Why Testing your Facebook Ads is Key
Why Testing your Facebook Ads is Key
Testing your Facebook ads is pretty damn important. Test, test and test some more is basically the theme of this blog. Here’s how to test and the reasons why you shouldn’t skip this.
I strongly suggest that you allocate at least 10 to 15% of your ads budget towards testing alone. The reason for this is to keep improving on your ad results and to drive that cost per result down. This will massively help you to deliver quality ads to your audience.
Constantly test different elements of the ad to determine exactly what is successful and what it letting you down. With my long-term monthly clients, I undertake A LOT of testing. I want them to get the best results! Some clients don’t understand why this is so important, but as a seasoned ads strategist, I can quickly tell if something isn’t working as well as it should be and I know I can do better.
There are three major elements to testing your Facebook ads
1. Audience
I always plan out the different personas and test different audience to ascertain which performs better than the others.
Think about their varying interests, different lookalike audiences, a broader audience and so on.
For example, are you best to target all the women in the UK, or those who really like watching the Great British Bake Off for instance?
You may even find that ads perform better when you have grouped a few interests together or perhaps narrowed down on your target audience.
2. Creative
When I talk about the creative, I’m talking about the words, the images, the video or the animation, the headline etc – everything that goes into the creation of your ad itself.
Test which element works best for the ad.
You should also test ad design - whether carousels work best, or maybe collections – drill right down into the detail.
Look at what the headline is, does this have an impact? If so, try differing headlines. Test whether having the price including in the headline makes a difference.
With regard to the copy (words) test long copy against shorter copy. Does copy with emojis in it work better than copy without? What happens when you talk about the lifestyle of the product and how it can improve your life? Yes, I know, there’s a lot to think about!
3. Hook
Hooks are things like “As seen in Cheshire Life” (any ‘as seen in’, or ‘featured on’ works really well), social proof testimonials (screenshots from social media), money off codes, discount offers, free delivery, and so one.
I always recommend stating “free delivery” if you don’t charge for that normally anyway – it really is a huge attraction.
If ever you have won an award, pop this in here as it oozes credibility, quality and trust.
Test one hook at a time and see which works the best.
Run multiple ads
It’s best practice to run at least 10 ads to test against each other. From multiple ads, you’ll see a clear winner!
But you’re not done yet!
Take this clear winner and keep changing it one thing at a time. Test another 10 versions of it. For instance, if you were testing the image, you would take the winning ad, use exactly the same copy, exactly the same headline, and just change the images. And again, when you get the winner from that, take that version and test something else. Keep trying for better results.
When you see the ads that aren't working within those 10, you can quickly pause them so that you are feeding more of your budget into the other ads that you're testing.
Aim to get them to at least a reach of 500. This should give you a good indication of the soft statistics (like click through rate or landing page conversion).
What results to look for
You need to be looking to lower the cost per conversion (or result of the objective you are focusing on – video views for instance) so keep your eye on this. You’re looking to get this as low as possible.
Check what your click-through-rate (CTR) is too – the higher the number the more people are clicking on it – a good thing!
Aim to beat these metrics every time to make the most out of your budget.
I hope that's helpful, but please do get in touch if you have any questions – it can be a little overwhelming to get your head around testing your Facebook ads at first!
What I don’t want you to do is test just a couple of ads and think that it’s not for you as they’re not working.
Facebook Ads need a bit of work to get the momentum going and find the sweet spot, but when the formula is right for you, they really are an amazing marketing tool.
Good luck!