How to Optimize Ads for Facebook

This guest article is written by Craig Robinson of Qwaya.

Once you've learned the correct way to approach and implement your Facebook advertising campaign, the next logical step is to optimize the ads themselves for the most effectiveness. Any marketer online, whether an individual affiliate or a large corporation, knows the key to receiving clicks and traffic is to make ads that appeal to as broad a base as possible within any given niche.

Obviously, there are many different ways in which to optimize ads for this goal, and also many different areas to target in terms of a respective niche. Age, gender, location, browsing habits, interests, income and even vices - depending on who you're advertising to, you may have to tweak multiple aspects of your ads.

Assuming you have the right tool to help you optimize your ads and keep track and control your campaign, here are some various steps to properly optimizing your ads for an audience.

Optimizing Facebook Ads in Four Easy Steps

Step 1: Identification and Creation

Using geotargeting methods to identify where your audience is located is a great way to play specifically to the needs of the particular resident. For example: Something as simple as displaying your ads with British English (colour instead of color) and using the GBP instead of USD will ensure that you're targeting the proper audience in the UK if you're based in the US. Geotargeting will help you optimize an ad campaign that reaches out across the borders of your respective nation, just like the Internet intended.

The same holds true for various demographics based on a variety of factors. To properly optimize your ads, you need to know to whom you're advertising - where they're located, what they're interested in, their age range, their income, and other factors.

Step 2: Personalization

As you will deduce from these steps, each takes the next logical leap from the previous. That's what optimization is about, regardless of the tactic implemented. You're using the information gained to a logical outcome of customer-specific ads. So by using geotargeting and demographics and other identifying factors, you need to work on personalizing the ads further by playing directly to your audience's interests.

Your ads will be displayed alongside others, so standing out as personal to the user is imperative. Your ads should be clearly targeted to a defined niche, but they also need to appeal beyond simply having something in common.

Step 3: Testing and Tweaking

To improve response rates, A/B testing is the best approach to take. Also called split testing, this is a method where a baseline control sample will be compared to other single-variable test samples. In other words, you'll create your ads as previously stated and test them out to see which ads work more effectively. This can be done using a Facebook campaign tool which gives you feedback about the ads.

As you test, you will notice patterns in how users respond to different features of your ads, such as wording, colors, layout (banner vs. tower, etc), and other factors. Only by testing can you effectively improve your ads.

Your aim should be to release the control sample and the variable to a sizable market to compete against one another. Tracking results and quick customizations will be crucial here, so make use of optimization tools in order to quickly and properly track and tweak your ads.

Step 4: Be Decisive in Your Toning

As you begin to track and test and tweak with your ads, you will undoubtedly find that your initial efforts need improvements. Everyone's does; no one gets it right the first time. And even if they did, there is always room for improvement. This is when you need to be decisive in the direction you want to go.

The follow-up fixes after testing need to be made quickly, accurately, and then tested again until a properly optimized ad is created.

The end result should be a clearly defined ad that is attractive, colorful, easy to read and understand, and that gives a clear call to action.

As long as you can follow the steps listed above, you should be able to accurately target, create, test and tone your ads until they are perfectly optimized for your Facebook campaign.

Qwaya is a tool for creating, targeting and optimizing Facebook ads.