3 Things to Test for a Successful Facebook Campaign

How can your brand make the most of Facebook ads to meet your business objectives? The answer is to test, test and test again. We can’t stress the importance of testing enough when it comes to running Facebook ads. It allows you to discover the most efficient and cost effective way to reach your advertising audience and achieve results.

How to test ads in Facebook

The ‘split test’ function in Facebook allows you to run different versions of your ad within the same campaign so that you can find out which version is the highest performer. When we talk about different versions of your ad, we’re referring to the different factors that make up your ad, for example what your ad looks like visually, what your ad is telling your audience through the copy and who is seeing it.

Split tests run between 3 and 14 days however Facebook recommends a 4 day test at a minimum to achieve the most accurate results. However, this duration may differ depending on your own advertising data and objectives. After the test period, the most successful ad will be chosen to run for the remaining duration of your campaign period.

There are three factors we recommend testing for your Facebook ad campaigns.

Your target audience

Facebook provides advertisers with the opportunity to select highly targeted audiences from a pool of 2 billion monthly users. You can choose an audience based on location, demographics and interests, or target those who have interacted with your brand on Facebook, your website or other platforms. You can also create lookalike audiences which meet similar criteria to your existing customers or prospects, for example Facebook can create a lookalike audience based on your newsletter lists or website visitors.  

Depending on your advertising goals, you may want to consider choosing a couple audience types to test. Let’s say you run an ecommerce site and you want to run a promotion for a new product. You may want to find out which audience is more likely to convert – people who have visited your website but haven’t converted or people who have bought a different product on your website. By placing a Facebook pixel on your website, you can start to monitor who is visiting your website, who is making a purchase and who is leaving before converting. Once you have measured these audience actions you can test both audiences in your ad campaign to see which is the higher converter.

By split testing your target audiences, not only can you improve the performance of your Facebook campaign, you can gain a better insight into who your target audience is and what factors are at play when they convert.

Your ad creative

Your ad creative will be the first thing that grabs attention and stops your audience from scrolling past your ad, so it should be eye-catching. The type of image or video creative you choose to use for your Facebook ad will depend on your specific advertising goals, however it’s important to test various options in order to get the most out of your campaigns. Facebook ads are most effective when they are highly visual, utilise bright colours and are engaging for your audiences.

Split testing is particularly useful when you’ve created a few ads, however you’re not sure which one will resonate the most with your audience. By testing, you can get your audience to decide. Create different ads using different imagery or videos and split test over the course of a few days to discover which ad is most successful with your audience.

Your ad copy

Now that you have nailed your ad’s imagery and compelled your audience to stop scrolling, the next step is to get them to click. Here’s where your ad copy comes into play. To create compelling ad copy, you should have your target audience in mind. What is your audience looking for? What solution are you providing for them? If you’re targeting different audiences, why not write ad copy specific to all audiences and test multiple versions of each? In your copy, you may want to test different brand offers, different types of action verbs and different sentence structures, for example question versus statement. Keep it short and snappy to grab attention.
If you would like help running your next Facebook ad campaign, talk to an advertising expert at Flight Digital today.