3 Top Tips to Create Stronger Facebook Ads

Facebook ads can prove one of the most difficult challenges to crack. Time and again we see brands come to market with what they see as ‘killer ads’ … only to see them fail miserably.  Read on as Liniad shares its top tips to creating winning Facebook ads.

Be Careful What You Optimize For

There is a massive amount of users who install your app on Facebook and never even get round to opening it. Indeed 49% of apps are uninstalled within 30 days – and 47% of these actually occur within 24 hours of installation. As the Facebook algorithm has one goal to obtain the most and the cheapest events for which you are optimizing, it makes sense that optimizing for installs means that Facebook will deliver users who are most likely to install your app –  and that quality of user will not be taken into account.  The question now remains- who should we optimize towards? Taking some time with your conversion funnel should provide the answer as you evaluate which event is most valuable and what the end goal is. It is also essential to consider the volume of the chosen event – events that do not frequently occur may take longer to leave Facebook’s ‘learning phase’ which itself needs 50 conversions a week per ad set. If in doubt, test, test and test some more- this should get you to a solid understanding of which campaign works best for you using a native SDK or mobile app measurement partner.

Creatives For The Win?

As we say time and again, you cannot underestimate the importance of creatives when it comes to ad success. Creatives are actually one of the biggest variables when it comes to smashing it on Facebook or Google ads in 2021. Think about it, the best ad will surely fail if it has sub par creatives, yet on the flip side a superior creative asset can propel a sub-par campaign forward. 

A significant focus of performance marketing needs to be firmly on improving creatives and frequently testing new ones- that one one winning creative can massively impact the success of a campaign and can even push your forward into scale. Once that winning creative and/or creative combination is discovered then it also delivers back lucrative insights into what performs and what does not – leading you to start replicating successful assets to pull in the crowds before creative fatigue sets in. 

Indeed a key component to a successful creative ad is visual storytelling, and this remains even more critical for video ads – getting the narrative correct alongside the right visual elements is no easy task- this is where we always advise to bring in a specialist third party as this can prove hard work and time consuming. 

Don't Limit Yourself to One Audience

There are three main types of primary audiences you should be gearing your campaigns towards: lookalikes, broad and interest based.

Lookalikes: This group should really be a first choice – more so if you have already been able to run successful campaigns in the past and have accrued all relevant/ rewarding data. There are of course many different types of Lookalike audiences to use, but here at Liniad we see more action when we target lookalikes that have made a purchase, who have completed in-app events and are more active users.  Again, when using Lookalikes you should be focussed on quality, not quantity- and it is critical to remember that a lot rides on your own testing. 

Broad Audiences: you may not quite believe it, but broad targeting (targeting without attributing interest or lookalike data) can be a viable strategy when it comes to facebook ads. This could very well prove a strong audience to run with, particularly if you have managed to gather a nice amount of learnings sitting in your Facebook ad account for the Facebook algorithms to run with.  So yes, you heard it from Liniad, broad targeting can indeed find audiences that you may not have even considered and can be a great way to scale, backed of course with the right data

“With iOS Privacy Data updates now creeping its way into the app ecosystem, it is imperative to start optimizing where possible – from creatives to targeting.”

Interest Based Audiences: this form of targeting is an ideal way to target those who have interests relevant to your buyer audience. Although perhaps this does not see such wide success when compared to other audience targeting, there are most certainly use cases where interest based targeting has worked a charm. Testing over time will help deduce whether this targeting type is right for your campaigns. 

With iOS 14.5 privacy data updates newly arrived, now is the time to optimize wherever possible, from targeting and optimization to creative production – pull in expertise where relevant and be ready for any industry shifts that are sure to emerge. 

Learn more about Liniad's user acquisition services

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