Optimizing Facebook campaigns: 15 tips & tricks

Today I'll show you how to create your own Optimize Facebook campaign can! Have you run Facebook campaigns but haven't achieved the desired success? Then you are not alone. When running Facebook campaigns, there are numerous building blocks that need to be taken into account so that you can successful campaigns get them to work. Today I present the most common reasons why Facebook campaigns fail!

Facebook campaign optimization: 15 tricks & tips

1. running time too short / insufficient data volume

You started your Facebook campaign yesterday and it's not converting? This is expected in 99% of the cases. The approach to Facebook campaigns is fundamentally different to Google AdWords campaigns. The first few days or weeks of your campaign are there to generate as much high-quality data as possible. This happens even if you don't generate any sales or leads. Important data that you collect when running Facebook Ads is information about your target group. For this reason, you should take a closer look at the following points:

• Which Facebook placement has the best values? (CPO, CPC, CTR)
• Which headline works best? (CPO, CPC, CTR)
• Which picture / video has the best values? (CPO, CPC, CTR)
• Which text works best? (CPO, CPC, CTR)

etc.

Once you've figured out which image + text combinations and which target group (age, gender, interests, device) work best, you can create your Facebook campaign precisely to this target group.

Important: When running Facebook campaigns, you should be patient and monitor the performance of the respective ads.

2. the wrong Facebook placements

There are numerous configuration settings for the placement of Facebook campaigns. One of the most important is the selection of Facebook placements. With Facebook placements, you tell Facebook where your ads should be displayed. The best-known placement for ads is the newsfeed, but there are numerous placements that you can use. Each placement has its own characteristics that you should be aware of. When placing ads in the Instagram feed, for example, you should focus on high-resolution images and a short text excerpt. You should also pay attention to the performance of the respective Facebook placements. Ads in the Instagram feed have the highest CPC, while ads in the Audience Network have the lowest. You can find a complete evaluation of the performance of the respective Facebook placements here here. To view the performance of your Facebook campaigns based on placements, select the campaign to be analyzed and choose the "Placement" option in the "Breakdown" menu item. Facebook will now show you the performance of the respective placements.

3. no A/B testing or split testing

What amazes me most about optimizing Facebook campaigns for clients is the placement of single Facebook ads without variations. After creating an ad, Facebook even offers the option to, Split test to create the perfect ad. For the placement of Facebook Ads I usually use three different headlines, three different images, three different texts and two different link descriptions to find the perfect ad for my target group. After running a split test, you can also see which people click on which Advertisements react best. Based on this data, it is then possible to high-performance advertisements switch. By running split tests, you can give your ads an extreme performance boost!

4. too broad targeting

The most important success factor in the placement of Facebook campaigns is the selection of the target group. A bad ad that is shown to the right target group works better than the best ad that is shown to an irrelevant target group. For this reason, target group selection should be taken as seriously as the Keyword selection for Google AdWords ads. The best way to determine the right target group is to use Custom & Lookalkie Audiences. If you don't have any customers yet, you need to get started with the IInterest targeting be content. Here you should be careful not to enter interests that are too generic. Example: Instead of focusing on the interest "soccer", you should post " A Jugend FC Bayern München" as an interest. When advertising on an interest basis, it can also be useful to test the different interests. To ensure this, several ad groups are placed. Each of the ad groups contains only one Feature of interest. This is how we find out which interest is closest to our target group.

5. too aggressive scaling of the Facebook campaign

Once the right ad and target group have been found, the next challenge arises. You want more sales and leads, so the daily budget is increased and the good performance of the Facebook campaign take a bath! To avoid this, the Facebook campaign should be scaled gradually. I have written a separate blog post on the topic "Scaling Facebook campaigns" is written. In most cases, Facebook performance is shot to pieces because the daily budget is suddenly increased. Instead of doubling the daily budget from one day to the next, the budget should be increased gradually so that the Facebook algorithm is not overwhelmed.

6. disregard Frequency & Relevance Score

The Frequency & Relevance Score are KPIs that every Facebook advertiser should be familiar with. The frequency score reflects the average number of ad impressions. If the target group sees your ad too often (>3), the campaign often performs negatively. The Relevance Score reflects the relevance of your ad for the target group. The more relevant the ads, the higher the relevance score and the lower the CPC. The Frequency & Relevance Score should therefore be monitored regularly.

