Introduction
This article will run through, in no particular order, seven best practices to help you create and optimize a direct response campaign in Facebook using the Marin Social platform.
Step One: The Facebook Conversion Pixel
The Facebook conversion pixel tracks how many people complete conversion actions and identifies which ad drove the conversion. Advertisers using the pixel can measure ROI of their Facebook ads and optimize the ads for success.
In addition, advertisers who leverage the Facebook pixel can use Facebook’s optimized cost per impression bid type (oCPM) to target users most likely to convert. They can also create lookalike audiences based on customers who have converted.
Step Two: Great Creative
Effective creative is key to success on Facebook. Creative images should clearly communicate product features and benefits and should be visually compelling – the goal is to stop users from scrolling. For maximum impact, choose images featuring people making eye contact with the camera. Remember that Facebook guidelines restrict copy on images to no more than 20%.
Copy is equally as important as images in grabbing a Facebook user’s attention. An ad’s text should attract attention by offering discounts or other exclusive benefits. It should also be short and simple, use exclamation points and contain a strong call to action.
Remember to keep creative fresh by switching it out every couple of weeks.
Step Three: Campaign Size And Structure
For best results and ease of optimization, we recommend limiting the number of ad sets and ads in any given campaign. Three to five ad sets with two to four ads apiece is a good place to start.
Step Four: Targeting
Custom and lookalike audiences typically deliver best results for direct response campaigns. Marin Social enables advertisers to create custom audiences by uploading CRM files or using a retargeting pixel. Advertisers can also create lookalike audiences on CRM files (especially useful for high-value current customers!), website custom audiences, mobile app users, page fans, and users who engage with campaigns.
Step Five: Bidding
Facebook’s optimized bid type, oCPM bidding, is typically an excellent choice for direct response campaigns. We recommend starting with a bid at least 50% higher than the one suggested within Marin Social, then optimizing down. You can optimize for sales or leads in a media plan with a sales or lead generation objective, or another option is to optimize for link clicks in a media plan with an offsite clicks objective. Also available in media plans with select objectives (offsite clicks, mobile app installs and offers) is CPA (cost per action) bidding.
Step Six: Rules
The rules functionality within Marin Social allows advertisers to create bid management rules to optimize campaigns or media plans automatically.
Example: Set a campaign or an ad) to pause automatically if cost per conversion exceeds $20.00
Step Seven: Optimize
Once you’ve set up your campaign, it’s time to start optimizing. The bullet points below are a good starting point for basic best practices and optimization tactics.
- A/B Test
- Do not compete with your own traffic – ensure audiences for ad sets are diverse
- Utilize charts (available on the media plan and campaign level) to test out media on a broad basis and still see performances broken out by gender, age and placement.
- Increase budgets on ad sets that convert best
- Pause ad sets that are not converting well
- Do a time analysis and take advantage of day parting capabilities to run ads when customers are most likely to convert
