Facebook can fetch you more conversions as compared to PPC avenues with its extended creative control and enviable user base.
Facebook has 1.65 billion monthly active users, this massive number enables it to give you a staggering user base with greater possibilities of conversion.
Before delving deep in the nuances of Facebook Ad conversion, you need to give emphasis on conversion tracking. Tracking is important because it helps you to devise strategies based on the data received from there.
What is a conversion?
Conversion is a term that is often misunderstood. Only selling does not imply conversion, it can be registering, download of free eBook, subscribing to a newsletter, checking out, adding an item to the shopping cart or viewing of key pages.
In short, it signifies fulfillment of the desired action. Conversion is truly multi-faceted. Tracking this element is important to plan the next step.
Tracking Conversion in Facebook.
Conversion tracking in Facebook is easy. With the help of a small piece of JavaScript called Pixel, you can track activities resulting from your Facebook Ad.
This tracking pixel has multidimensional utility. In one hand it provides reliable data on how your Ad is performing and on the other hand, it uncovers the shortcomings of your landing page or website.
You need to place pixel between in the header of your website pages, especially in the pages of which activities you want to take note of.
Pixel delivers comprehensive tracking data regarding your ads performance to Facebook which in turn shows your ads to interested visitors.
Conversion tracking is also an important activity for remarketing practices.
Remarketing is an effective practice for increasing conversion. Click To Tweet
From the data received from conversion tracking and using the Facebook custom audience, you can show your ad to the visitor who once paid a visit to your website.
The success behind remarketing is it tracks visitors who have already shown some interest in your website. Here, Facebook filters out uninterested visitors and makes promotion even more pinpoint.
10 Factors that influence the Facebook Ads Performance are:
1. Who is your Audience?
Defining who your audience becomes a crucial factor for conversion.
Reaching to the right people is important to generate conversion. Click To Tweet
In Facebook, you can customize your audience in order.
Here you can target audience belonging to different strata of age, sex, interest, profession and geographical location.
It allows you to pinpoint your target. By using conversion tracker you can also judge which geographical area or which age group is responding more.
One basic mistake that every marketer makes is that he thinks his competitors belong only to his own industry. Ads finally appear in the desired slot only after winning the bid.
You must not forget that for a desired ad space not just your own industry people but many others companies from different industry are competing. This way reaching to the desired customer gets tricky.
A user may be having more than one interest like reading, fashion, food, cycling etc. So, brands from each sector are after the user to grab his attention. They will come with unique ads and compelling copies to appear in that news feed area.
In Facebook, there is a large amount of audience present who wants to convert. All you need to do is to find them.
Among your target users, a major section does not know about you but they might be having similar interests. They may not like you or trust you. But there is a small portion of people that is willing to buy your product or service. Your job is to get them converted.
Next, there will be a section who know you but they might not have made any purchase up till now. So, they are aware of your reputation, hopefully positive, and want to buy. This audience has the much greater amount of possibility to be converted.
At last, the group of people who has made a purchase previously remains. This bunch may be small but is most valuable. They will make repeat purchase unless they have encountered with a bad experience after purchasing from you. Nurture them with care.
In our previous blog, we have mentioned some strategies on “How to make Facebook Ad Targeting more effective”. Therefore, to make your targeting more effective you can refer to this blog.
2. Ad Quality or Relevance Score
The importance of the quality of the ad holds supreme.
The quality of the ad is directly proportionate with the ad’s conversion rate. Click To Tweet
There is no alternative with the great quality ads.
An ad with great quality will enhance your conversion rate whereas an ad with bad quality can decline your conversion rate. Now, using two metrics you can measure the quality of your ads
First one is relevance score.
“Relevance Score“ is calculated based on the positive and negative feedback that an ad receives from its target audience.” Facebook
Now you can measure the relevancy of your ad with the audience it is targeting. The score is given on a scale of 1 to 10.
Now, don’t feel so tempted. A high relevancy score does not mean that your conversion is going to be skyrocketing. Do some tweaking in your ad copy.
A higher relevancy score will reduce your Ad spend. Increasing relevancy indicates that your ad is connecting well with the user and catering what they actually want. A positive reaction from the user will add to your existing relevancy score.
An ad with a relevancy score 8 will receive 4x times more clicks from a similar ad with the same budget.
Another ad quality metric is Click Through Rate. Similar to AdWords, a higher Click Through Rate refers to higher relevance and adds more value to your audience. On dividing the number of impressions by the number of clicks received you will get Click Through Rate.
High Click Through Rate will fetch you greater relevancy as both these parameters are interrelated. The more you come close to the need of your audience, the more your relevancy score will increase.
But if you are optimizing for CPC and aiming high CTR then it will obviously cost you. Still, it will help in improving your overall performance.
3. Timing
Every ad has its own peak time of the day or week.
Knowing what is your peak time is a determining factor behind driving more sales. Click To Tweet
Try to provide your customer with something more than he expects. If your landing page contains contact number for product inquiry then do not forget to mention call timing.
If a customer goes back without getting any response, it will cause him irritation. He will immediately switch to next alternative.
Not just days or weeks, peak times are sporadically present throughout the year. During these times Facebook gets flooded with ads of different industry. Every company wants to cash in more profit during peak times.
Take winter holidays or 4th July, during these holidays marketers wants the customer to buy more. Though during peak times ads cost more but then it is worth spending.
Timing is a crucial factor that affects your cost per conversion. You should have a perfect understanding of Facebook Ad Scheduling.
If you register more purchase or subscribes then on an average it will level the extra penny you invested.
