Facebook Ads: Tools & Tips for More Effective Campaigns

With over 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the reigning champ when it comes to social media networks.  68% of Facebook’s active users are adults, which means you’re more than likely to find an audience to engage with and purchase from your business on the platform.

While targeting customers, lookalikes, and custom audiences is a given, we’re here to show you tools you can use to step up your Facebook Advertising game, drive more traffic to and purchases from your online store, and maximize your Facebook Ad’s return on investment (ROI).

Understanding Facebook Ads Manager

The Facebook Ads Manager is your command center for all your Facebook advertising activities. It’s where you create new ad campaigns, manage existing campaigns, set budgets, choose targeting, analyze performance, and more.

To use Ads Manager effectively, you need to understand its structure. Facebook ad campaigns are divided into three levels:

Campaign level: This is where you set the objective of your ad campaign (e.g., brand awareness, lead generation, conversions).

Ad Set level: Here, you define your audience, budget, schedule, and placement of ads.

Ad level: This is where you create the actual ads – you choose the format (image, video, carousel, etc.) and write the ad copy.

Understanding the functions and possibilities at each level will help you to create more effective ad campaigns.

Leverage Facebook Creative Hub for Ad Design

Facebook Creative Hub is a tool that allows you to experiment with ad formats and mock up ad designs before launching them. It’s a space for marketers and creative teams to collaborate, design, and test ads without having to put any money behind them. You can even share your mock-ups with others to get feedback.

To use Creative Hub, you just need to go to your Facebook Ads Manager and select ‘Creative Hub’ from the ‘All Tools’ menu. There, you can explore different ad formats, create your own mock-ups, and save them for later use or to launch them as real ads.

Utilizing Facebook Lookalike Audiences

Once you’ve mastered the art of custom audiences on Facebook, it’s time to take it a step further with Facebook Lookalike Audiences.

Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences tool is an efficient way to reach potential customers who are likely to be interested in your products because they’re similar to your existing customers. Facebook uses its algorithms to find people who share characteristics with your existing audience.

To get started with Lookalike Audiences, you need a source audience. This source can be a custom audience created from your website visitors (thanks to the Facebook Pixel), a list of your existing customers, or even people who’ve interacted with your content on Facebook.

From there, Facebook takes over, analyzing various aspects of your source audience – including demographics, interests, and behaviors – and finds users who match those traits. The result is a new audience of potential customers who are more likely to be interested in your brand or products because they’re similar to those who already are.

Creating a Lookalike Audience is straightforward. Here are the steps you need to take:

1. Log into your Facebook Ads Manager.
2. Go to the Audiences section.
3. Click on “Create Audience” and select “Lookalike Audience” from the dropdown menu.
4. Choose your source audience (e.g., a custom audience you’ve created before).
5. Select the country or countries where you’d like to find a similar set of people.
6. Choose your audience size. A smaller audience size (i.e., closer to 1%) will more closely match your source audience. A larger audience size (i.e., closer to 10%) will increase reach but decrease similarity.
7. Click on “Create Audience”.
8. Lookalike Audiences can take your Facebook ad campaigns to new heights by finding you more qualified leads who are likely to convert. It’s a tool that effectively enhances the power of your Facebook Pixel and custom audiences.

The Facebook Pixel, split testing your ads, and using Facebook Lookalike Audiences can significantly improve your advertising results on Facebook. They allow you to understand your audience better, create more effective and personalized ads, and find new potential customers who are likely to be interested in your products. By taking advantage of these tools, you can maximize your return on investment in Facebook advertising.

The next steps in your journey to master Facebook advertising may include understanding the Facebook Ads Manager better, leveraging Facebook Creative Hub for ad design, measuring your success with Facebook Analytics, and integrating your CRM with Facebook for advanced ad strategies. Keep learning and experimenting, and you’ll find the combination that works best for your business.

Facebook Pixel

Facebook Pixel is an incredibly powerful marketing tool. In a nutshell, Facebook Pixel is a line of code that you plug into your online store’s backend.  It tracks your site visitor’s behavior and enables you to retarget them with Facebook Ads that relate directly to that behavior.

It also works in reverse, meaning that if someone clicks one of your Facebook Ads and lands on your site, you track their browsing behavior as well.

Enhancing ad performance with Facebook Automated Rules

Facebook Automated Rules let you create rules to automatically update or notify you about changes to your campaigns, ad sets, or ads. This could be stopping an ad set if the cost per conversion goes too high or increasing the budget if the ad performs well. These rules can save you time and help optimize your ads.

