With evolving algorithms, privacy regulations, and loss of tracking, staying ahead in digital marketing requires constant creative and strategic thinking. Staying put often equates to rising costs and shrinking profit margins.
As the prominent social platform of GenX and millennials in the US and around the world, Meta presents both a significant challenge and an opportunity for marketers that is hard to ignore.
Our team has collected ten different strategies to enhance your Meta ads campaign, backed by data and industry insights.
Embrace Creativity in Ad Creatives
The Meta algorithm rewards engagement, plain and simple. Leveraging creative ad formats to increase engagement, especially videos, can significantly lower your Cost per Click (CPC) and Cost per Mille (CPM).
According to a Facebook for Business study, video ads drive 59% more engagement than other post types. Having said that, not all videos are the same. Users are immune to corporate messaging and embrace authenticity; therefore, encouraging things like user-generated content and collaborating with influencers to diversify content can significantly increase user engagement and reduce costs.
Optimize Attribution Settings**
The Meta platform should not serve as your source of truth for conversions. Rather, campaigns should be fed data to help the algorithm understand when ad creatives are hitting their desired goals. Instead of relying on the same goal for every campaign, consider setting different campaign objectives. Ad formats may benefit from tailored attribution settings. This customization aids Meta in optimizing campaign performance more effectively. A study by AdEspresso highlighted that adjusting attribution settings could improve ad performance by up to 30%, which means your budget is spent more efficiently.
Implement Server-Side Tagging
Data is king and unfortunately for us marketers the monarchy is losing its grip. With digital privacy regulations tightening, server-side tagging has become essential. It offers a more reliable tracking mechanism, which is crucial for ad optimization. Simply put, server-side tagging can help deliver more user and conversion data the platform can currently track which in turn will help guide your decision making. According to a research from Statista, a third of Americans use ad blockers. One of the benefits of using server-side tagging is its ability to going around ad blockers to track more users.
Experiment with Targeting
Should I go broad or narrow? The answer is “Yes. Test both”
Balancing broad and narrow targeting is key. Meta is pushing more and more into broad targeting and it’s showing more success. It’s not always the right targeting for every advertiser in every instance. While broad targeting can increase reach, it may not always result in high-quality traffic. An analysis on Search Engine Land showed that while broad targeting brought more leads at a lower cost, the leads did not turn to MQLs which required the team to add thorough filtering.
Integrate Shops and Lead Generation with Analytics
Connecting your Facebook and Instagram shops to GA4 and your CRM can provide actionable insights and facilitate immediate engagement. Similarly to server-side tagging, analytics platforms are getting less and less data and ad-serving platforms want to create more conversion actions on their platforms instead of sending the traffic off platform. Connecting and integrating each platform to analytics can lead to a more cohesive user journey, increasing conversion rates by up to 25%, according to a Salesforce report.
Leverage Generative AI for Ads
Early adopters of AI in advertising have reported up to a 35% increase in campaign efficiency, per a McKinsey study. Meta’s generative AI feature can help optimize ad presentations so that more ads are visible across various screen sizes and formats. As always with AI, the marketing team needs to review and approve the ads to make sure they align with the brand.
Schedule Ads for Optimal Performance
This may appear simplistic, but advertisers with limited budgets need to focus their spend where it matters most. Timing is everything. Deploying ads during peak engagement times can maximize your budget’s impact. For example: Data from Sprout Social suggests that ads run on weekdays, especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays, perform better in terms of engagement and conversion.
Engage with Interactive Elements
We wrote earlier that user engagement in ads is key to lower CPCs and CPMs. Incorporating high quality engaging ad elements like quizzes, surveys, and trivia can boost engagement. Additionally, this interaction not only lowers CPMs but also builds trust with your audience. As per HubSpot’s research interactive content can double conversion rates.
Activate Lead Gen Ads for E-commerce
Third party cookies are going away. That’s no secret. Many businesses have still not fully internalized the implications nor created a plan to help increase their zero-based and first-party based cookies. In Meta, lead gen ads are cost-effective for growing your first-party data and enhancing email marketing strategies. At UCL, we found initiatives to increase email lists for E-commerce have cost $0.75 – $1.35 on average.
Target Hyper-Local to Boost In-Store Visits
A case study on Church’s Chicken on local Facebook’s store visit campaign resulted in 592,000 store visits, proving the effectiveness of geo-targeted campaigns. This is critical for brick-and-mortar businesses hungry for foot traffic. The hyper-local targeting campaign can reach customers at the right time-right place when combined with persuasive and relevant ad content.
In the ever-changing world of Meta advertising, success lies in innovation, testing, and adaptation. By employing these strategies, marketers can navigate the complexities of digital advertising and achieve better outcomes for their campaigns. Always remember, data is your ally in deciphering the best approach for your audience and objectives.
Want to know more? Read about how we’re using AI in digital marketing, how landing pages can maximize your conversions, and how one client increased quality leads 90% in social in just one year.
Contact us to talk about your Meta or other digital marketing challenges!