Want To Reduce Your CPC On Facebook Ads? 5 Effective Steps To Get The Best Results From Facebook Advertising

Everybody has different ways of using Facebook advertising to their advantage. People often complain about how their Facebook ads aren’t giving them their money’s worth. That might often be because your advertising strategies have holes in them, which are leaking your campaign budgets dry. Here are 6 things you can do to m-seal the cracks and get the best out of your Facebook advertising.

Step 1: Create Killer Ads

-       Make sure your copy is short and sweet and to the point. Just because you have 90 characters, doesn’t mean you need to use them all. Use only as much as required.

-       Pay attention to the image you use. Here is where you use all the space you’ve been given. Use images that stand out. Use single focus images, i.e. only one object of focus in the image. Use colors that are appealing to the eye and make sure you reduce the negative space as much as possible and really zoom in on the image. (The size of both the images below is the same, only the white space is reduced.)

-       Harmonize the headline, text and image. Using a cute puppy as your image isn’t going to please anybody when they click on it and end up on a speed dating website. People want to see what you’re actually offering so make sure that’s what you show them.

Step 2: Increase CTR (Click Through Rate)

Although this may seem slightly daunting (at least that’s the usual reaction I have to acronyms) it’s an easy step to sail through.

It’s a simple formula:

So – for instance, if your ad has been running for 5 days and has been shown to Facebook users 10,000 times in those days, your impressions are 10,000. If 2 people clicked on your ad in those days, your CTR is (2/10000) x 100% = 0.02%.

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that that’s not a very good CTR. Although with Facebook any CTR from the range of 0.08% – 0.2% is considered good, certain small things in the past have helped me keep my CTR as high as 0.2 – 0.3%

-       Make sure you define your location specifically.

-       Clearly define your TG – age and gender are a must.

-       Specifically spend time defining the precise interests of your target audience. Over time Facebook has added features to make the targeting a lot more exact. Make sure to use those.

Step 3: Rake In The Bulk

This is where things get a little more time consuming. The idea behind this is to make sure that you have the highest CTR possible by having a strong CPC right at the beginning.

The way to do this is to bid higher than the lower end of the suggested bid ratio. For instance if Facebook suggests $.30 – $.45, bid around $.38.

The suggested bid that Facebook gives you for your ad changes based on the specific TG that you have defined and other competing ads in the same or similar categories that are running on Facebook. The higher CPC, the more likely your ad is to be displayed to users. The more likely users are seeing your ad, the more likely they are to click and in turn give you a better CTR, i.e. raking in the bulk.

Step 4: Change the bids based on the CTR performance

Once your CPC beats the CPC of competing ads, as a result is shown more, and as a result is clicked more, your CTR is going to start looking good. At this point, pause the ad and manually lower your bid.

The simple reason this tactic works, is because Facebook will automatically lower your CPC if your CTR is high. Basically they reward you for having ads that are actually relevant to the targeted user and are therefore being clicked on.

Although it is a lot of manual effort to pause and un-pause ads, this is one of the best ways to keep your CPC low.

It is critical at this point to make sure you keep a track of your CTR. If after reducing your CPC, your CTR starts to drop tremendously, go to STEP 5.

Step 5: Kill Ads That Don’t Work

If you’ve done all of the above and your CTR is not very effective after having gone through step 4, shut down the ad. It’s used up most of its target group and doesn’t have much left to offer.

Try and run multiple ads simultaneously following all of the steps above so that when one ad’s CTR starts to drop, you can end that one and still have others to rely on. I’ve often read that you should run 8 – 10 ads at the same time, but I strongly suggest that instead you run different campaigns with 2 – 3 ads under each campaign at the most. For instance if you are an e-commerce website, run a campaign for different categories of products you sell. If you are a deal buying website, run 2 – 3 ads for the same deal and different campaigns for different deals simultaneously. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket so to speak.

Facebook advertising is a lot easier than you think. One sure-shot way to reduce CPC is also to direct users to Facebook pages and not to URL’s. Redirecting to a Facebook page is a lot cheaper for Facebook than redirecting to a URL; therefore it’s a lot cheaper for you.

Stay on top of your ads and monitor your CTR on a daily basis and you can’t go wrong.

If there is anything you’ve done differently with glaringly positive results, let me know in the comment box below.

Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

WATBlog is India’s Best Blog Of 2009 and is owned and managed by WATMedia Pvt Ltd a Digital Media Company that aims at being the thought leader in the space by Connecting the Web, Advertising and Technology (WAT) Industry in India.