How To Optimize Your Facebook Ads

Ok, so if you’ve had anything to do with Facebook in the past decade (that’s right, Facebook has been around now for over 10 years!), you’ve noticed that it’s gone through some major changes. What once was a mecca for small business owners who were looking for organic reach and inexpensive advertising, has now become a frustrating place of lost content just floating around with no one paying attention to it.

Algorithm changes over the past few years has significantly decreased the organic reach of business pages. It’s gotten to the point now, where on average a business owner can expect that only 2% of the people who like their page will organically see what they’ve posted. As someone who spends a significant amount of time researching, creating and editing content to send out to the masses, that is a bummer. There’s nothing worse than knowing you have something really important to say, without an audience to say it to.

Well, once you’ve mourned the loss of your organic reach (because trust us, it’s not coming back), it’s time to buck up and make the best of it. Despite some challenges, there ARE ways you can get great reach on the social media platform at a lower cost than other outlets, and those are Facebook ads. Trying them out? Below we’re breaking down just a few tips to help you optimize your ads to ensure they’re working the best for you.

1. Spend some time researching your audience and target them. When you’re looking to target your ad don’t just go by geographic area. Take some time to do some research on some of your existing audience’s interests and likes. On Facebook you can target by general interests, things they’ve looked at on the web, and even other complimentary Facebook pages they’ve liked. Spending some time playing with the interest categories available for targeting can make a HUGE difference in your ad performance.

2. Pick the ultimate pic.  Ahh the ad image. This is always the most difficult (for many people) when designing an ad. The image is the first thing people will see when scrolling through their newsfeed so you want to make sure it not only makes sense with your content, but that it’s attention grabbing as well. Find something with bright colors, interesting designs or a little bit of humor to ensure maximum results. And be sure to keep text to a minimum! While Facebook has loosened up a little on their restrictions, it will cost you more to run an ad with text in the image than one that doesn’t have any. And be sure to keep it in the 1200 x 628 wide format so it fits the space nicely.

3. Start small with the budget. A lot of times people think the more money you throw behind an ad the better. However, recent studies have shown that dramatically increasing your budget will actually cause your Cost Per Click (CPC) to go up dramatically as well! Start your budget smaller (about $5 per day) and test it out over the course of a few days to see how it’s working for you. Don’t like what’s happening? Go back and edit the image, text or both until you find the right mix. Happy with the results? Slowly increase your budget (No more that $5 per day) over time to increase the reach without increasing the CPC.

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