Facebook like most platforms does not explain their ad product very well, especially to direct response marketers on a tactical level.
Beyond the obvious CTR, CPA, I like to my optimize my ads a little bit differently than most. I look at mainly unique users and meaningful actions instead of the KPI’s that Facebook usually lays out for you like Facebook actions and overall CTR.
Here is my main 3 main tactics to optimize Facebook Ad Images..
1. Give weight to the Unique CTR
Facebook will default you their overall CTR if you allow them to. You should try looking at the UCTR in the “reports” section as this gives you a better idea of how your ads are performing to the audience at hand.
Your CTR as you see is usually very different than your UCTR as you can probably see int he report. This UCTR should be one of the main short-term performance indicators of your Facebook campaign, if you have a good UCTR then there is a good possibility that your campaign can scale and drive significant amounts of clicks.
2. Calculate Clicks to Web Site Click Percentage:
The goal for most is to get website clicks. The “clicks” area of the reporting on Facebook doesn’t mean web-site clicks it means people clicking on your ad post.
Overall, I don’t care if I have a 9% CTR if that isn’t resulting in a “Web Site Click” then the campaign is a fail.
I like to look at my ads and calculate the click to web site click percentage, this is an amazing indicator of people’s actually interest in my product or service.
3. Create Different Ads for New User Acquisition Campaigns v.s Re-marketing
In most cases, I don’t believe you should show the same ads to both users who have already engaged with your web site and “new users” or people who have never heard of you.
Facebook allows you to easily re-market to old users or at the same time exclude your current audience from your new acquisition campaigns.
If you are leveraging the same ad units to both audiences, try splitting off both audiences into different campaigns and then excluding your re-marketing audiences from your new user acquisition campaigns.
Upon doing this, you will get a lot more meaningful data and be able to find profitable audiences a lot quicker and more efficiently.
