A Manual for Improving Facebook Ads (Fundamentals)

Facebook ads are not performing…

This article is for you: it covers how to improve the way you run Facebook ads.

1. How to think about improving Facebook ads

1.1 The measures to watch in Facebook ads

The first thing you need in order to improve Facebook ads is a grasp of which measures to focus on.

Take a look at the image below.

The path to a conversion in Facebook ads runs“impression ⇒ click ⇒ conversion”.

The probability of getting from impression to click is CTR,
and the probability of getting from click to conversion is CVR.

In most cases, “not performing” means

• few conversions
• a high CPA (cost per conversion)
• both of those

– one of these.

When conversions are low, look at
①impressions
②CTR
③link clicks
⑤CVR

When CPA is high, look at
④CPM
⑤CVR

If both are poor, review all five, ① to ⑤.

So with Facebook ads we recommend working through these five measures, ① to ⑤, as a matter of course.

1.2 Which measures to focus on in Facebook ads

When working through the five measures, it is important to establish which of them is poor first.

Even when the overall result is poor, unpicking it often shows some measures doing well and others doing badly.

Separating the good measures from the bad and fixing the bad ones first is the efficient way to improve results.

So how do you work out which measures are the bad ones?

Here is an example of how to establish which measure is poor.

The figure above is an example set of results.

Against a target of 10 conversions at a CPA of 10,000 yen, this account delivered 2 conversions at a CPA of 28,351 yen, well short.

So how should it be improved from here?
Here is the approach we recommend.

Give up on improving CPM, within reason

First,CPM is the hardest measure to improve and not one to put effort into, so we leave it out of the picture.

That is because its value is set by how competitive the market is, and it is not something you can readily control. It goes up when you run ads at people many companies are targeting, and down when you run ads at groups few advertisers chase on Facebook.

You can shift the number by changing the audience settings, but it remains hard to predict.

Here we will leave the target as it is and look at how to improve from where things stand.

Work out impressions from the actual CPM and the budget

Assuming CPM is fixed at 1,939 yen, spending a budget of 100,000 yen gives impressions of

100,000 ÷（1939/1000） = 51,572　

.

From a base of 51,572 impressions you have to hit 10 conversions at a CPA of 10,000 yen.

Assume a CVR

That leaves how to think about CTR and CVR.

CVR is generally harder to control than CTR, so

fixing the CVR target and setting the CTR target to match is what we recommend.

Lifting CVR is hard to do from the Facebook settings alone; it calls for a better landing page after the click.

CTR, on the other hand, can be improved fairly easily by changing the banner and by the other steps covered below.

So we recommend starting by assuming a CVR, the harder number to move, from results in search advertising or other channels.

Here we have set it at 3%.

Work out the CTR

Finally, use that CVR to work out the number of link clicks and the CTR.

In this case, the numbers in the figure above come out as a realistic ideal to aim for.

Compare with where you are

Let us set the present state against the ideal once more.

Impressions⇒at the current CPM, spending 100,000 yen clears this without trouble

CTR⇒needs to more than double

Link clicks⇒the number rises automatically as CTR improves

CVR⇒needs to rise by 0.73%. If that does not come off, CTR has to rise further

So in the end, how do you lift CTR and CVR? is the question. Setting out the ideal once makes it clear what CTR and CVR you should be targeting, and from there it is a matter of deciding what to do against each of them to reach those targets.

Of course CPM, CTR and CVR often fail to land where you aimed, but once you have laid this out, it becomes easy to see which number is poor right now and to pick the action to take.

2. How to improve each measure in Facebook ads

Once it is clear which measures to watch, the next step is to work out how to lift each of them.

Below is how to improve each number.

2.1 Impressions and CPM

Impressions are set by the budget and by CPM, and CPM, as noted above, is hard to control.

That makes impressions harder to improve deliberately than the other measures, but here is what you can do.

Review how the budget is split

If the account you are running has several ad sets, look at how the budget is split between them.

Concentrating the budget on the ad sets that perform should bring you closer to the target.

Review the audience settings

CPM is largely set by the audience, so looking for an audience with a lower CPM that still converts should bring an improvement.

