Advertising on Facebook is profitable but also competitive. Facebook represents a lucrative market for advertising, thanks to Facebook’s in-depth marketing tools that allow you to precisely target your market. However, plenty of other businesses are already using Facebook Ads. Read our guide for some tips to optimise your ads to minimise spend while maximising profit.
Target your market
The more people your ad targets, the more expensive your ad campaign. Make good use of Facebook’s targeting tools and do your research to understand who to target. Then tailor your material accordingly. Defining and targeting specific demographics will lower costs, by not advertising to the wrong demographics, and increase ad engagement, by targeting customers who fit the market.
Schedule your ads
Facebook allows you to schedule your ads. This gives you complete control over the dates and times when your ads are shown and when they are not. This can help you to once again fine-tune who your ads target. Don’t pay for ads on dates and times your target market is unlikely to see them.
Bid strategy
Facebook offers two built-in options to help balance your cost and use of the service: Lowest cost and Target cost.
Lowest cost tries to spend your entire budget at the lowest optimal cost per ad. You can set per ad limits, but doing so too low will prevent your ads from displaying if the competition is high enough. A disadvantage to Lowest cost ads is that costs will rise as you and your competition spend more. In order to spend your budget inside the timeframe, it may significantly raise your per ad spend.
Target cost helps you achieve more stable average costs and is more suitable for long-term ad campaigns as your costs stabilise over time. It’s only available for the following campaign objectives:
- App installs
- Conversions
- Lead Generation
- Catalog Sales
You set an average cost for your ad and Facebook will spend on average that amount on getting your ads shown. This means that you will not always spend the lowest possible cost on advertising, as Facebook will not consider your wider budget, but you’ll have a much better understanding and level of control over your ad budget in the long term.
The most optimal bid strategy depends on your campaign but, generally, short-lived campaigns benefit most from Lowest cost and longer-term marketing campaigns see more benefit from Target cost.
