Mastering Meta: 6 tips for success

Six tips to elevate your paid social strategy

1. Understand the power of Audience Segmentation
   
   Effective audience segmentation is the key differentiator between a good paid social campaign and an exceptional one. Whilst you may already have a solid grasp on the fundamentals of audience targeting — such as understanding your target audience and leveraging in-platform insights — it’s essential to delve deeper and explore the supplementary components to develop a truly powerful and comprehensive targeting strategy.
   
   
   1. Audience sizes
      Instead of using a generic approach, consider dividing your audience into segments based on their unique characteristics, behaviours, and pain points. By creating smaller, more targeted groups, you can tailor your messaging and ad content to resonate with each segment, leading to improved outcomes.
      
      That being said, Meta recommends audience sizes of at least 1,000+. From my experience, an audience size ranging from 300,000 to 500,000+ strikes a balance. This range allows for sufficient data collection by the Meta algorithm, maintains cost-effectiveness, enhances performance and ensures effective delivery of your messaging.
       
   2. Through-the-funnel targeting
      Rather than exclusively concentrating on awareness campaigns at the top of the marketing funnel, it’s crucial to take a holistic approach and align your targeting strategy with the entire customer journey. By targeting audiences at various stages of the funnel — including awareness, consideration, and conversion — you can successfully guide them through the buyer's journey and optimise the effectiveness of your campaign.
      
      Drawing inspiration from the funnel analogy, my recommendation is to broaden your targeting efforts at the top of the funnel (TOF) and become more specific at the bottom of the funnel (BOF). This means focusing on generating a relevant quantity of leads and engagement at the TOF stage, while prioritising quality and precision in targeting at the BOF stage.
       
   3. Types of audience targeting
      Take into account the distinction between AI/pixel-based audiences and demographic & interest audiences. AI and pixel-based audiences utilise algorithms and tracking technologies to identify individuals who display particular behaviours, regardless of whether they fit into conventional demographic categories.
      
      In contrast, demographic audiences rely on attributes like age, interests or location to define the target audience. It’s essential to understand the advantages and constraints of each approach and conduct experiments to determine the ideal combination for your campaigns.
       
   4. Custom audiences
      By harnessing the data accumulated from diverse sources (such as website visitors and customer databases) you can construct custom audience segments. These segments provide the opportunity to retarget users who have shown engagement, nurture existing customers, and engage with prospects who share similar interests to your current customer base.
      
      By leveraging custom audiences, you can deliver highly personalised and pertinent advertisements, enhancing the chances of conversions and fostering customer loyalty.
       
   5. My go-to custom audiences list:
      Top 5% / 10% / 25% time spent - all website visitors / specific landing pages
      Lookalike (1%) - thank you page visitors / converters
      Instagram & Facebook page engagers
      75% / 95% video completes (from previous campaigns or your Top-of-Funnel campaigns at Bottom-of-Funnel level)

This is the general structure I like to follow which mixes both:

2. The art of messaging
   
   Crafting compelling and tailored messages that address specific pain points which resonate with the target audience increases engagement, builds brand awareness, and drives conversions — ultimately leading to the success of the campaign.
   
   Through-the-funnel
   
   I find the saying "You wouldn’t propose on the first date" quite fitting in this context! It emphasises the importance of guiding your audience through the marketing funnel gradually, understanding their pain points at each stage. To achieve this, it is crucial to craft messaging that directly addresses their specific needs, ensuring high engagement and increasing the likelihood of conversion.
   
   To understand your customer’s pain points, social listening tools are your best friend. My personal favourite is Answer the Public. This tool allows you to analyse and extract valuable insights from conversations taking place across different platforms and search engines.
   
   Another tool I use in my research is Facebook Ad Library. It provides a window into what pain points other brands are addressing. By studying their ads, you can gain valuable insights — as well as identify any gaps in the market — and differentiate your own campaigns by addressing pain points your competitors may have overlooked.
   
   
   1. Multi-touch
      
      Let's say you run a business selling holiday homes. A potential customer searches for ‘luxury holiday home for sale’ and clicks on a result that brings them to your website. This customer isn’t quite ready to make a purchase yet though. The following week, the customer sees an ad for your holiday homes on Facebook and clicks on it — taking them to your website again and motivating them to fill in your interest form.
      
      In this situation, the power of multi-touch messaging becomes evident. It enables you to deliver a series of targeted messages across various touch points throughout the customer journey. The goal is to ensure that your audience receives a consistent and cohesive brand experience at different stages of their interaction with your brand. Customers often require multiple touchpoints and interactions before making a decision.
      
      The effectiveness of multi-touch messaging lies in its ability to build brand awareness, nurture leads and drive conversions by delivering the right message at the right time. For instance, you can capture your audience's attention with informative blog posts or engaging social media content as the initial touchpoints. As they progress through the customer journey, you can follow up with personalised emails offering exclusive promotions or incentives tailored to their specific interests and needs.
      