4. Ad Copy
A huge amount of Facebook Ads gets disapproved because of vague ad copy. It happens because most marketers do not know the language of ads. They do not have an advertising or marketing background to understand little detailing.
These ad copies fail to describe their product in an apt manner. It results in disqualification of the ad and leaves advertiser clueless as Facebook show a custom response.
Your product may have amazing quality or good service but all this effort goes in vain when ad copy cannot bring out what it actually does and how it can impact other’s lives.
A quality ad copy stands on three pillars-
(i) Comprehensible Message
It is the first and foremost criteria for a perfect ad copy. The copy must indicate what the ad is all about, what product it wants us to know about and what it want me to do.
These three basic things are must requirement. Even if you want to say things in a fun way, you must conform to these three basic points.
The message should be clear and understandable to your target audience.
The Ad above gives a comprehensive message about the offer including the minute details.
(ii) Clear Call to Action
A clear call to action is something you cannot leave an ad without. A strong call to action pushes visitors to make a move.
Book now, call now, subscribe now, buy or sell now provides the customer a clear and strong message that he should act upon immediately and all this drives conversion.
(iii) Objective Revision
Always try to get an objective opinion on your ad copy. After writing the copy you may understand it as you know your product best but is it audible to other persons?
Ask someone who does not know anything about the product and ask him what he understood. Did he understand what you wanted your potential customers to understand? Such sessions often come out as an eye opener.
5. Landing Page
For any advertising, whether it is on Google or Facebook, Landing page holds a very crucial space in conversion. Cost per conversion sinks as profit increases.
If landing page does not hold required relevancy and fails to deliver information that visitor is seeking for, the visitor simply bounces.
You can think it as the gateway that leads to specific page or pages of your website and leads to conversion.
Landing Pages are a key element of online marketing. Click To Tweet
That is why landing page optimization becomes relatively important.
A Website can have more than one landing page to promote different products or categories of services.
A well-designed landing page must have:
- Attractive yet soothing design.
- Clear copy that describes things properly.
- Suitable for viewing on mobile, tablets and desktops.
- Should not redirect to home page.
- Should contain right keywords.
- Professional look.
- Must have a Call-to-Action.
- Not crowded with too much information.
Do a review of your landing page following the above-mentioned points and make your landing page a pillar of your campaign.
6. Social Proof of Your Product
Women often buy beauty products only after getting the green signal from someone who has already used it and is satisfied. Not just women but whenever one goes to purchase something new he wishes to have a feedback from a user of that product.
This Facebook Ad has displayed a social proof that Agency Analytics being used by 1500+ Agencies and Freelancers.
This is a very natural tendency of humankind and also prevalent in Facebook. Being a social animal other’s experience influence our decisions.
When your ad receives positive social proof it automatically gains trust. Click To Tweet
Such products and services are often purchased as compared to products with no social proofs.
For example, you enter Starbucks and post a status update. When comments of your friends follow that status update, automatically Starbucks gains a social proof. It is obvious that some of your friends will surely try to make it to Starbucks soon.
7. Imagery
A simple color combination, image choice or graphics work can make your ad stand out in the news feed. Choose an image that is directly relevant to your product/service.
According to Facebook’s 2016 guide, you should keep Image size 1200 pixel wide and not less than 600 pixels. Now FB allows using the same image for two different ads.
Put happy faces in the ad but keep the context of the ad in mind. Facebook’s color scheme is blue and white. So never use blue in your ads. Orange comes out best in this background.
Make the color combination contrasting with the background so that it stands out among news feed in the sidebar.
Do not use an easily recognizable logo, use an image of women, pet and baby instead. They are attractive and eye catching.
Infographics work well if done well. Call to action button is also helpful in making conversions happen. It guides the visitor to his desired space quickly. Also, it puts a strong value proposition.
You can use stock images but not using them is recommended. Also try to discover whether you should use soft or dark colors, professional or candid photos in your ads.
Pets and kids photos work in favor of conversion and so do funny and odd pictures. Click To Tweet
But at the end of the day, use your aesthetics to judge how suitable it is for your product and brand image.
8. Ad Optimization
While running a campaign, Facebook will ask you to optimize your campaign. But to accomplish the task you have to provide him a sample size according to which it will optimize your entire campaign.
At least 50 conversions are required to make Facebook understand how it can optimize your entire ad campaign. Facebook will find similar people to show your ads.
You can optimize to increase your website clicks. In that case, Facebook will try to make people click anywhere in your ad but take them to the landing page is much more beneficial. It will increase conversion.
Optimizations are also available for daily unique reach and impressions (CPM).
Through optimization, Facebook tries to increase your conversion as much as possible. Click To Tweet
In spite of that, you should do split tests to see how other optimization services affect your campaign in order to find best optimization service.
9. Placement of Ad
Are you scared of placing your ad in the sidebar? Do you fear low CTR? Please shed this thinking because CTR is decided by many other factors, mostly competition.
A sidebar is a competitive place where your ad has to make its mark among news feeds, friend suggestions, and group suggestions.
The ad on the news feed and the sidebar appear like the image above.
As the competition of a place increases its cost also increases. This situation affects your ads cost per conversion.
As the platform changes the placement of ad also goes through a sea change. Now tablets and mobiles have acquired a vast portion. Since mobile is the high-value placement now so advertising on mobile is costly.
As competition has increased Facebook has changed their sidebar policy and now accommodating three ads in the sidebar.
Summary
The factors that increase conversion of Facebook ads are dynamic in nature. They cannot be controlled alone rather they work in symmetry. Make your ad more conversion prone by taking note of this above-mentioned factors.
Originally published at adstriangle.com on May 24, 2017.
