9 Facebook ads tips from the speakers of Biddable World

• Updated on: 2018-11-04
• Read original article here

This is a guest post from our friends over at brightonSEO, which is a leading European organiser of online marketing conferences and training workshops.

Hosting a number of events each year, Brighton SEO brings together some of the best speakers in the world of SEO, PPC and SMM.

It’s not long until January 21st and our very first Biddable World, a conference we’ve put together focusing exclusively on Paid Search, Performance Display and Social Media Advertising. In the festive holiday spirit we thought we could give you a sneak peak of what is to come, by sharing 9 of our speakers’ and friends’ top Facebook Advertising tips. Enjoy!

“My top tip would be to make sure you fully understand the targeting options available. Facebook is the most powerful ad targeting system around when fully understood - you can target people based on their exact interests, demographics, relationship status, and education or based on their email address, phone number or user ID. Combining these into intelligent targeting sets allows you to find the exact users you want to deliver highly competitive cost per acquisition figures.”

“Close-up images improve click-through-rate by 20%-25%! Related statistics from our research at Adobe can also be found here.”

“If you're lucky enough to have an account manager with Facebook (who answers their emails or picks up their phone every now and again) then you can ask them to pull together an affinity report which will give you an idea of which brands your followers have an affinity to. This means you can then target users who like those brands but aren't yet connected to you, as they have a higher propensity to act in a similar way to users already connected with you.

If you don't have a Facebook account manager you can still get at 'similar users' - using custom audiences. Upload a mailing list or phone directory from your site or newsletter into Facebook, and you can choose to either target these users on Facebook, or you can exclude them but use them as the baseline for Facebook to find similar or 'lookalike' users.”

“Take advantage of Facebook's 20% text rule when it comes to creating graphics for your promoted posts by including text to grab your audience's attention. Just make sure your text doesn't occupy more than 20% of the image - any more could see your ads being disapproved.”

“Don't assume you know who your customers are. Even if - especially if - you're using Facebook for acquisition. You can find out so much more about who is interested in your brand, and how interested they are, by creating more campaigns and gradually broadening your reach beyond the usual suspects. Some of the mud will stick, some of it won't, but your CRM team will love you for it.”

“Experiment with different bid types. In a test I ran earlier this year, I found that with all things being equal (the creative, placement, ad type, targeting etc.) the different bid types varied my cost-per-conversion from $1.20 to $29.89! In general, optimised CPM (oCPM) for conversions works best (providing you have conversion tracking and enough conversion data), as Facebook are essentially optimising your budget to drive more conversions."

“Using a platform which allows you to easily create your own ads enables you to test several different ad formats and do MVT. Some platforms offer you full bid optimisation, which takes the time and effort out of manual bidding. You’ll often find they showcase a dashboard that displays all of your results, which saves time in downloading spreadsheets and working everything out for yourself.”

“Always tailor ad content to local audiences when working internationally. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach and simply translating content is not enough; for the best results take the time to really understand your audience and create optimised ad content which is unique and relevant to them.

Also important to remember is that Facebook is a very image-led platform, therefore visuals are especially important. To ensure maximum impact on your target audience, make sure to update your ads with fresh images and text regularly. This will minimise the risk of ‘ad fatigue’ (when users stop noticing your ads). Tie in ad copy refreshes with your testing schedule to get best results!”

"I'm a fan of using micro-conversions for search advertising, but I consider them even more important for Facebook. Remember that people are not in "transaction mode" the same way they are when on Google and set the goals of your campaigns accordingly"

Biddable World will be held in London at the Institute of Education on the 21st of January. Free conference tickets are sold out, but there are still some 2 day training workshop and conference tickets available.