Advanced tips for getting the most out of your Facebook ads

So we know how much Facebook is making and that the majority of their revenue comes from advertising, but do you really know how to milk your own Facebook advertising for all it’s worth? Facebook ads are turning into an art of their own and are now far more advanced than simply chucking up a few ads and hoping for the best.

With that in mind, I’ve put together an update to the top tips for making the most of your Facebook ads to (hopefully) increase your click through rate, reduce your cost per click and improve the overall engagement of your ads.

Target Ads Based On Actions

This isn’t currently an option within Facebook’s own self-serve advertising platform, but the company Social Ads Tool has developed the functionality to be able to target users based on particular actions they take. This is based on the new Open Graph features, that allow app developers to create their own actions within an app such as ‘listened to’ ‘ate’ ‘visited’ etc..

 

Unfortunately this isn’t a free tool, but it’s recommended for those with larger marketing budgets – to test out new Facebook functionality as it emerges and ensure new ways of getting in front of your target audience – before everyone bundles in and starts doing the same

Time Your Sponsored Stories

The click through rate of sponsored stories will typically be much higher than standard Facebook ads – mainly because they don’t look like ads but instead fit beter with the organic nature of discovering content on Facebook. With sponsored stories you have two options: Page Like Story (your ad is shown when a friend Likes your page) and Page Post Like Story (your ad is shown when a friend likes a particular post on your Page).

From a user’s perspective, the second one is likely to appear more interesting, as it isn’t just about liking ‘x’ brand, but they get an insight into the type of content on your Page. Time these sponsored stories well. You’ll know when you’ve got a particularly good update, such as an offer, competition, or exclusive piece of content. Time your sponsored stories around the time of this post, to make the engagement spread further.

Lead To A Dedicated Tab

When you’re a new fan seeing a Facebook Page for the first time, it can be hard to ascertain how useful the Page might be and whether it’s even an official Page by just looking at the wall. You’ll probably find a much better connection rate on your ad (the amount of people who Like your Page after clicking on an ad) if you take them through to a dedicated landing tab that tells them exactly what they need to know and why they should join their Page. And of course, if you Likegate this, you’ll likely see a higher connection rate too. Note this option is also available as ‘Page Post Advert’ in standard Facebook ads.

Promote Shared Links

You’ll find that Facebook advertising works best when you reflect the ways that people use Facebook overall. So it’s not all about just promoting your brand, but sharing content as well. Sharing links on your Facebook Page is a good way to engage existing fans, but you should also choose to promote these as specific post as well. These will show up slightly differently in the ad sidebar on users’ profiles, which will further draw attention to your ad. You can promote this either by selecting the shared link post from within the Facebook ad option:

…or by entering the post id of that specific post:

The post ID can be found by clicking into a particular post, and copying the numbers at the end of the url:

…which you then enter into the required field:

Promote Retrospectively

Whereas Page post stories previously only let you promote your most recent content, with the new option to manually enter a post ID, you can now promote retrospectively. This means that your best content can keep on working for you. Target your ads based on your post’s popularity.

So if one of your posts is getting a lot of comments/likes, or you even find for example that an offer-driven post is converting into sales, promote this post retrospectively to keep generating positive results. You’ll need careful tracking to ensure this is done in the best way, particularly looking for activity on your own website originating from Facebook ads.

Think about timing

This applies particularly if you’re running a Facebook ad campaign that’s promoting individual posts. When you’re leading through to a post, the likelihood is that once someone’s clicked on your ad, they’re going to Like your Page/post or leave a comment. If you’re running these ads at the weekend, try and make sure that you have someone around to actually follow up on this action.

You might risk putting off a new fan if, for example, they ask a question as a followup, but it doesn’t get answered. Try allocating your ad budget based on times that you know work. This might be taken from your Google Adwords campaign, where you can day-part your reports to find which times of the day your users are most likely to engage with you.