3 Ways to Improve Your Facebook Ads Right Now

Facebook Ads is a complicated beast. As we’ve managed paid media for clients over the past four years, we’ve learned some of the best ways to improve Facebook Ad performance. These tips can get your ads back in shape and can help save your paid ads budget today.

Increase the Number of Ads Per Ad Set

Are you creating more than one ad per ad set? If that’s a “no”, then listen up. There’s a limited amount of information you can gain from one ad, making testing campaign creative an inefficient process. Instead, create at least three to five ads per ad set, utilizing different creative to test which performs best.

Keep the changes between each ad minimal, so you can determine what performs best: the copy or the imagery. Once the learning phase is complete, review the ad set to determine the best performing ads. Turn off the poorly performing ads to maximize your budget.

The learning phase is Facebook’s way of stabilizing an ad’s performance and optimizing it to your parameters. This phase contains roughly 50 optimization events, which is the number of times ads achieved the outcome the ad set is optimized for. We say “roughly” because the number varies based on market conditions and specific ad characteristics.

By waiting until this is complete, you can avoid any preemptory changes to the campaign which may then restart the learning phase.

Check Each Ads’ Relevance Score

When a relevance score is low, you’ll pay more per result. Create an engaging and relevant ad, though, and your cost per result will decrease.

This rating is based on a scale of 1 through 10, one being least relevant and 10 being most relevant. We recommend aiming for at least a 7. Keep in mind that an ad’s score will likely start low during the learning phase and then increase. If an ad isn’t increasing after the learning phase, then it’s time to rethink the targeting and creative.

Make It Personal

Let’s face it. By this point users can recognize what’s an ad on Facebook. This doesn’t mean you should give up, though. Instead, make your ads personal with “you-based” copy. Instead of “80% of designers save time with this calendar”, use “Maximize your time with a calendar built for designers.”

Keep in mind that it’s easy to create click-bait sounding copy with this technique, and that’s not the goal. The real goal is to create engaging copy that’s written to the user, not a group of people.

Improving your Facebook Ads doesn’t need to be a mind-bending series of minute adjustments. (Though at times that can definitely be needed.) Start with these three paid ads optimizations and see the difference it can make.

Interested in learning more about paid media? Check out our Tuesday Show episode for some more insights! (Ignore the part where Hannah needed more coffee and misspoke about Relevance Score. ;)