Written by ContentPowered.com
Marketing online is all about streamlining your process for maximum efficiency. The same way that an assembly line allows a factor to create more uniform products faster, streamlining your marketing allows you to sell more.
This is increasingly important as the organic methods to reach more people are growing harder or more expensive. Speaking of Facebook specifically, as your organic reach drops, your message reaches fewer and fewer people. Therefore, you need to make sure that message convinces as many of those people to convert as possible. A lower reach with a higher conversion rate may be better than a higher reach with a low conversion rate.
What can you do to influence your conversion rate? How can you make your message better, so that users are more likely to convert?
1. Tweak Your Images
Everyone knows you need a compelling image to make a converting advertisement. How you define compelling, however, will vary from ad to ad. Here are a few ideas for tweaking your ad images.
Idea: White text on a colored background. This works best for sidebar ads, where a block of color can make your ad stand out and grab attention. The large, blocked out white text in that block of color keeps that attention in much the same way a bumper sticker might while you’re stopped behind someone at a light. The text you put to the side can be tweaked to match the message in the image.
Note: for some ads on Facebook, you’re limited to the amount of space you can cover with text. There are a few ways to get around this limit, mostly revolving around careful positioning.
Idea: Use a picture of a person related to the ad. Particularly, use a picture of an attractive person. Steve Buscemi may be distinctive, but he’s not likely to bring in that visceral sex appeal you want from an attractive picture. On the other hand, you aren’t likely to gain much by putting a picture from the cover of Maxim on your software ad. Pick some notable figure in your industry, someone recognizable and attractive, and use a picture of them for your ad.
Idea: Go goofy. Pick an off-the-wall picture of someone or something that’s just a little out there. Something that will make a user do a double-take when they gloss over it the first time. The best images are those that appear to have nothing to do with your business, but can be tied into your product on your landing page. People will click through to see why the picture makes sense.
Don’t forget to make sure your images suit the format of ad you’re using. You can’t get away with a low-res image on a news feed ad, where compression artifacts make it look terrible. You likewise can’t use a high definition image on a sidebar ad, where the tiny size strips all detail and leaves you with a cluttered postage stamp.
Don’t forget to split-test variations on each image you use. Something as simple as a border around your image or text within the image can have a huge effect. It’s all subtle and psychological, and there’s no real way to guess what works without testing.
2. Emphasize Mobile
Facebook, more than the Internet at large, is increasingly dominated by mobile users. This is likely due to a combination between how quick and easy it is to use the platform, and how sensible their app happens to be. Mobile is also a great place to push your ads, because comparatively few people use mobile adblockers.
Images for mobile use can be crisp and high resolution, but they can’t be too small or detailed, because some detail will be lost by the native display of the mobile device. Obviously, a tablet is going to have a better display than a last-gen smartphone, but you have to cater to both.
Ads on mobile take the form of news feed ads or sponsored posts. They look more or less identical to a normal news feed entry, with a small “suggested __” entry above them to indicate an ad.
One key to remember when using mobile ads is to make sure the target of the ad is something the user can do from their mobile device. Remember, many mobile users are taking advantage of a short break in their daily routine to check their mobile feeds. This means they don’t have a lot of time to investigate whatever lies at the other end of the ad. If the ad is for your page, that’s quick and easy. If the ad is for an app, it needs to be an app they can investigate and decide to download in a minute or two.
If the destination of the app is a web landing page, you need to remember that the page needs to be optimized for mobile. Sending a mobile user to a desktop page, particularly a desktop page that may not render properly, is going to have harsh consequences to your conversion rate.
You also need to consider that if they do convert, what are they going to do with that conversion? If they just bought a piece of software from you, can they do anything with it? If they ordered a product, they expect to wait. Just remember to consider the post-conversion experience of the user.
3. Refine Your Targeting
Targeting is incredibly important, and can easily be the subject of an entire post. Instead of digging too deep, it’s better to start with a few tips.
- Make use of any audience factor you can find that links your audience, and use that hook to expand. If you discover that a significant portion of your audience likes volleyball, why not expand into volleyball players that meet other audience criteria? You never know; you may have a big influence in their sport.
- Always make use of retargeting whenever possible. People who click through to your ads are interested, but if they bounced, they had to have a reason. Often times, that reason is “I want to take the time to think about it.” When you retarget them, you remind them that they were considering that purchase and you subtly nudge them towards making it. Sometimes, the audience you know is more effective than the audience you don’t.
- When in doubt, consider going for a smaller, higher converting audience over a larger, lower converting audience. If you target 100 people and 80 of them convert, you’re going to have a higher profit margin than if you target 1000 people but 70 of them convert. Obviously the numbers in real life won’t be so cut and dry, but they serve to illustrate the point.
Picking the right audience for each individual ad can make a significant difference, but you need to test and analyze each ad for each audience before you can make a determination.