1. Do NOT use the “Boost Post” button 

Sounds counterintuitive, I know. You probably did some ‘boosting’ before and I know that because I did it too.

But here’s the thing about the “boost post” option. The objective of this method is to gain engagements on your Facebook post.

So Facebook’s algorithm will get you as many comments and likes as possible.

Sounds good. But here’s why you should avoid it.

The logic here is that people who comment and likes posts are not necessarily buyers. When you choose the boost option, your ad will be targeted to a mass audience who are known to like commenting or liking post, thus ‘engagements’.

But that usually never equal to sales. Engagement does not correlate with sales.

So here’s my tip: Use the Facebook Ad Manager to create an ad campaign with a website visit objective. This way, Facebook will help show your ad to people who will most likely click on your ads and wait for it to load. They may not be people who enjoy commenting/liking posts – but in my experience, these people convert into sales better.

2. Always Choose Your Ad Placements

Admit it. How many times have you chosen ‘Automatic Placements’ when creating your ad campaign on Facebook?

Just like advertising with a physical billboard, the location of your ad needs to be strategic.

When you opt for “Automatic Placements”, Facebook will push your ads to every possible placement it has – including placements like Instagram Stories.

But here’s the thing. The same ad that you use for Facebook newsfeed will not be as effective if you used it as an Instagram Stories ad.

The user behavior on the different platform, say Instagram, will be different – so you’d want to use a different ad copy and size.

Yet, there are thousands, if not hundreds of marketers using automatic placements to push their ads – wasting ad spend.

Let’s break down the different purposes of the ad placements available on Facebook:

Instagram Placements

If you are new in the market, do not advertise on Instagram. This is because people scroll really fast on Instagram. They are there to look at pictures. If they do not know your business, your ad will be quickly scrolled past.

However, if your brand is knowned and has some traction in the market – Instagram could work for you.

Facebook Feeds 

This is the most effective & common placement for Facebook ads is “Feeds”. It is a form of a native ad, where your ad looks just like an organic post on Facebook. This makes it non-intrusive, where it does not disturb the user’s experience scrolling through Facebook.

Your job here is to make your ad stand-out while still looking like a post. Don’t oversell here, because users scrolling on the Facebook newsfeed are looking for interesting things to look at, not to buy something.

Facebook Instant Articles

This ad placement is slightly more disruptive, as it will pop up in between articles on Facebook. They may not work as effectively because you are disrupting users who are reading an article.

Unless your ad relates really well with the article that they’re reading, then this may be a good ad placement. You can choose to show on certain websites and articles – based on your settings in the Facebook ad manager.

Right Column (Desktop Only)

These ads are the one that appears on the right side of your Facebook page on desktop. They appear to be quite small and people normally dismissed them, thanks to banner blindness. So you’d want to use high-contrast images here to attract users.

Right column ads are usually great for branding campaigns or retargeting ads.

Facebook Marketplace 

This is one of my least recommended ad placement, especially if your target audience is Malaysians because it is not so widely used here yet. These are ads that appear when users browses Marketplace in the Facebook app.

Facebook Stories 

These are ads that appear between stories you watch on Facebook. They can be made to work, but you need to design ads specifically for the placement. Never use the same ad you were going to use for the news feed here.

Because stories is in a video format, creating video ads for this placement makes more sense.

Audience Network 

Audience network would refer to ads showing on websites or applications – out of Facebook under Facebook’s Audience Network.

Using this ad placement is tricky, because you have less control as to where it would appear. The biggest advantage of this placement is that it is affordable.

I would recommend you use this ad placement, but closely monitor your ads, and see if it brings the results you want.

Messenger

These ads will appear within your inbox and is quite effective. However, you don’t currently see many of these ads in Malaysia yet. This is good to run, but you might not have enough audience reach with it.

3. Game Changing Tip: Optimize your ad as early as possible!

The final tip for this post.

Most marketers who run Facebook ads would leave it to run for a few days, before coming back to check on its performance, cost per click, results, etc and then do necessary optimization.

Here’s a trick: Check in as early as 1 or 2 hours after your ad has gone live and optimize it.

Why is this important? 

When you first publish an ad, Facebook’s algorithm put the ad out on all the “premium spots” where people would see it. It does this to gauge the quality and relevancy of your ad by tracking the number of people responding to it. The algorithm then decides if your ad deserves to stay in the “premium spots” or if it should be deprioritized.

Here’s the cool thing about optimizing your ads early. When you tweak your ads early, it will continuously stay in the “premium spots” on Facebook, where Facebook is learning about your ad – thus providing a higher chance for your ad to maximise its potential.

I’ll recommend this if you’re handling just a handful of Facebook campaigns. However as you scale your ad campaigns, you might not be able to use this trick for each ad campaigns you launch.

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