Q&A on Facebook Strategies to Improve ROI
With over 1.5 billion active monthly users (and growing) on Facebook, it doesn’t look like social advertising is going anywhere anytime soon. But one question still remains–Is your retail business taking advantage of the opportunity to reach millions of consumers?
Last week, CPC Strategy & AdEspresso teamed up to bring you a LIVE 60 minute Facebook Advertising course on how retailers create awareness & drive conversions for their products.
There were a lot of questions we didn’t get a chance to answer – so here they are now with answers from Stephen Kerner, Retail Search Manager at CPC Strategy.
Q1. Facebook recommends that the title be 25 characters or less. What are your thoughts on title length?
A. It depends on what is performing. I would A/B test two different title lengths.
Q2. I am getting good traffic to my website through my FB campaign, but unable to convert that traffic into conversions. Any advice?
A. Without looking at the campaign in depth, this is a hard questions to answer. If you’re not converting it probably means you are not sending the right people to your site.
Q3. When creating a custom audience for your ads, what’s a good number to target or what would the max be?
A. It depends on who you are targeting, the more granular you get with the specifics, the smaller the audiences is going to be. I would split your audience in two and test different aspect of it to see “who” performs best.
Q4. I understand creating audiences by uploading email lists in Facebook, but is there a way to segment the audience you create (e.g. you might find your list generated 2 distinct audience demographics)?
A. You can continue to segment your audience by using the demographic and interest information the Facebook provides. I would start by segmenting your list a couple different times and then create ads specifically for each audience.
Q5. Is it better to make your audience broad or target specific genders. e.g i sell kids clothing and I use Facebook ads. I noticed when I focus on women within the age bracket of 24-65 who are in my target country, I get more traffic to my website but the cost seems higher than when I make the ads focused on everyone (i.e male and female). I also notice my relevance score is higher when I focus my ads on women specifically. What do you suggest?
A. The goal would be to reach a specific audience with the right time and the right ad. This takes testing and segmenting who you are targeting and the ad you are using to target them. With that said, the more focused your ad is to your target audience the higher your relevancy score, because your ad should speak more to them.
But because it is a smaller audience it is more valuable, so you will pay more. The bigger the audience the less relevant the ad will be and the less valuable those people will be, so you will pay less to reach them.
Q6. What is the minimum budget to devote to the full funnel effort?
A. It depends on how much you have to spend. You have to consider what your goals of the campaigns and what return you want.
Q7. Is one able to target demographically on Instagram because of Facebook’s capabilities?
A. Yes.
Q8. Should we make each ad set very granular?
A. Yes, each ad set should have a specific targeting purpose.
Q9. I spoke with friends working in the paid advertisement industry in London and they told that they noticed that Right column does not convert well for them. Should we use it? Does it convert well for other users?
A. Right hand column is less interactive because of its placement and more like a banner ad. I would consider using it has a branding play.
Q10. We have been running multiple campaigns on Facebook with success, but we have been using the same target audience which is a lookalike audience from our best customers. How often would you recommend updating your target audience? So, if I am looking for immediate conversions, Facebook advertising is not the right medium for me?
A. It can be if you are using retargeting or you are reaching the right audience with the right message. I have had accounts drive more sales from Facebook then they are able to on Google.
Q11. I have my own brand and I am a seller on Amazon. We did 350,000 in December but we know we can do 100x this with more traffic. Would you suggest using Facebook to drive traffic to my products on Amazon?
A. If done correctly, driving off-site traffic to Amazon is a strategic way to increase volume and conversion rates. Unfortunately, tracking this type of off-site generation can be difficult because marketers are essentially piecing together two sets of data from Google / Facebook & Amazon. At this time, Amazon has not made any public attempts to shut down off-Amazon traffic generation since their main goal is to drive traffic to the marketplace.
There is no question that driving traffic to Amazon is likely to convert better. But, if a brand’s main concern is improving ROI – they might want to drive traffic back to their website where it could be more profitable (even with a lower conversion rate). Brand building on Amazon can be difficult, so it really depends on what your business goals are.
Q12. I use Google analytics and track all ad sources to my webstore through purchase without problem. But I don’t know how to track ads from anywhere – like Facebook to amazon directly. What tools do you use to track ad through conversion when sending people directly to Amazon.com, not my own ecommerce platform?
A. For information on how to drive & track traffic from Facebook to Amazon, check out our recent post: How to Drive Traffic to Amazon & Optimize Conversion Rates
Q13. I have about a $6 margin for my main product (sleep aid) per unit on Amazon and I don’t have a good website up at this point. Would Facebook advertising linked directly to the listing be a viable option for me?
A. There are people doing this, but it is very hard to track how it is working. I would do this but proceed with caution.
Q14. Is the lead generation piece on Facebook something new to Facebook advertising?
A. Facebook Lead Ads are relatively new. For more on Facebook Lead Ads check out our recent post: How Retailers Can Leverage Facebook Lead Ads
Q15. I’m a freelancer and want to run FB ads for a client’s online clothing store, what would be a good starting budget to ask for from the client to prove the effectiveness of FB ads at driving leads and sales?
A. It really depends on the size of the brand. You could probably ask for a small amount to get retargeting off the ground, and then work your way up the funnel for more budget.