Episode 3: Tracking and Optimization

This is the third and final part of a series that explores all the things social marketers should do when setting up their social ad campaigns. In our previous posts, we discussed account structure and creative, and targeting and bidding.

Without conversion measurement and continual improvement, your Facebook campaigns won’t realize their highest potential. Read these tips to make sure your Facebook ad campaigns are working their hardest for your bottom line.

7. Implement the Facebook Pixel

The Facebook Pixel tracks conversions, automatically bids for conversions, and enables remarketing. Be sure to implement the pageview event of the Facebook Pixel on all the pages of your website so that you can populate your Custom Audiences and Custom Conversions. You’ll also need the Facebook Pixel to implement each standard event on a single page of your website.

To double-check that the pixel is firing properly, use the Facebook Pixel Helper.

Lastly, follow the user’s journey down the conversion funnel. This will help you identify exactly where your customers are dropping off in the journey.

Marin Tip
For an extra layer of reporting in Google Analytics, apply dynamic tags at the Media Plan level.

8. Optimize on a Daily Basis

As a Facebook best practice, you should optimize your campaigns daily, but no more than two times a day. For oCPM bidding, it's even recommended to optimize only once a day, as the algorithm needs stability to learn from and to find conversions for you.

To understand the optimization that’s working best for your campaigns, do one at a time and assess the results.

Another rule of thumb—avoid making any drastic changes to bids, since reducing your bid by more than 5% could damage the delivery. If you change the bid type of your campaign due to bad performance, duplicate the campaign so that the algorithm refreshes.

Be sure to refresh your creative every few weeks to fight audience fatigue and ad blindness.

Marin Tip
Use the Refresh button so that the campaign can start from scratch with the new bid type. Set up Rules to automate daily optimizations. For example, you could set a rule that if your CPA is greater than $10, or the frequency is greater than four, or the CTR is lower than 0.4%, then pause the ad.

9. Keep an Eye on the Relevance Score

Facebook wants to make sure the paid advertising campaigns that appear on its platform don’t damage the user experience. To that end, it has the Relevance Score.

The Relevance Score is an algorithmic calculation that takes into account your targeting’s relevancy and your ads’ engagement. The important metrics to look at here are CTR, engagements, feedback, and conversions.

When your audience begins showing less interest, your Relevance Score will decrease. As a result, Facebook lets your ad participate in fewer auctions. Moreover, if your Relevance Score is lower than the other advertisers competing on the exact same targeting, they’ll win the auction, no matter how high your bid is. Consequently, your reach and impressions will drop.

To fight against a bad Relevance Score:

• Always make sure your targeting is relevant and specific by using custom audiences, lookalikes, and high-intent interests.
• Make sure your creative is relevant and engaging.
• As soon as you see any sign of ad fatigue, refresh the ad or the targeting. Sure-fire signs of fatigue include a CTR drop, a CPC increase, or an impressions decrease.

Essentially Strong Foundations

Social advertising isn’t quite rocket science, but it’s indeed an art. But, with a strong foundation that takes advantage of all the great and evolving features Facebook has to offer, you can maximize positive user experiences and see positive results for the KPIs that matter most to your organization. As always, if you’d like to find out how Marin Software can help with all of the above, just reach out.

Episode 2: Targeting and Bidding

This is a three-part series that explores all the things social marketers should do when setting up their social ad campaigns. In our second post, we look at best practices to target effectively and bid for the greatest ROI. For the first three tips see our previous article on account structure and creative.

One of the main goals of the social marketer is to consistently target wider and more precise audience segments, while making smart bids based on a solid bidding model. Follow these best practices to ensure your social advertising campaigns are fine-tuned for the highest performance possible.

4. Target Wisely

When it comes right down to it, Facebook is mass media, and its algorithm performs better with large audiences. A best practice is to keep the target size above 100,000, especially for your prospecting campaigns. A few other rules of thumb:

• Always keep an eye on your reach.
• Avoid campaign overlap—competing against yourself will lower your relevance score and obstruct spend. Use the detailed targeting feature to refine your audience.
• Make use of email-based targeting and Website Custom Audiences.
• Use lookalike audiences, the Facebook conversion pixel, and
  Fan Page.

