How to get better results for the same money in paid advertising

Paid advertising is the best way to reach the desired audience quickly and in predictable numbers. You will invest more money - you will reach more people. Reaching people is only one aspect of paid advertising and it must be said that it is the easiest and is not a determinant of good results. Additional steps need to be taken to optimize these ads and get the best results.

In this article, we'll look at 10 ways to optimize your paid ads for more clicks, purchases, or more:

1. Connect the website to the Meta ads platform, for collecting information and more effective optimization of ads;
2. Make sure that the correct actions of the user are really being followed on the website;
3. Choose the right goal for the advertising campaign;
4. Select the right target audience;
5. Come up with an irresistible offer, don't be like everyone else;
6. Uses built-in automation options;
7. Different approaches to different stages when the potential customer is in your digital marketing flow;
8. What to do if there is not enough data from the website or application about its users and existing customers?;
9. Use quality and engaging digital material, headlines and content;
10. Make sure the homepage is optimized for the new audience.

Meta ads

Paid ads are quite similar from platform to platform, so these tips can be applied to different platforms, but we'll be specifically looking at Meta ads in this article. (Facebook and Instagram primary) 

Other types of digital marketing

It should be noted that paid advertising is only one form of digital marketing and is the best and easiest way to reach a short-term audience.

Another way to reach a short-term audience is, for example, social media marketing, where influencers are paid for advertising, but this way is much more difficult to optimize and predict its results.

One example of a good form of long-term digital marketing is SEO where, for example, it is optimized to appear higher in Google search results by generating an organic audience that does not require direct payment. This one takes a lot of time, so it's in the long-term category.

10 tips to improve your Facebook and Instagram paid ad results

Want to see better results from your ads? They need to be optimized and these are the best ways to do it.

1.Connect the website to the Meta ads platform, for collecting information and more effective optimization of ads.

The Meta ads platform needs to be connected to the website so that the platform can collect information about website users and in this way help to optimize ads more effectively, knowing more about existing and new users and their actions.

This type of linking will also help mark specific actions on the homepage that are considered successful conversions.

To connect the website to the Meta ads platform, you need to add the Facebook Pixel to the website. In addition to information extraction, Google Tag Manager can be connected to the Facebook Pixel so that Google Analytics data is also available to the Meta ads platform. 

2. Make sure that the correct actions of the user are really being followed on the website

If the website is an e-store built on Shopify, WooCommerce or any other popular platform, then the advertising campaign will automatically track actions such as adding the user's products to the cart or making a purchase in the e-store. This information will appear in the ad results and help the Meta ads platform to further optimize the ads and the price for them.

If the homepage is a sales or informational page where you want to collect contact information from potential customers, filling out this type of form will not automatically show up for conversions. This behavior must be manually specified as an action that counts as a conversion.

It is important to follow and choose the right user actions, because without them it will not be possible to optimize ads for filling out the aforementioned user form or any other action that could help you get better advertising results.

3. Choose the right goal for the advertising campaign

Choosing the right target is important as it is a large part of the auto-optimization efforts carried out by the Meta platform.
One of the most popular goals for an advertising campaign is making a purchase or filling out a contact form, but it is not recommended to set such a goal for a campaign if the Facebook Pixel does not collect data about users who have fulfilled this goal.

In principle, if you have recently added the Facebook Pixel to your website and have recently started advertising, then you better set a goal to increase the number of clicks. The Facebook Pixel will optimize the ads for the number of clicks, but purchases or filling out the contact form will also happen if the other elements of the ad and the campaign as a whole are optimized for it.

Once you have 50 new purchases or contact form fills, or any other behavior you want to optimize, you can start thinking about changing your campaign goals to that behavior. This will ultimately lead to even better results.

The Meta ads platform will warn you about setting exact campaign goals.

4. Select the right target audience

Choosing the right audience is a very important step for paid advertising, as it will help you show your ads to the right people who might be interested in your product or service.

Audiences can be targeted by interests and demographics. The selection of demographic data is quite self-explanatory, so more emphasis should be placed on interesting selection.

There are many different interests to choose from:

1. Personalities or influencers that these people could follow;
2. Devices or instruments that these people could use;
3. TV shows or podcasts that these people might be interested in;
4. Favorite music groups;
5. Position to be held;
6. Various hobbies.

