One of the biggest challenges with Facebook is the common trend of performance metrics seeing a significant decline after the first couple of weeks or even days of the campaign being live. Based on running a number of campaigns and experiencing exactly the same thing, i have included top tips below which work to get your Facebook campaigns back on track. Hopefully this will save you some time.
Keep an eye on Frequency
Within the Facebook interface you can select the metric frequency from the custom metrics option, this shows you have how many times a user has seen your ad. The right frequency will depend on your campaign objectives, product and audience. However we should keep in mind that if a user has already seen your ads numerous of times and has still not taken an action, the chances are they won’t. Remember that Facebook will give you an ad relevance score which is made up of the ads CTR and engagement, if frequency is high and users are no longer engaging with your ad, you will find your CTR will drop, this in effect will result in Facebook charging more for serving your ad and will serve your ads less.
Run burst campaigns
A great method for improving your campaign performance is to have a level of activity which is always on and support this with burst campaigns. This will ensure you dont exhaust your audience by targeting the same ad to the same audience for a long period of time, as a plus this will help with budget management. Build campaigns around seasonality, promotions, around periods where these key users are more likely to purchase i.e. pay day, weekends and rotate your audiences and ads.Try using the ad scheduling function to support with day of week rotations.
Adjust your budgets
You may have an audience which works particularly well for you however due to its size, frequency increases quickly and you start to notice a drop in performance. Aim for a frequency of 2 and when you start to see a drop in performance, test new audiences or broaden your current audience. You can now set up rules in Facebook which will alert you to CTR drops, this is handy if you dont have the chance to check in on your accounts frequently.
Rotate your ads
Rotate your ads as often as can, create as many variations as you can before you go live i.e. different images, ad formats, headline, copy and then use these variations to rotate them every 3 – 5 days.
Switch to daily unique reach
One of the tactics i have utilised is to switch from impressions or website clicks to daily unique reach within the ‘optimise for’ section of the advert set build screen. whilst this can be successful in reducing frequency as Facebook will only serve your ad to a user once per day, this can be expensive. Do however give this a try as it can work in some cases.
Reduce frequency and find new audiences via custom audiences
You can utilise custom audiences to add as inclusions or exclusions for your targeting. You can create custom audiences based on pixel implementation, CRM list uploads or based on a users engagement with your ads (Only lead ads, canvas and video at this point). This gives you the opportunity to do three things; stop serving ads to users who have already made a purchase, for users who haven’t purchased identify where they have been on-site or what they have previously purchased to serve them ads which are most relevant to them, and thirdly so you can create look-a-likes of users who have purchased previously. Not only do these tactics make your marketing efforts much more effective but it also gives you a way in which to find and target new audiences rather than serving ads to the same users.
Test alternative ad objectives
When you are planning your campaign and you have an acquisition goal its a no-brainer to create image ads with the objective of clicks to site with the CTA of shop now. Try video campaigns and alternative formats to engage with your audience and focus on product features and benefits before expecting a user to make an immediate purchase.
Re-build campaigns
If after attempting the above you are still not seeing success (Which you should) or if you have been running the same campaign for quite some time, maybe not having implemented best practices previously, i would recommend re-building your campaigns with the above in mind and you will see a significant improvement in results.