4 Effective Paid Facebook Ads Tips to Improve Post Engagement
Creating effective, engaging posts is key to getting a good return on your Facebook ads and sponsored posts. How you present and deliver these posts often makes the difference between a profit and a loss on the campaign. Here are 4 tips to implement if you advertise on Facebook, want to improve engagement with your posts, and get the most bang for your buck in your Facebook marketing efforts.
1. Retargeting Is Your (Best) Friend
Use Facebook’s retargeting and Facebook pixel functions to show your ads to people who already have some sort of connection to your business. You can create a custom audience by uploading a list of email addresses from your mailing list, people who have purchased something already, or by using Facebook pixel to track and target people who have visited certain pages on your website. You can also retarget people who have, for example, watched a certain percentage of a previous video ad or post, or use other criteria as well. Campaigns that use retargeting have, on average, higher engagement and conversion, and a lower cost-per-click.
2. Use Video or Moving Images in Your Posts
Video is one of the most engaging types of content on Facebook. People will scroll right by an ad that has more than 3 lines of text, but will often gladly stop for 20 seconds or more to watch a video that caught their eye. Now, videos aren’t cheap to produce - they take time and money to make, especially if you want to do it well. A trick that you can use to make something eye-catching, that gives you that crucial “in” for the target’s attention, is to use a GIF image. It looks like a video and, if done well, will make the viewer more likely to transition to the accompanying text and link(s), share, comment, or otherwise convert on the post.
3. Provoke and Question
The previous tip brings us to this one: videos, gifs, and even still images, can be used very effectively, together with provocative statements or questions to engage with your intended target audience. If you know your audience is split into passionate, opposing camps on certain issues or products, you can provoke a discussion in the comments by simply making a statement in favour of one or the other, or asking the right kind of question. It won’t always be pretty, especially if it’s a hot-button issue, but there is nothing like active discussion to bring attention to your post.
4. Experiment with Lookalike Audiences
It’s true that all businesses have clients and customers that are more valuable than others. The same goes for when you advertise on Facebook. Some audiences are more valuable - with higher engagement and conversion rates - than others. Luckily, Facebook provides you with the opportunity to create lookalike audiences. This should be used when you already have some experience and data from Facebook advertising campaigns.
Remember this, though - you’ll get better results with lookalike audiences if you drill down and consider what your goals are. Facebook shouldn’t do the work for you. If you want to increase awareness of and engagement with your brand, you might want to go with a lookalike audience similar to your Page Fans or Group Members. If you want to drive sales, though, you should create a lookalike audience similar to website visitors (or people who have visited a certain page on your site). If you want to increase engagement on your video ads, your lookalike audience should be targeted by referencing people who have interacted with your video ads in the past.
Finally, if you’re looking to engage with people in certain geographic locations, make sure to include that in the targeting criteria, because Facebook will always prioritise similarity over location. If you want to expand to Britain and the USA from Australia, for example, create a lookalike audience based on page fans, customers, or people who have engaged with your ads from those countries.
Conclusion
There are many ways to improve your engagement on paid ads and sponsored Facebook posts - these are just a few of the most important, fundamental ones. As always, gather data and analyze your results, and you’ll be well on your way to higher engagement and ROI on your ad spend.
If you feel that you don't have the time or expertise to optimize your Facebook ad engagement, then contact the experts at Pivotal Agency and we'll do it all for you!