It is also worth thinking about competitors' websites or applications that the potential customer could use.

5. Come up with an irresistible offer, don't be like everyone else

This step seems obvious, but in reality it is very difficult to do. We recommend that you think about how your company differs from others. Maybe there is an offer that you can make to a potential client, and maybe it will take you more time at the beginning, but it will give you the opportunity to convince this person that your company is the right choice.

This step can range from deep discounts as long as there is a plan to upsell to that new customer, a free consultation with some added value, or a gift that comes with the service or product. The goal is to think creatively and separate yourself from the competition as different and better, maybe even more forward-thinking.

The offer must be a prominent part of the advertisement, it cannot be somewhere at the bottom of the description or a small text on an image.

6. Use built-in automation capabilities

We have already mentioned the automation provided by Meta Ads several times in this article. Automation is an important aspect focused on by the developers of the Meta ads platform to make it easier for its users to work with ads. Things like:

1. Achieving the best price in the advertising auction by evaluating the goals;
2. Various recommendations and automatic optimization of ads for more clicks, purchases or other purposes (Using data from Facebook Pixel and other sources);
3. Automatic selection and combination of titles, descriptions, images and videos to arrive at the most capable combination;
4. Importing images and content from the website;
5. Other aspects.

These automation measures allow the platform to do work that would otherwise take a lot of time. These measures make the advertising experience simpler and more efficient.

7. Different approaches for different stages when a potential customer is in your digital marketing funnel

If you don't have enough data to split your audience into multiple groups, starting with one audience group may be enough to gather the necessary audience data.

Once the audience data is collected, it is very important to segment it into multiple groups so that you can create more relevant content for each audience group.

Audience segmentation could look like this:

1. The general target audience, which is introduced to the product or service, with the company's brand, is talked about the problems that are being solved. The purpose of this group campaign is to direct to a link where there is more information about the product or service, it can be a website, a video or some other source. This step is most often not about selling;
2. The interested audience that has engaged in the previous advertisement, viewed the website, video or other source that has access to the data. This audience must already be trying to sell the product or service by talking about the product and using the graphic elements of the now familiar brand;
3. Audience of existing customers, which are people who have purchased a product or service from the company. New products or services can be sold to these people with the goal of repeat purchase. Sales language is already looser and includes more brand-related elements that these people are familiar with.

8. What to do if there is not enough data from the website or application about its users and existing customers?

Almost anyone will say that you should increase your advertising budget gradually, test and optimize to understand what works best. But other times it can happen that you don't have enough data to perform a full-fledged optimization and in such a situation you can do something a little differently.

The entire advertising creation process remains the same as always, high-quality images, descriptions, headlines, etc., the difference is in the budget, which needs to be set a little higher than maybe initially planned in order to get data faster and be able to perform optimization.

Here it is very important to keep in mind that this point is not only about increasing the budget and everything will be - the right advertising measures should also be taken into account, which is logical, but should be mentioned.

9. Use quality and engaging digital material, headlines and content

When creating any advertisements, quality content and graphic elements that can attract attention are important. This is especially important in digital marketing and paid advertising on the Meta platform.

Content and graphics will vary from niche to niche, you need to understand how to reach people in such an environment and understand the niche you are advertising in.

Graphical elements are usually images or illustrations that can contain text, but again this depends on the niche.

It is recommended to include video in every advertising campaign. Some of the most popular types of video included in ad campaigns include:

1. Video showing how to use the product;
2. Customer feedback or customer-created video with the product;
3. Influencer video with the product.

A successful advertising campaign will begin to deteriorate after a long time, in such a situation the solution is often to add new graphic elements that people have not seen before.

10. Make sure the homepage is optimized for the new audience.

When someone clicks on your well-designed ad, they are more likely to go to your home page. This page should complement the ad and continue the conversation, if you can call it that.

A couple of suggestions for a landing page:

1. A button that prompts an action;
2. Test different versions of the home page;
3. Be sure to make the page phone-friendly;
4. Make sure the page is fast;
5. Adds customer reviews to the page;
6. Make sure the page has proper branding and content that matches the ad.

In conclusion, there are many different aspects to consider when creating paid ads, and it is impossible to cover all of them in one article. For more advanced paid advertising strategies, it's a good idea to get an expert opinion, we can help you.

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