Advanced features of Facebook Pixel for eCommerce tracking

Facebook Pixel can do more than just retargeting. It can also track conversions, optimize ads for actions, and gain access to audience insights. By setting up custom conversions, you can track specific actions on your website, such as product views, add to carts, and purchases.

Why is this information useful?

Ultimately, Facebook Pixel is useful because you’re gathering valuable information on your site visitor’s browsing behavior and which products or services they’re interested in. With that information, you can create dynamic ads that reflect their interests and have a higher probability of being relevant and generating a sale.

Get to know your audience

Getting to know your customers and online audiences better is incredibly valuable. Knowing what they’re looking for and clicking on allows you to shape your website, marketing, and brand to what your customers want, which helps boost your Facebook Ad’s conversion rates and your online store’s sales.

Learn if your Facebook Ads are effective

Facebook Pixel enables you to measure your Facebook Ad’s conversion rates, meaning, of the people that click your Ad, what percentage of those are actually completing their transaction?

Higher ROI on your ad spend

We’ve established that Facebook Pixel enables you to target people who have already engaged with either your site or your Facebook Ads with relevant content. Ultimately, that assures that you’re only spending your ad budget to target people with the highest probability of buying your products. You’re not wasting money targeting a large audience, most of which won’t click on your ad; you’re only targeting people that have already demonstrated an interest in what you sell.

Dive into Advanced Matching with the Facebook Pixel

Advanced matching with the Facebook pixel allows you to more accurately track conversions and build larger remarketing audiences by capturing additional data from the forms on your website such as email addresses, phone numbers, and more.

Split test your Facebook Ads

Let’s say you’ve designed a few Facebook Ads, but they aren’t giving you the results you were hoping for. If this happens to you, your Facebook Ads are a prime candidate for split testing.

A split test lets you test different versions of an ad to see which one works best. You can either set a split test for the same audience to see which ad performs better or test the ad performance on different audiences.

What’s important when split testing is to have two precise variables to test, whether it’s in your design or your copy. This is incredibly important if you want the information you gain from your split test to be valid.

Depending on the results of your split test, you can conclude that either the ad with or without a person worked best for the audience you targeted. You can use that intel for the next ads you create for that same audience and improve their performance.

Use split testing to learn which types of ads get the most engagement out of your Facebook audiences.

Want to learn how to create a split test on Facebook? Click here for their comprehensive walkthrough. 

Optimize when you schedule your ad sets

We all know Facebook collects an enormous amount of user data, so use that information to your advantage.

Getting insight into which times of day your audience is most active is incredibly valuable for when you’re scheduling your Facebook Ad sets. With it, you can schedule your ads to appear in their Facebook newsfeed only during the times when they’re most active. Rather than spending to deploy an ad for long periods of time and potentially wasting resources, you’re assuring that your ads only run when your most relevant audiences are actually online.

With ad scheduling, you can specify certain hours or days of the week when your ads will be shown. If you know when your audience is most active on Facebook, you can schedule your ads for those specific times to maximise your ad visibility and engagement.

Make use of seasonal and event-based campaigns

Aligning your Facebook campaigns with seasonal events, holidays, or special days can boost your campaign’s performance. These can range from big events like Christmas or Black Friday, to smaller, industry-specific events.

Use Facebook’s Ad Placement Optimization

Facebook’s ad placement optimization automatically selects the best placements for your ads across Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network. This ensures your ads are shown where they’re likely to perform best.

Monitor and adjust Your campaigns regularly

Last but not least, always monitor your campaigns and adjust them as needed. Facebook provides a plethora of data in the Ads Manager, so you can see how your ads are performing and make data-driven decisions.

Perfect your Facebook advertising strategy

Using a Facebook Pixel along with split testing and scheduling your ad sets assures that your Facebook Ads are relevant and convert the highest possible volume of site traffic into purchases. These tools enable you to run a hyper-targeted Facebook ad strategy that maximizes your return on marketing investment while minimizing their complexity to set up and deploy.

Enhancing ad performance with Facebook Automated Rules

Facebook Automated Rules let you create rules to automatically update or notify you about changes to your campaigns, ad sets, or ads. This could be stopping an ad set if the cost per conversion goes too high or increasing the budget if the ad performs well. These rules can save you time and help optimize your ads.

Incorporating Facebook Business Suite in your ad campaigns

Facebook Business Suite is a tool that allows you to manage your Facebook and Instagram business accounts in one place. You can post content, connect with customers, and get insights about your audience.

