5 Clever Facebook Ad Hacks That Will Take Your Company to the Next Level

You’ve learned the basics of how to create ads on Facebook, launch them, and track them. And your campaigns are doing fine—maybe even well. But now, you want to scale your campaigns, increase your click-through rate and engagements, and generally take your social advertising to the next level. If this sounds like you, then you’re in the right place to learn how to scale your Facebook ads.  We’ve taken a look at the most effective Facebook ad hacks and distilled them down into a list of the five most effective strategies. Using the proven techniques below, you can increase your following, engagement, and conversions. 

#1: Target the Right Audience

Creating an awesome ad is a great first step, but it won’t go anywhere unless you’re showing it to the right people. Before doing anything else, you’ll need to find out who responds most to your brand. You can do this in a few ways:

• Look at your Google Analytics demographic data. Who is coming to your site the most? Who is converting? 
• Look at your Facebook page fans. Are they in a specific region? Do they have common interests? How old are they?
  • For example, did you know that 62% of online Seniors over 65 have a Facebook account? If you aren’t taking age and online presence into account, you may be missing out on potential customers.
• Check your other social media accounts. If you’re new to Facebook, who is engaging with your brand on Instagram, Snapchat or Twitter? How can you find those same people on Facebook? 

Once you have an idea of your ideal customer demographic(s), it’s time to set up your target audiences on Facebook’s Ad Manager. To do so, simply click the “Audiences” option under the “Assets” tab. From there, you can fill out a number of options, including audience location, age, gender, interests, and behaviors. You can then save your custom audience for use in your campaigns, so you can ensure your ads are being seen by the perfect people.

Want to learn more about finding your target audience? Check out our complete guide to Facebook audiences.

#2: Create Retargeting Ads for “Almost” Conversions

Did someone click on your ad, go to your site, and make it all the way to their cart before hitting “Abandon”? That’s the perfect person to target with a Facebook retargeting campaign. Retargeting is a powerful tool that allows you to find people who have already shown interest in your brand, but who haven’t yet made a purchase. Don’t believe us? Here are some stats that might change your mind.

• Click-through rates on retargeted ads are up to 10x higher than those on first-time ads. (Wishpond).
• 30% of consumers feel positive about seeing retargeted ads. (eMarketer).
• Remarketing campaigns for PPC Grader lead to a 50% increase in repeat visitors to their site and a 51% increase in conversions.

By showing these “warm leads” a new ad, you can regenerate interest in your products, and win the conversions you’re after.

#3. A/B Test Your Campaigns

Trying to choose between two images? How about whether or not to include a CTA? A/B Testing is the process of creating multiple ads that are identical except for a single variable, either in the ad or in the custom audience. From there, you launch both of the ad sets and compare key performance metrics between the two.

By putting out two nearly lookalike ads and tracking how they perform against one another, you can easily make informed decisions about what is working best for your online campaigns. Further, you can continue to make changes to the ads, switching out variables as you learn more so that you can continue to scale the effectiveness of your campaign.

#4: Take Advantage of Social Proof

Social Proof is the concept that people will generally follow the trends set by the majority, be it online or in real life. After being coined by Robert Cialdini in 1984, social proof has been backed by numerous marketing studies and continues to be one of the most effective ways to influence followers. For example, in a 2014 study, BrightLocal found that 72% of consumers trusted a business more when it had positive reviews, and 88% trusted online reviews as much as word-of-mouth from family and friends.

Wondering how to scale Facebook ads with social proof? On Facebook, social proof comes in the form of likes, reactions, views, and comments. The more of these positive indicators your ad has, the more it is likely to get. This is great for an existing campaign that is already doing well, but what about new campaigns? 

When you create a Facebook campaign, there are two ways to generate social proof. 

• First, you can use an existing post instead of creating new ad copy. The existing post will retain all its likes and comments under the new campaign, giving you a headstart on generating buzz. 
• If you are creating a campaign for a new audience or making minor changes, copy the “Post ID” from a post that already has social proof, and apply it to your new ad. The new ad will show all the likes and comments from the old ad, giving it automatic social proof! Use this option sparingly and only when the likes and comments are relevant (such as the same copy with new images, or a new audience).

#5 Scope Out the Competition

Did you know there’s an easy way to see how your competitors are using Facebook advertising? Well, you can, and it’s super easy. To spy on what your competitors are up to, just go to their Facebook Page. On the lefthand side of the page, scroll down and click the option for “Info and Ads.”

That’s it! You can now see everything your competition has been doing. One of the best things to look at is how long an ad campaign has been running—the longer it’s been active, the more successful it’s probably been. You can also check out what kind of visuals and ad images are being used, who is engaging with another brand, and what kind of ad sets they are using most. Keep notes and compare multiple ad campaigns from different competitors to get new ideas for creating and scaling your Facebook campaigns.

Want to use these Facebook ad hacks yourself? The experts at Marketing Supply Co. can help. Fill out this form to contact us today!