As of the second quarter of 2019, Facebook boasts approximately 2.41 billion active monthly users. That’s a key reason it’s among the most popular digital marketing platforms. Facebook ads simply have the potential to reach a very large audience, and this remains true today, despite greater competition among advertisers.
However, merely running ads on Facebook doesn’t guarantee success. If you monitor yours, you may find they aren’t performing as strongly as you would like.
Don’t worry if this is the case. There are numerous steps you can take to optimize Facebook ad performance.
How to Optimize Facebook Ad Performance
- Run your ads during specific times of day
- Create variations of ads
- Monitor ad placement data
- A/B test
Run Your Ads During Specific Times of Day
By default, your Facebook ads will typically be displayed 24/7. This might not be ideal depending on your target audience.
For example, perhaps you’re advertising a nonfiction book about gardening in the southern United States. You would likely market it to an audience of people who live in the southeastern region. Most of those people won’t be using Facebook during certain hours of the night when they’ll be asleep instead. You could waste a substantial portion of your budget if your ads are running during times when your audience won’t see them.
To avoid this, check your Facebook Ads Manager reports, using the Breakdown option to analyze your campaigns by Day. This provides you with data you can use to determine the best time of day to run your ads. Once you determine what times are ideal, you can choose the Run Ads on a Schedule option when setting them up. Check Facebook’s official instructions for the details of the process, or follow along with the tutorial below:
Create Variations of Ads
It’s important that your ads not be displayed too frequently to your audience. If they are, your potential readers will simply grow tired of seeing them. This is yet another way you could waste your funds.
That’s why you should create multiple versions of ads to include in a single ad set. Schedule each to run on different weekdays, ensuring your ads appear unique. This is key to sustaining user attention. If a user sees an ad too frequently, they may stop noticing it entirely. If ads look different every time a user sees them, that’s far less likely to occur.
Monitor Ad Placement Data
When using the Breakdown function of Facebook Ads Manager, you should also check ad placement data. This information tells you which ad placement options yield the best results.
That said, you shouldn’t assume data is relevant when campaigns are only a week or so old. You need to give them time to allow for patterns and trends to emerge.
A/B Test
Don’t forget the basics. As a self-published author, you have the opportunity to own your marketing efforts—and if you're running Facebook ads for your books, then A/B testing is a must.
As the name implies, it simply involves testing multiple versions of ads and campaigns. Elements you can modify for each version include copy (particularly the call-to-action), creative, placement, and more.
Just make sure you don’t change too many elements. If you do, you may struggle to determine which change accounted for the improvement in performance. You’re better off changing one element at a time when testing different versions of ads. This helps you determine the specific way in which you can improve your ads in the future.
Monitoring your data in general is always essential. Remember, there are many reasons your ads may not be performing according to your expectations. When you monitor your data and keep these tips in mind, determining what those reasons are is much easier.