Here you will find an evaluation of the Relevance Score and how the performance of the ads correlate with the Relevance Score.

 

7.conversion tracking not implemented

At the latest when the advertising objective is Sales & Leads, the Facebook Pixel must be implemented and conversion tracking set up. Without conversion tracking, the Facebook algorithm does not know to whom it should display the ads. Of course, you can also optimize on the basis of CPC & CTR, but this has not proven to be promising in practice. In particular, the combination of lookalike audiences based on conversions reduces acquisition costs in the long term.

 

8. ignore the sales funnel

Nobody is on Facebook to buy products or see ads! Facebook advertisers should also bear this in mind! Simply advertising products and services on Facebook without thinking about the sales funnel is not very promising. For this reason, you should not aim for direct sales, but rather accompany potential new customers through several steps to the conclusion of a purchase. Without a clearly structured sales funnel, selling on Facebook will be difficult. It is often sufficient to create a retargeting campaign based on website visitors in order to increase the performance of the Facebook campaign.

9. different advertising promises on advertisements and websites

The click rate on the ad is high, the CPC is low, but the bounce rate is too high? This may be because the value proposition of the ad does not match the one on the website. It does not have to be literally the same value proposition, but the difference should be kept as minimal as possible. There should also be a graphical match between the ad and the website, otherwise it will have a negative impact on user behavior.

10. wrong targets

Even after you have implemented conversion tracking, you can still make some mistakes with conversion campaigns. A common mistake is that you optimize for a specific conversion (e.g. leads), but there are not enough conversions for Facebook to play the campaign to the appropriate target group. As a rule, 25 conversions per week should be achieved per campaign, otherwise there can be no conversion optimization. To solve this problem, you can designate an action in the front part of the conversion funnel as the target, e.g. instead of optimizing for the completion of a sale in an online store, it can make sense to designate the "Add product to shopping cart" action as the target conversion. If this does not help either, then the optimization should be changed from conversion to link clicks.

11. ad texts that are too long 

People's attention span is constantly decreasing. Ultimately, this also has an impact on how Facebook ads should be designed. In particular, the written ad texts should be short and crisp so that they are also noticed. An analysis by Adespresso confirms this statement.

 

12. image ads with too much text

Another reason why your Facebook campaigns are not performing as expected may be due to the amount of text in the image used. If the text in the image makes up more than 20% of the total content, Facebook will no longer play the ad regularly, so the CPC and click-through rate will develop negatively. Even though Facebook has officially abolished the 20 % rule - i.e. images with more than 20 % of text will not be displayed at all - this rule should still be observed. When the images are uploaded, Facebook already indicates whether the 20 % has been exceeded.

13. no optimization of the Facebook campaign

A relatively simple but still neglected point is the constant optimization of advertising campaigns. The results of campaigns change almost daily. For this reason, Facebook campaigns should be optimized on a regular basis. First, the optimal target group should be determined. By breaking down the campaign performance, you can gain insights into which age group and which gender most frequently make the desired conversion on which end devices. These people are then the primary target group for which the campaign should be optimized. In this way, other groups of people, placements and devices that do not contribute to the desired success are gradually eliminated. It should also be determined which advertising promises lead to the desired results. The value proposition should then be tested again in a split test.

14. end split tests too early

Another mistake that is often made is that split tests are stopped too early, even though a meaningful number of impressions has not yet been reached. As with the first point "Too short runtime / insufficient data volume", the ads should run for several days and have reached at least 10,000 impressions before ads are switched off. I have seen time and again that ads that do not perform particularly well in the first few days then perform much better (because Facebook has determined which ads should be shown to which people) and ultimately win the split testing.

15th bid too low

Facebook allocates advertising space based on a Auction procedurein which every advertiser takes part. The winner of the auction is determined by the bid submitted, the relevance and quality of the ad and the estimated interaction rate. For ads to be displayed, the bid submitted must be competitive in order to win the auction. In addition to manual bidding, there is also the option of automatic bidding, where Facebook sets the bid to achieve the maximum number of conversions (leads, sales clicks, etc.). To ensure that the ads receive enough impressions, the automatic bid should be preferred.

Conclusion: Why your Facebook campaign is not successful

There are countless reasons why your Facebook campaign is not performing optimally. I have mentioned 15 starting points that could be the cause. When running Facebook campaigns, you should always give the Facebook algorithm time to determine the right target group. Facebook campaigns work best when you use Custom & Lookalike Audience uses.