You may also want to use split targeting, depending on:

• How recently users have shown intent using the inclusion and exclusion feature
• The level of intent (beginning of the sales funnel vs. the end)
• User behavior
• The purchase value

Marin Tip
Thanks to Marin's Lookalike feature, you can create high-intent lookalike audiences based on conversions from your best performing campaigns or ad sets.

5. Choose the Appropriate Conversion Window

The conversion window tells Facebook how far back in time to look at conversion data, so that it can optimize appropriately and find the right people to deliver your ad to.

You can use the conversion window for Website Conversions, App Installs, and App Events objectives. You can break them into 1-day, 7-day, and 28-day post-click windows.

In order for Facebook’s algorithm to have enough conversion data to learn from, set up your conversion window to get at least 15-25 conversions per ad set and per week. If you use the longest conversion window but don't get enough conversions, change the promoted object to a step higher in the conversion funnel (for example, add-to-cart rather than purchase).

6. Let the Audience Size Determine Bid Type

When the target size is above 100,000, bid oCPM. This’ll allow the algorithm to look for the users more likely to convert. Optimize for clicks and pay for impressions when your audience is between 80,000 and 100,000. For target sizes below 80,000, use the CPC bidding type.

On small and highly qualified audiences—for example, Website Custom Audiences of lower-funnel stages—you can even bid CPM (optimize and pay for impressions), since your aim here is to make sure that everyone in your audience sees your ads.

Marin Tip
Bid as granular as possible at the ad level in order to push the best performing ads within an ad set. Change bids across ad sets and campaigns in two clicks by clicking the Selected or All buttons.

Episode 1: Account Structure and Creative

This is a three-part series that explores all the things social marketers should do when setting up their ad campaigns. In this post, we focus on making sure your account structure is solid and how to get the most from your creative.

Setting up a social advertising campaign can be a bit daunting. With so many things to consider in reaching your goals, strategy and tactics become crucial.

We’ve developed nine best practices—presented over a series of three articles—to ensure you have a strong foundation for social advertising success. If you’re a Marin customer, we’ve added Marin Tips tailored just for you.

1. Keep a Consistent Account Structure

A/B testing is important, because it helps you understand why some variables trigger user reactions and others don’t. From there, you can take action accordingly.

Consider each campaign as a test, where you refine based on lessons learned from each test. We recommend including the following in your A/B test:

• Up to six ad sets per campaign, testing placements, targeting, or demographic. The algorithm will optimize ad sets against each other. So, to make it a fair fight, make sure all ad sets have similar target sizes and intent.
• Between two and six ads per ad set, each one testing a different element of the creative (image, landing page, call to action). The algorithm will find and push the best performing creatives. Be sure to pause the non-performing ads so the others have more budget.

Marin Tip
The Split button allows you to A/B test audiences in a single click.

2. Use Creatives That Resonate with Your Audience

Above all else—be different. Every business has its own identity, so use yours to find your tonality and compose smart ad copy. Here are a few more tips to stand out, get noticed, and stay current.

• Use storytelling to make your ad attract eyes and your brand memorable.
• Stay consistent across channels so customers recognize your brand.
• No matter how good your creatives are, ad blindness and ad fatigue will happen. Keep refreshing images on a regular basis (two weeks on average).
• Make the most of all Facebook ad types to engage with your audience in different ways and maximize conversions: Lead ads, Dynamic Ads, Carousel, Video, Slideshow, Canvas, and 360 photos and videos.

Marin Tip
For brand awareness, use Marin’s Reach & Frequency sequencing feature to control the order in which your ads are delivered—this is great for storytelling! Follow this link for more tips.

3. Use Videos

We all know video’s hot and only getting hotter. Make sure you’re creating killer videos and keeping people entertained, educated, and informed. In addition:

• Keep it short. Facebook best practice is to keep video length between 15 and 30 seconds.
• Make sure the thumbnail is attractive to your audience and relevant to your story. Change it regularly to fight ad fatigue.
• Tell a story. As mentioned, storytelling is a great way to keep people watching all the way to the end of your video.
• 50% of Facebook users watch videos without the sound. So, mention your brand and insert text within the first five seconds.
• Turn on video re-engagement to people who watched your video. Retarget them with a link ad or carousel ad and a strong CTA.
• Don’t have enough budget to develop a video? Slideshow is a great alternative.

Marin Tip
Use Carousel Ads, mixing videos and images and adding different CTAs.