By incorporating Facebook Business Suite into your ad campaigns, you can streamline your workflow, improve communication, and get a more holistic view of your social media efforts.

By understanding and utilizing these tools effectively, you can optimize your Facebook ad campaigns and achieve higher returns on your ad spend. Each tool offers unique capabilities to understand your audience better, create more engaging ads, and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. The key is to keep testing and learning to understand what works best for your business.

Integrating Your CRM with Facebook for advanced ad strategies

By integrating your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system with Facebook, you can supercharge your ad campaigns. This integration allows you to leverage customer data stored in your CRM to create personalized and targeted Facebook ads. Whether it’s segmenting audiences based on their buying habits or delivering personalized ad experiences, the CRM-Facebook integration can significantly improve your ad efficiency.

Using Facebook’s Video Creation Kit for engaging ads

Facebook’s Video Creation Kit helps you create mobile-optimized video ads with ease. The tool provides a variety of templates that you can customize with your images, text, and logo to create engaging video content.

The Role of Instagram in Facebook Advertising

Instagram, owned by Facebook, plays a crucial role in Facebook Advertising. When creating ads in Facebook Ads Manager, you have the option to run your ads on Instagram. Leveraging both platforms helps maximize your reach and engagement.

The power of user-generated content in Facebook Ads

User-Generated Content (UGC) can greatly improve your Facebook ad performance. UGC like reviews, testimonials, and customer photos can increase the credibility and relatability of your ads, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

Driving eCommerce sales with Carousel Ads on Facebook

Carousel Ads allow you to showcase up to 10 images or videos in a single ad, each with its own link. This format is perfect for ecommerce businesses as it enables you to feature multiple products or tell a story about your brand that develops across each carousel card.

Using the Facebook Ads Library for competitor analysis

Facebook’s Ad Library is a transparency tool that allows you to view all active ads that pages are running across Facebook and its partner networks. You can use this tool to check out the ads your competitors are running, gain insights, and use them to improve your own strategies.

Leverage the Facebook Attribution Tool

The Facebook Attribution tool gives you an overview of your sales process and allows you to see what touchpoints along the customer journey are driving the most results. You can use this information to allocate your budget more effectively across different channels and campaigns.

Explore Facebook Messenger ads

Messenger ads provide a new way to interact with users. They appear in the user’s Messenger app, and can be designed to initiate a conversation, which can then be automated with a chatbot to guide the user, provide information, or even facilitate a sale.

Utilize Multi-product ads

Multi-product ads allow you to showcase multiple products within a single ad. Users can scroll through the ad to see different products, each with their own link, which can lead to different parts of your website.

Take Advantage of Facebook Offers

Facebook Offers is a feature that allows you to share discounts and promotions directly from your Facebook Page. These offers can be redeemed online or in stores and can be shared, making them a great way to encourage word-of-mouth marketing.

Optimize for value

When setting up your campaigns, consider choosing the ‘value’ optimization option. This tells Facebook to not only look for users who are likely to convert but those who are likely to bring in the most revenue.

Capitalize on automated rules

Facebook’s automated rules let you set up triggers to automatically adjust your campaign settings based on the criteria you set. For example, you can create a rule to increase your ad budget if your CPA drops below a certain threshold.

Harness the power of Facebook Stories Ads

Facebook Stories provide a unique full-screen, vertical format for you to engage your audience with more immersive content. They also allow you to take advantage of interactive elements like swipe-up CTAs.

Integrate WhatsApp in Your ad campaigns

Given Facebook’s ownership of WhatsApp, you can integrate this popular messaging app into your ad campaigns. For example, you can set up your ad to allow users to directly message your business on WhatsApp.

Consider mobile vs. desktop traffic

Depending on your target audience, product, and website, you might find different performance on mobile vs. desktop. Be sure to analyze performance by device type and consider creating separate campaigns if necessary.

Leverage crossposting and shared audiences for multiple Facebook pages

If your business has multiple Facebook pages, you can use crossposting to share videos between pages. You can also set up shared audiences for ads across multiple pages.

Integrate Offline Conversions

Facebook’s Offline Conversions tool lets you track when transactions occur in your physical store or over the phone after people see or engage with your Facebook ad.

Take advantage of new features and ad formats

Facebook regularly rolls out new features and ad formats. By staying up-to-date and experimenting with these new features, you can stay ahead of your competitors and engage your audience in fresh and interesting ways.

Always remember that while these strategies can be very effective, it’s important to continuously monitor, test, and optimize your campaigns to ensure they’re performing at their best.