As for which audience settings are the good ones, the article below goes into detail, so do have a read.

Audience settings for Facebook advertising that deliver, explained in full

2.2 CTR and clicks

There are five broad angles on improving CTR and clicks.

①the audience settings
②the quality of the banner
③the format the banner runs in
④frequency
⑤placements

Here is each one in turn.

①The audience settings

What matters is choosing an audience more likely to click the banner you are running.
To take an extreme example, a banner for women’s cosmetics served to an all-male audience will not get clicked.

CTR improves when the right banner goes to a properly targeted audience.

The audience is one of the most important settings in Facebook ads. As mentioned above, the article below covers it in detail, so do refer to it.

Audience settings for Facebook advertising that deliver, explained in full

②The quality of the banner

Banner quality has the single biggest effect on CTR. We recommend forming several hypotheses and testing them a month at a time.

Here are a few banner patterns that tend to produce a high CTR in the accounts we run.

Pattern 1: the target’s problem voiced as an offhand remark
Pattern 2: a number from your track record
Pattern 3: a woman’s face in shot
Pattern 4: paired with a limited-time campaign

Build all four of these banners and compare them.

Facebook’s own site also lets you search the ad banners your competitors are running, so that is worth drawing on too.

▼The Facebook Ad Library
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/

③The format the banner runs in

Facebook ads come mainly in the following formats.

• a single banner
• carousel
• slideshow
• collection

Video

Carousel, slideshow and collection need several banners, and video needs filming and editing, so all of them cost more time and money than a single banner.

If you have plenty of both, it is worth considering all of these formats, but where time and money are limited we recommend starting with a single banner.

Try several single-banner patterns, iterate, and only if the target still proves out of reach should you move on to carousel, slideshow, collection and video.

④frequency

Are you familiar with the measure called frequency?

Frequency measures how many times, on average, the same person was shown the ad, and is worked out as impressions divided by reach, the number of people the ad was shown to. The higher the frequency, the more often the same person is seeing the ad.

Frequency can be read as the shelf life of a banner. It moves inversely with CTR: the higher the frequency, the lower CTR tends to be.

Once frequency reaches 2.5 or more, CTR tends to decline from that point. 2.5 Use that value as a rule of thumb, and if CTR is falling, consider swapping the banner.

⑤Placements

An ad set in Facebook ads has a setting called placements,「Facebook」「Instagram」「Audience Network」「Messenger」which lets you choose which of the four to run the ad on.

The recommended default for placements is automatic, which runs the ad on all four platforms. We recommend comparing results across the four and turning off the ones that perform badly.

To check, click Breakdown > Delivery > Placement at the top right of the ads manager.

That brings up the figures by platform, as in the screen below, so you can compare CTR and conversions across them.

Those are the angles on lifting CTR and clicks.

2.3 CVR

Finally, here is how to lift CVR.

Two points matter most.

①the quality of the landing page
②consistency between the banner and the landing page

①the quality of the landing page

The landing page shown after the click sits outside the Facebook ad settings, and its quality has to be raised there.

However much you spend, and however good a banner you build to lift CTR, none of it counts if the landing page they end up on does not convert.

Reworking a landing page costs money and time, so frequent changes may be hard, but if you want results from advertising we recommend building it without cutting corners.

The article below covers what makes a landing page perform, so do refer to it.

[Keep this one] Landing pages that deliver: the winning structure

②Consistency between the banner and the landing page

The next thing that matters is consistency between the banner and the landing page.

What someone expects from the banner and what they expect from the landing page have to be the same. To take an extreme example, if the banner looks like it is promoting hair removal cream but the click leads to a landing page for buying groceries, almost everyone will drop off and CVR will fall.

Check once more that the landing page lives up to the interest the banner stirred up.

Reworking the landing page is usually the harder job, so it matters to build the banner to match the landing page.

3. In closing

We hope that was useful.

When improving Facebook ads,

• establish which measures to watch
• establish the gap between where you are and the target
• run improvement work against each item

– that sequence is what matters.

We hope you will use this article as a reference and put it to work improving the accounts you run.

Thank you for reading to the end.