!
So now that we’ve established that Facebook Advertising can and should be used for your business, just what is the best way to get the most out of it? Well, read on, as we share our 7 Facebook Ad-Proven Hacks To Improve Your ROI in 2023.
Hack No 1 – it’s all about Ad Quality
Let’s be honest, Facebook has had some dodgy press in the past, and slowly but surely, they’re waking up to it. That’s why it’s important to be aware of a key change in the Facebook Ad algorithm; it’s now all about the customer.
The engagement-to-impressions ratio is now THE key metric for Facebook to determine ad quality.
What does this mean? Every time your ad is shown it counts as an impression. The expectation is that if your ad copy is high quality and engaging, people will, well engage with it by liking, loving or sharing the ad.
Conversely, if your ad shows thousands of times and gets little interaction from Facebook users, this will be noticed too. Good old Facey will lower your quality score (an invisible metric used to ‘score’ an ad). Lower-quality ads will end up costing more, whereas high-quality ads attract a lower CPM (cost per mil) and CPC (cost per click) depending on the goal you’ve chosen.
Hack No 2 – Make full use of the Meta Pixel
The pixel is a piece of tracking code you install onto your website. You’ve probably heard of it; it can be particularly useful for retargeting customers who didn’t complete a purchase for example.
But there’s another extremely useful way to make use of the pixel; you can make use of the customer data gathered from other users pixels too.
How does this work?
Facebook is, by way of the pixel data, tracking the habits of every user that visits any site with pixel code enabled. This means they have the big picture on spending habits across the board.
How does this benefit me?
When creating an audience for your Facebook Ad there’s an option to target engaged shoppers. You can find it under; Detailed Targeting > Behaviours > Purchase Behaviour
As mentioned previously, Facebook is tracking the behaviour of customers across any website that has pixel code installed. This means they know who buys frequently online and who doesn’t.
By targeting engaged shoppers in an ad campaign, you increase the chance of getting higher conversions as you’re targeting people who have proven that they’re comfortable spending online.
Hack No 3 – Promote your Organic Content
Organic reach is about as bad as it’s ever been on Facebook. According to Hootsuite, organic reach is down to just 5.2%.
The truth is, organic content is also often our best content. It’s not usually ‘salesly’ and people engage with it more (if they can see it!)
Our solution: simply boost your organic post. The option will come up under your recently posted content, and if you decide to do it, you’ll be presented with options to specify duration, budget, locations and even audiences to target.
Hack No 4 – Schedule Your Content
If you have a Facebook page for your business, you have access to a tool called; “Facebook Publishing Tools”
From there, you can schedule your content, save audiences and more. Also, if you link your Instagram account to your Facebook, you can schedule content for both platforms at the same time. To learn more about FBT click here.
Hack No 5 – Avoid Ad Fatigue
One common mistake we see with those less experienced on the Facebook platform is the lack of ad creativity. Usually, 1 or 2 ads are created and they are then uploaded within 1 ad campaign with budget, audience, duration etc all set.
The problem is that the same ad can start showing to the same audience over and over again. A user might recognise the ad, but if it didn’t grab them the first time, they are less likely to click on it a second (or third or fourth) time.
Oh, and another thing to consider; ads are shown to become more expensive, the more times they are repeated. Check out these numbers from Adespresso;
2 views: it increases by 45%
3 views: it increases by 60%
4 views: it increases by 70%
5 views: it increases by 90%
A good way to determine how many repetitions your ads might be getting is to look at the ‘frequency’ metric in your ad reports. The range is from 1-10 with 10 being the most repeated.
Our suggestion is to ensure your ads stay under a ‘3’ to remain fresh to the user. If the frequency goes higher than that you can either upload new ad creative into the existing campaign or create a new campaign entirely.
Hack No 6 – Use Videos instead of Images
Facebook clearly favours video content over images. In fact, if you post a video on FB or Instagram, most of your followers will actually get a push notification that you’ve posted a new video! This never happens for a regular post. According to Databox, your ad conversions increase by 20% – 30% when using video content over images.
What if I don’t have a video?
You can always animate images these days with transitions etc to breathe some life into your still images. Or this brings us nicely to Hack no 7.
Hack No 7 – Use UGC everywhere you can
UGC or User Generated Content is arguably one of the most powerful forms of advertising these days.
Why? Because it’s a real person that is either unboxing, demonstrating or showcasing your product. And despite the relative lack of production quality, people engage with it, because it’s authentic.
Going back to the question in hack no 6 – what if I don’t have a video? You can always ask your customers to shoot a 15 – 30 second video for you, perhaps offer them a discount off their next purchase if they do.
Once you have the content, use it for ad creative.
Bonus tip: if you do not yet have any customers, or are unable to source your own UGC, there are people who will do it for you. Go to Fiverr or Upwork and type in ‘UGC’ – choose ‘local’ for your search option and you’ll see lots of Aussies who make a living unboxing, reviewing and demonstrating products.
The beauty of receiving UGC content is that you can repurpose it for other mediums such as TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn or any service that supports video.
In conclusion
Hopefully, this has given you some insight into how powerful Facebook advertising can be, and how the focus of the algorithm has fundamentally changed.
We also hope that our hacks have sparked some ideas for your next ad campaign. If we can ever help you dream up and execute the next dream campaign, please feel free to reach out.
