LIVE Q&A: Mastering Facebook Ads

TomFromCrunch

Hi all, this is the thread where Callum of Social for Good will be joining us to answer your questions about Facebook Ads. We’re looking forward to picking his brain as an expert on the subject and I’m sure you’ll have lots of great questions.

We’ll kick off at 1pm, but feel free to drop yours in here if you aren’t going to be around and we’ll try to make sure it gets answered.

Just a reminder this is a Reddit-AMA style Q&A so there’s not a video link or anything. This allows for more in-depth and thought out responses and worked really well for our ‘Mastering Instagram’ session last time.

See you back here at 1pm!

CallumMcG

Hi all,

Looking forward to this session and helping with everything I can! 🙂

TomFromCrunch

Well without further adieu, I’d like to give a warm welcome to the forum to Callum, today’s expert!

I have a question to start off with - how would you go about avoiding bots when utilising Facebook Ads? We used to run ads on my band page but we shared the name with a footballer called Almeida and we had loads of fake accounts based in Turkey following us. Bit of a waste of money!

juliebinchet

TomFromCrunch

Hi how do I join please?

CallumMcG

TomFromCrunch

Well the first thing you’d need to do is check the location targeting on your ads. If you had it set for worldwide, then Facebook will show it in locations where you’ll get the most results for your money. So for example, if you ran a traffic campaign, you’d see that loads of your traffic would be coming from India and Indonesia because it’s cheap to get traffic there so Facebook would prioritise showing the ads there.

You could also use exclusions in your targeting. So you could exclude the interest of Almeida, that would mean that your ads wouldn’t be shown to people who like the footballer Almeida. I’d recommend starting out in the UK for your adverts. Or testing different countries individually rather than grouping everything together. That will stop FB showing your ads to wherever is cheapest, and actually mean you are showing them to people who are most likely to engage.

Suz

Hi Callum - How long should an ad run before it becomes a waste of money? I’ve been told seven days is enough time for people to know whether they’re interested or not.

CallumMcG

Suz

Hi Suz,

Alot of it depends on a metric called frequency. Frequency refers to the number of times each person in your audience saw your ad. If you have a high frequency say 5 or more, and people still aren’t taking the action you want them too, that tells us that it is time to stop that ad or make some changes to the campaign. If someone has seen your advert 5 times and still not purchased something isn’t right.

Annoyingly, there is no ideal frequency because it’s all dependent on time frame. If someone sees your ad 5 times in a month that’s not bad, but if they see it 5 times in a week they are probably getting annoyed. Also if they’re seeing it a number of times in a week then that means your audience is probably too small, or your budget is too high

TomFromCrunch

juliebinchet Hi Julie - you are already here! It’s not a video call or anything like that - just drop your question in here and Callum will respond with his advice! 😀

dickvan

Just did my first facebook ad.

reached 7,033 people. 9 link clicks. $16.

Not sure what to do next as have no idea who I am reaching.

Any advice welcome.

CallumMcG

dickvan

Hey Dickvan,

It’s tough to give advice without knowing what the objective of the campaign was? $16 for 9 link clicks isn’t great, the average is around $0.85 cost per click. But reaching 7000+ people for $16 is great. It’s normally around $5 to reach 1000 people!

If you’re trying to generate awareness and reach lots of people that sounds like a good campaign, if you’re trying to drive traffic to your site I’d say you need to make some changes.

CallumMcG

dickvan

Did you add any targeting details when you set it up? Any age, location, interests etc?

Ant

Creator Studio seems rubbish and complicated, but FB seems to want me to use it - are there any benefits I’m not aware of?

CallumMcG

Ant

Hey Ant,

I agree, a lot of the features on FB are unnecessarily confusing. I don’t use creator studio. I recommend using Canva to make your creative and then just uploading it into Facebook ads manager as an image or video or whatever it may be.

You can create templates in Canva so it’s easier and quicker next time you want to make an ad.

TomFromCrunch

Canva works great for me too, can definitely recommend. Great tip.

RobP

Hiya - I haven’t used Facbeook ads in ages, what are your 5 top tips for getting the most out of an ad?

CallumMcG

RobP

Hey Rob,

Great question.

Creative is the most important thing. There are so many little tweaks and optimisations you can make in Facebook Ads, but ultimately, if your creative doesn’t stop people scrolling and cut through the noise you won’t be successful with the campaign. A great piece of creative that is in campaign set up incorrectly, will significantly outperform a bad piece of creative in an optimal campaign.
Make sure you’ve got a plan for what you want to achieve. Often people have a piece of content that does well organically so they decide to chuck some money behind it. A campaign needs to be thought through in terms of, audience (who am i talking to) creative (what do I want to say to them) and call to action (what do I want them to do as a result of seeing my ad).
Don’t test too much at once. If you want to get a better understanding of how ads work for your business you need to test and learn, but don’t overwhelm yourself with all the options available. With any new client I start by testing audiences, then I test formats (stories ads, carosuels, videos), then I test creative and copy. Don’t try to do everything at once.
Be specific with who you are talking too. Facebook ads are very noisy these days, everyone is advertising so it can be hard to cut through. Try to be very specific about the people you are talking to and the problem you solve for them. That will help your ad stand out and feel like it is really tailored to them.
Don’t boost posts. Its tempting to boost posts because it’s easier than setting up a proper campaign, but you have such fewer options and control over who your ad is being shown to and how it’s being optimised. Always use Facebook Ads Manager to set up your campaigns, not ads center and not boosting.

dickvan

I targeted London but nothing else.

I am targeting private landlords and letting agents.

Can I target these groups?

CallumMcG

dickvan

You used to be able to target things like Homeowner, which would’ve worked well. I’m not sure if that targeting option is still available, but if it isn’t then you can probably target things around mortgages, rightmove, zoopla, etc. They will all be useful indications of someone being on or about to be on the property ladder.

You can also add ages in. You’re unlikely to get a private landlord in London under 30. So I’d include that in your age targeting

RobP

CallumMcG Brilliant, thanks, really helpful!

dickvan

CallumMcG

Thank you. Will take a deeper look at the options and target 30+.

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