Sharing is caring!

The following is a guest post by Anne Felicitas. Anne is a Writer and Social Media Manager at Advertisemint, a Facebook advertising agency.

Are your Facebook ads in desperate need of an upgrade? Do you want your ads to shine among the others, to garner the conversions you covet? Then read on. This article outlines the ten best ways you can upgrade your Facebook ads.

1. Have an Objective

Don’t even think about starting your ad campaign without determining a clear objective. Running a campaign without it is akin to sending your players to a football game without a game plan. Before you create your ads, decide what you want your ads to achieve: do you want them to increase app downloads, to drive people to your physical store, to increase video views, or to purchase your product or services? Facebook has several objective options you can choose from as illustrated by the image below.

Because your ads’ features and optimization depend on your objective, you must determine the objective you want for your ads before creating them.

2. Narrow Your Targeting

When sending your ad into Facebook’s platform, you want to aim your ads at the right audience rather than shooting them blindly at a crowd. This is where targeting comes in.

Unfortunately, many advertisers either don’t know how targeting works or they haven’t unlocked Facebook’s vast ad targeting options. Because most advertisers usually use the most ineffective, most popular, and most competitive targeting options, they squander their budgets and fail to reach a high-interest audience likely to convert.

To narrow your targeting, create an audience profile with the targeting options Facebook provides. There are 850 options divided into the categories demographics, connections, interest, Custom Audience, and behaviors. Your audience profile will look something like this:

• Gender: Female and Male
• Age: 18-30
• Language: English
• Connections: women and men who like Work Out World, American Ninja Warrior and friends of women and men who like Work Out World, American Ninja Warrior
• Custom Audience: customer contact list
• Behaviors: men and women who like health and fitness Facebook pages
• Interest: the gym, exercise, health, and fitness, the outdoors

The more specific your target audience, the better your chances of serving ads to an audience likely to convert and the more money you save.

3. Add a Value Proposition to Your Ad

Value propositions give your customers incentive to take action because of your ad. There are three types of value propositions.

• Relevancy- a solution to a problem
• Quantified value-a money-saving deal such as a discount or free shipping
• Unique differentiation-a reason why customers should buy from you and not your competition

Target’s ad contains a value proposition of quantified value by offering a 50% discount.

Meanwhile, TrackR’s ad offers a value proposition of relevancy by giving customers a solution to a problem: never having to lose one’s belongings ever again.

4. Optimize Your Ads for Mobile Devices

Research shows that more people access Facebook through their mobile phones than through their desktops. eMarketer found that mobile has accounted for half of all digital advertising in 2015. In the following year after that discovery, Facebook’s daily active mobile users rose to 989 million—that’s 989 million potential viewers for your Facebook ads. Since more people are on the app rather than the webpage, you should optimize for mobile. There are several ways you can do this:

• Place ads on mobile devices

Choose “All Devices” or “Mobile Only” on the “Edit Placements” section of Ads Manager to place your ads on mobile.

• Write short copy

Write shorter copy to avoid truncation. Although you can use a maximum of 345 characters on mobile before your text is truncated, try to be concise by keeping your copies to a few lines.

• Use mobile-friendly landing pages

Make sure your landing page loads quickly and works properly when accessed through mobile.

5. A/B Test Your Ads

A/B testing allows you to know which ads garner the revenue and which do not. To A/B test, you can test copy against copy, image against image, and CTA against CTA. For example, when AdEspresso tested copy with emojis against copy without emojis, it found that copy with emojis performed better than copies without emojis.

6. Refresh Creatives

Refreshing your creatives combat ad fatigue, a pesky phenomenon that occurs when your target audience that has seen your ads too many times ignores or overlooks your ads. Unfortunately, ad fatigue causes your CTRs to increase and your frequency to decrease. There are several cost-effective ways you can combat ad fatigue:

1. Revise ad copy

• Write statements rather than questions or vice versa
• Mention or don’t mention your product in your copy
• Add or eliminate emojis (if applicable)
• Add or remove price details
• Change the text’s tone
• Change the CTA verbiage

2. Edit image

• Edit generic photos by adding graphics and filters
• Turn photos into gifs
• Place photos against a quirky background
• Add or remove brand logo

3. Turn videos or photos into gifs

• Turn photos or videos into gifs with the programs Gifboom, Cinemagram, Giffer, or Gif Camera.

7. Use Original Images

When AdEspresso tested product photos against stock photos, it discovered that product photos performed better than stock photos, illustrating the point that original images are the better option.

Unfortunately, many advertisers use stock photos for their ads because they are cheaper and easier to obtain. However, you can always recycle your old photos by placing them against a quirky background, editing them with new filters, adding captions and stickers among many other decorations, or turning them into gifs.

8. Add a Clear Call-to-Action to Your Copy

CTAs directs customers on the next step after reading your ad. It tells them whether they should purchase your product or services, download your app, or visit your website. CTAs can be as forthright as “buy now,” “sign up,” or “click here” or it can be subtle as Tesco’s CTA in the ad example below.

In this ad, the CTA “Find more tips” urges customer to explore its online recipes.

9. Add Social Proof to Your Ad

Social proof shows customers that people are taking action because of your ad or engaging with your ad by liking, sharing, or commenting on the ad. It can appear on the copy, with lines such as “10,000 people have downloaded this app” or it can be the engagement section on the bottom of a Facebook ad where it lists the amount of likes, shares, and comments on your ad.

Social proof is important because it functions as word of mouth on social media: when people see ads that their friends, whom they share interests with, have liked, they are likely to trust that ad.

10. Analyze Your Data

Much like A/B testing, analyzing your data is a vital part of managing your ad campaign. Fortunately, you don’t need third parties to give you the data for your ads. In fact, Facebook offers free data that gives you insights into the demographics of your audience, the relevance score of your ad, and the amount of engagement, among numerous other vital information. Analyzing data allows you to see what works and what doesn’t. It allows you to improve your campaign to gain better ROIs.

If you want to improve your Facebook ads, try one, two, or all of the advice outlined above.

Sharing is caring!