What Does It Even Mean to Optimise Facebook Ads?

In this episode, we break down the true meaning of Facebook ad optimisation and explore how you can make your ads work smarter, not harder. From audience targeting and ad creative to budget adjustments and landing page alignment, we cover everything you need to know to take your Facebook ad performance to the next level. Whether you're running your first ad or looking to refine your strategy, this episode will give you practical tips and insights to optimise like a pro. Tune in and learn the art of ad optimisation!

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Transcript

Hey, welcome back to the new School of Marketing podcast. I'm grateful to you for tuning in. Before we start, I would love to pay respect and acknowledgement to the Palawa people of lutruwita, who are the traditional owners of the land on which my business operates. And I pay my respect to their elders, past and present. Okay, today I want to about a topic that's both essential and often misunderstood. I want to talk about optimising Facebook ads. You've probably heard the term a hundred times, optimise your ads. And I'm guilty. I say it a lot as well. But what does that really mean? So today I want to break down exactly what optimisation is and I also want to tell you why it's important and the steps you can take to make sure that your Facebook ads are working smarter and not harder. So hopefully by the end of this episode you understand the key areas of optimisation and actually be able to apply the strategies so that you get the most out of your ads budget. So let's go. So let's start with the basics. What does it mean to optimise? I'm literally using air quotes here. Optimise a Facebook ads. Well, in simple terms, optimisation is about making small adjustments. So small changes to improve your ads performance. And this could mean anything from tweaking your targeting or adjusting your budget to completely changing the visuals in your ad. The goal is to make sure that your ad is reaching the right people at the right time and achieving the best possible result for the money that you're spending. You can think of it like tuning up a car. You're making small changes to keep everything running smoothly and efficiently. Now, why is optimisation so important? I mean, we all keep saying it. Optimise your ads, Optimise, optimise, optimise. The truth is, even the best ads can underperform if they're not optimised. Facebook ad landscape is dynamic and that means that what works today might not work tomorrow. So by optimising, AKA making small adjustments, you're making sure that your ads stay relevant and effective because it literally changes all the time. And since Facebook ads cost money, every little tweak can help you get more bang for your buck. Now let's talk about which areas you can optimise. Like, you know, which areas of Facebook ads. One of the first areas that I normally focus on when optimising is my audience targeting. So if you're showing your ads to the wrong people, it doesn't matter how amazing your ad is, it won't convert. So you need to start by refining your audience based on the performance data. If you see that a certain demographic or certain interests are responding well, you can adjust and focus more on those segments. On the other hand, if you're getting a lot of clicks but no conversions, it might be time to reevaluate who you're targeting. And custom and lookalike audiences can be really powerful here for reaching the people who are likely to engage and convert. So, yeah, I love that you can have this really narrow focus and targeting options in Facebook ads. But if you're getting lots of clicks but people are not really taking the actions you want them to take, maybe you've got the wrong audience. The other area of optimisation is your ads. Creative. I usually make tweaks here as well. And when I talk about creative, I mean your visuals and your copy. I only ever make one change at a time, so I won't change the audience, the visual and the copy at the same time because then I don't know what made the difference. So one tweak at a time. So the image or video that you use really has a big impact on whether on people, whether or not people will stop scrolling to pay attention. I'm pretty sure that if you're on Facebook, you would have come across ads and you would have gone, oh wow. And you would have watched a video or looked at looked at something. So test out different formats like videos, carousels, or single image ads. Sometimes, and this is pretty amazing, even changing a colour or tweaking a headline can make a big difference for your copy. Make sure that it's clear, make sure that it's direct, and try different approaches. I usually test something that's longer format and something that's shorter format. It really depends on what you are trying to promote, whether it is something that people need to be a bit more invested in and need to know a bit more. Might need longer copy, but if it's a freebie, sometimes you can get away with shorter copy. Once you've updated it, you can run your ads again, measure it again, you might need to make more changes. So constantly refining these elements can keep your ads fresh and engaging. Budget optimisation is also huge. Facebook gives you control over how much you spend and how that spend is allocated. So check how your ads are performing and consider reallocating budget from underperforming ads to those that are bringing in results. Also, if you're seeing consistent results with a particular ad set, try gradually increasing the budget to actually maximise the results. Just remember, scale up slowly. Facebook's algorithm doesn't always handle sudden budget increases very well, and you don't want to disrupt your ad's performance. So I usually do no more than 20% increases every three to four days. I don't know if there's a rule around this. I know the 20% rule is valid. I just don't know if every three to four days is kind of, or if you can do it every day. But I really don't want to disrupt any good performing, well performing ads if I need to scale because there's a time like it's. It's a time limit or something like that. So, for example, for a webinar, and we really need to ramp it up, I duplicate the ad set and put the higher budget on that new ad set. Even though it's a brand new ad set, it is exactly the same as the previous one. It's the only way to scale a budget fast, because if you do it on the original one, usually Facebook doesn't handle it very well. So here's my little hack for that. Your bidding strategy can also play a role in optimisation. So Facebook offers several bidding options, from automatic to manual. And if you're not seeing the results you want, it may be worth experimenting with different bidding strategies. For example, if you're looking to drive conversions, you might try a cost cap or a bid cap bidding to control how much