Increase your conversions through Facebook ads
People doing performance marketing note: facebook is a great channel to acquire new customers & if you are losing money that means you are not doing it right. Every channel has its audience & nature of how people react to it. Pumping money & expecting conversions out of it will not get you conversions at the price you want. It will just make Mark Zuckerberg richer.
Take google for instance — It works on keywords & has more transactional audience who are looking for a product & you are bidding to outdo other competitors for that keyword search. Facebook on the other hand has both transactional as well as non-transactional audience & its your job to find the transactional ones with right targeting.
In this article, I am going to talk about how to increase or get conversions through facebook ads by doing the small but right hacks.
- Defining the goal — The primary thing we do is define the goal really well. Majorly, you should always define any online ad action through two goals: Branding & Conversions . As per facebook, conversion is defined as:
- Pixel Integration — As we will run ‘conversions’ campaign, facebook pixel integration on your website is must. If your website is on shopify or other platform, the integration becomes easier as it maps all the custom conversion events automatically. If not, you can follow the instructions & make sure you map the ‘purchase’ script code.
- Choosing the right audience — This comes in the ad set level. You have gone ahead & selected the objective as ‘conversions’ & the second part of the funnel is choosing the right audience. I am going to divide into parts when it comes to preparing the right audience.
Placements: Facebook has the default setting of automatic placements wherein it starts showing your ads on all the placements (audience network, facebook feeds & instagram). I mostly avoid audience network unless its a mass product or a service as it shows on third party apps & platforms. Facebook feeds have been the most reliable placements of showing ads. Instagram only if your audience is under 25 & women.
Custom Audiences: This is the best thing to happen to facebook ads. Make sure you create custom audiences & lookalike audiences based on your website visitors & subscribers or email ids of your actual audience who purchased or booked from your site in the past. If I compare between an ad set with lookalike audiences & without lookalike, the lookalike ad set has performed 3x better than the other ad set.
Detailed Targeting: When brands run campaigns, many people tend to overlook the behaviors & the demographics part. The interesting part I like or has shown tremendous results are the behaviors. Try experimenting with various browsers, excluding unwanted operating systems (like windows os), consumer classifications & many more. When you do the targeting make sure you check the daily unique reach/day. It needs to be maximum based on the targeting.
- Ads — The most effective or converting ads I have seen don’t look like an ad. It looks like another facebook post on your timeline. Facebook is too cluttered with posts, pictures, memes, statuses & over selling brands. Do not oversell. Some dos & don’ts here.
Do’s
- Consistent styling across your images especially if you are doing the carousel ad format.
- Use real faces more than illustrations or animated images unless you are doing the most awesome illustrations.
- Rather than writing sentences in the ads, put clear cut pointers as there is very limited attention span on the ad & they will not read your whole pitch.
- The content & the visuals you choose make sure they are there on the landing page or your website. Having different visual on the ad & different on the landing is a bounce.
- The ads should convey a story in itself and not be an overselling trick.
Don’ts
- Avoid using foreign faces, visuals, setup, etc. Lets say your target audience is Asian, do not use European faces or visuals in the ads.
- Using dark color backgrounds is a big turn off like black & red. The maximum conversions happen on blue, green & mix colors. Light color background always works as it highlights the product more than the background.
- Dont overwrite the ad text, headline or supporting text. Keep it crisp & simple.
I have worked with 30 brands when it comes to online marketing out of it 20 were spending the highest on Facebook ads than other channels. If ads are done right, the CAC (cost of acquiring a customer) can drop to 50% of your average product or service ticket price.
If this interests you, do check out a detailed video course on Facebook Ads Targeting. Would love to hear suggestions/comments on the same.
