Have you spent hours trying learning the Facebook Ads Manager, but your click-through rates have plateaued or even tanked? It’s incredibly frustrating to put all of your time and money into something that doesn’t work and not know how to fix it.
Soapbox - 5 Ways To Increase Your Click Through Rate
Luckily, low click-through rates aren’t something you have to live with. In fact, improving them is easier than you think! Here are five simple ways you can increase your click-through rate and get more from your social advertising.
1. Shorten Your Copy
If you think about it, you have half a second to grab the attention of your audience with your ad graphic. And you have even less time to tell your story with the proper ad copy. You need to make it count, and this brings up a new problem: overstuffing your ad copy.
Most social media advertisers want to increase the chances of converting potential customers through their ads. And, since the amount of text included on your graphic is limited, cramming a sales pitch into your ad copy must be the way to go, right?
Actually, that’s a great way to make your ads less effective. Shorter ad copy drives people to your website to find out more information — which, we all know, increases the potential of conversions on your site. A pro tip is to keep your copy around 1 to 2 sentences long.
2. Incorporate (Mobile-Optimized) Video
We’re all aware we need to incorporate video into our marketing strategy, but how often does your company actually do that, especially in conjunction with social media advertising?
If you’re not, it’s by far one of the easiest ways to increase your click-through rate. Why? Because it’s much simpler to tell the story of your company, product or service through a well-crafted video script
Notice how I said script and not production. For the most part, your script is more important than a majority of the production, so don’t worry about having fancy animations or special effects. They can certainly help, but as long as you capture the heart of your business in your script, they aren’t as integral to your click-through rate.
3. Target and Retarget
It’s a shame how often I see ads that are broadly targeted. As in United States, 18-65+. It drives me crazy and I wonder why companies still do that. Sure, you’ll get a higher reach, but if you aren’t bringing in any leads, what is the point?
The worst part about broadly targeting is that you’re wasting your money on people who have no interest in your product or service. The best thing you can do for your ads is to look at the pages your customers follow instead.
Here’s a great example: if you sell golf products, you wouldn’t want to target golf or even Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods is so well known that some of his followers might not even be interested in golf.
If you want your targeting to be on par with the experts, you should instead target to people interested in Rickie Fowler or Bubba Watson. Those people truly follow golf and more than likely play the game. This technique can be used across many different industries.
Once you’ve nailed down your proper targeting, it’s essential that you enable a retargeting campaign. A retargeting campaign can include anything from retargeting to the people who have visited your website or to retargeting those who have viewed your ads and videos.
I believe every social media marketer who uses social advertising should have a solid retargeting strategy to complement their overall campaign goals. Retargeting doesn’t require as much money, so I suggest setting an overall ad campaign budget and then distributing from there.
4. Swap Out Graphics
Ad fatigue is a real thing. Users constantly see ads, and the first thing that catches their eye is the image.
To keep things interesting, halfway through the month, I like to switch out graphics for ads with big budgets and refined targeting. This is a great way to run the same ad multiple times, so you keep the analytics but reduce ad fatigue. Freshening up an old ad can be as simple as swapping an image or tweaking the headline.
When running an ad for a local gym, I often switch out graphics twice a month. I’ve found we see the most success by starting with images of women and then changing the image to feature men, families, and single women again.
Finding the right combination is all about knowing your buyer personas and what really resonates with them.
5. Understand Your Analytics
If you’re spending any amount on social advertising, you should study analytics when the ad is running AND after the ad has completed. There are a few key metrics you should focus on: frequency, link clicks, and cost per click.
Frequency is going to be your key driver in deciding if you’re spending too much or too little on your ads. You always want to have a frequency under 1.5. If your frequency is too high, chances are the same people are seeing the same ad too often — and that means ad fatigue and a decrease in click-through rates.
Your link clicks are crucial because they drive traffic to your website. If your link clicks are low, your copy probably isn’t selling like it should. An easy experiment is to change your ad headline and see if your link clicks improve. If they don’t, make your ad copy more compelling.
The last thing you need to do is look at cost per click. This is done by dividing the number of results by the cost of the ad.
This number will vary on how much you spend and the buying cycle of your product. If it is a longer buying cycle, expect the number to be higher. Your ideal cost per click depends on your industry.
This site has helpful benchmarks for the top 17 industries to help you determine if you need to cut back or invest more in your social advertising.
So there you have it! Crafting the perfect social ad can be overwhelming, but with these five easy tips, you’ll improve your click-through rates — and get some serious results like lead conversion and brand awareness.