you pay per action. Sometimes the problem isn't your ad or your audience, but how Facebook is spending your budgets. So adjusting the bidding strategy can help. I would look at this like sort of last, not necessarily first. I tend to stick with targeting and creative first, but this is definitely an area of optimisation that you might want to look at. And finally, there's one part of Facebook ad optimisation that's often overlooked, and that's the landing page. So if your ad is getting clicks, but it's not getting conversions, and you're actually sending your traffic to a landing page, it is possible that the landing page isn't actually matching what you're promising in your ad. So you really want to make sure that your landing page is relevant, that it's quick to load, that it's mobile friendly, because most of the traffic comes from Mobile devices. But really your landing page should make it easy for people to take the next step. Whether that is signing up, whether that is purchasing, whether it's filling out a form. So if you're getting lots and lots of clicks but people are not taking the action, the problem might actually be that it's not on Facebook or, you know, in Facebook's area. It might be the next step of your funnel. Now let's talk about some concrete techniques for optimising your ads, starting with a B testing. A B testing, or also called split testing, is really, it's a powerful way to identify what works best. We talk about AB testing or split testing a lot in the marketing space. Basically what it means is that you can test different images, different headlines, different audience segments, different calls to action buttons to see what gets the best response. Now, as with your ads, make sure to test one element at a time so that you can actually pinpoint what makes a difference. So there are ways to even do this at the same time. I'm not going to go into that, but you can run a test, like, for like two different pages at the same time. Leadpages has the option to do this. There are different software options that you can use to do this, but you can test. You can even run two of the same ads side by side. Send one of them to one landing page, one the other one to another landing page, and literally the only difference on the landing page could be your headline or your call to action button. Like I said, one element at a time. Another important metric that you want to watch is frequency, which is the number of times that each person has seen your ads. If you have a high frequency, it can mean that your ad is fatiguing, and that means that people are starting to ignore it or dislike it even. It's possible. So you kind of want to aim for a frequency of less than 3 for most campaigns. But see how you go, like, just keep an eye on it. I wouldn't like fiddle with it or set it up in a way where you're in control of it. I would just keep an eye on it. Also keep an eye on your relevance score. It's not the most important thing to look at. Sometimes I completely ignore it. But usually a higher score means that your ad is well targeted and resonating with your audience. And if you notice your relevance score dropping, it might be time to refresh your ad creative or adjust your audience. But like I said, I sometimes completely ignore it because I look at the numbers first and at that score second. Because you know, Facebook doesn't always get it right. So I just look at how many leads am I getting? What's the cost per lead? You know, if I'm running lead ads. So look at it, but don't look at that first. And finally, optimising isn't just about making changes. It is about understanding what the data is actually telling you. So you want to check metrics like click through rate. So I look at link click through rate, which means is it resonating with people? If it's over 1%, it is resonating with people and people are clicking through. And then obviously you need to look at your landing page conversions. I also look at metrics like cost per result, conversion rates. So how many people are actually taking the action. And if something seems off, then it's a sign to adjust. Remember that you need to have enough data. So if you're running ads on a really low budget, like five to ten dollars a day, and you want to make changes after two days because you're not seeing the results, it's most likely because your budget is too low. So you need to have enough data for you to be able to tell what is right and what's not right. It's really hard for me to sort of tell you that from where I'm sitting. So you might actually want to get in touch with me and get, you know, get me to do an ads audit or look over your shoulder or something like that. Because it's really hard for me to tell you that. But if something is seems off, it's assigned to adjust. So for example, a low click through rate might mean that your ad creative isn't grabbing attention. While a high click through rate, but a low conversion rate indicates that there might be an issue with your landing page. So you really want to dig into those insights because then you can make decisions on what to do next and improve your ads performance. And like I said, sometimes it's not actually the ad, sometimes it's somewhere else in your funnel. So there you have it, A breakdown of what it really means to optimise Facebook ads. So from refining your targeting to improving ads creative, adjusting your budget, and remember to keep an eye on those metrics because that's really important. But yeah, optimisation is all about making your ads work better and more efficient, efficiently. The main thing here is to make small adjustments based on the data rather than guessing what might work. I hope this episode has given you the insight and the confidence to go out there and get the best results possible from your Facebook ads. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the new School of Marketing podcast and as always, I'm excited to share more marketing tips and strategies with you next week. If you're ready to take your business to the next level with Facebook and Instagram advertising, make sure that you head to newschoolofmarketing.com for practical free resources. And if you want to grow your business but you don't want to spend all your time on slow and unpredictable organic social media, then the Aimful Ads Academy is for you. It's the place to learn how to be seen by your audience, attract the right people as leads and turn them into paying customers. With my proven four ad stack method plus as a part of the program, you'll have one on one access to me. I'm a marketing strategist for over 10 years of experience so that you don't have to navigate ads alone. I'm here to help you be seen, attract leads, and get more paying customers. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. I can't wait to keep this journey going with you. Until next time. Take care and market your business every day.