      Make sure to leverage data and analytics to monitor and evaluate the performance of each touchpoint in your messaging strategy. By doing so, you can identify the most influential channels and fine-tune your messaging to enhance engagement, increase conversions and achieve overall campaign success. 
      
      Tracking and measuring the effectiveness of your touchpoints empowers you to make data-driven decisions and optimise your messaging for maximum impact.
       
   2. Content
      
      Here’s how I suggest 30 second to 1 minute long video ads should approach their messaging (this can be adapted for various video lengths):
      
      HOOK: The first 5 seconds of the video should grab the viewer's attention and make them want to continue watching. This could be a visually striking image or a question that piques their interest.
      
      PROBLEM: In the next 6-8 seconds, the ad should clearly state the problem that the viewer may be facing. This should be specific and relatable to the viewer's experience.
      
      SOLUTION: In the next 10-12 seconds, the ad should introduce the solution that your product or service provides. This should be explained clearly and simply so that the viewer understands how it addresses their problem.
      
      WHY YOU?: For the next 6-8 seconds, the ad should explain why your product or service is better than the competition. This could be through highlighting unique features, demonstrating results from previous customers or emphasising the company's reputation.
      
      WHY NOW?: In the final 4-6 seconds of the ad, the viewer should be given a compelling reason to take action now. This could be through a limited-time offer, a special promotion or a reminder of the problem they'll face if they don't take action.
      
      CTA: Finally, the ad should include a clear call to action, such as "click here to learn more" or "download now." This should be repeated at least once within the ad and be visually prominent.
       
3. Role of Creative
   
   The creative assets you use in your campaigns have a direct impact on audience engagement and overall campaign efficiency. Great creative drives engagement, leading social algorithms to recognise the ad as "successful" — resulting in increased reach and priority in ad auctions. This in turn allows us to obtain impressions at a lower cost. Therefore, focusing on compelling and captivating creatives can greatly enhance the performance and cost-effectiveness of your campaigns.
   
   While creative strategies can vary across industries, clients, and campaigns, we've compiled our top 5 tips for crafting effective social campaign creatives (call it list-ception):
   
   Format: Opt for videos over static images. Videos tend to outperform static visuals as they’re generally more effective at capturing attention and conveying your message.
   
   
   1. Video Length: Keep it concise. With attention spans shortening, aim to keep your videos under 20 seconds. This enables you to deliver your message succinctly and keeps viewers engaged.
       
   2. Approach: Use people to grab and hold attention — a face-to-camera approach tends to resonate better with audiences. We enjoy looking at people we can relate to, as they create a sense of connection and authenticity.
       
   3. Colours: Dare to be different. In a world dominated by blue, green and grey you can stand out by incorporating unusual colours into your creative. Breaking away from the monochromatic feed can capture attention and pique curiosity.
       
   4. Call to Action (CTA): Maintain consistency. Clearly instruct your audience on what to do next and ensure your CTA remains consistent throughout your ad. This clarity encourages viewers to take the desired action — leading to better campaign outcomes.

Remember, these tips are general guidelines, and it’s essential to continually test, iterate, and adapt your creative strategies based on your specific target audience and campaign objectives. To find out more, check out our full Role of Creative in Social blog.

6. Benchmarks
   
   It’s difficult to offer specific benchmark figures that can be universally applied to all Meta marketing campaigns because performance can vary based on numerous factors. Things like target audience, ad types, post copy, creative assets and campaign goals can significantly influence campaign performance.
   
   However, to provide a point of reference, I like to use WordStream for industry specific benchmarks on Facebook. In general:
   
   
   1. Click-Through Rate (CTR): 0.90% average across all industries.
   2. Cost per Click (CPC): £1.35 average across all industries.
   3. Conversion Rate (CVR): 1-3% average across all industries. This metric is heavily influenced by landing page quality and loading speed.
   4. Cost per Thousand impressions (CPM) is heavily influenced by seasonality.
       
7. Optimisations & Testing
   
   Regularly optimising and testing your campaigns is a great way to keep your paid campaigns performing strongly. 
   
   Optimisations
   
   Regularly optimising your paid campaigns is crucial to ensuring their ongoing success and effectiveness. Optimisations enable you to fine-tune various campaign elements based on your objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs). Your approach should vary depending on your campaign goals — whether that’s driving website traffic, generating video views, or increasing leads.
   
   One key factor you’ll want to consider here is when to start optimising your campaign. You don't want to jump the gun and start too early, as you’ll hinder its performance before your ads have had a chance to perform. I personally wait until ads reach ~8k impressions, where key metrics like CTR and CPM begin to stabilise.
   
   Testing
   
   Effective testing plays a pivotal role in optimising the performance of social paid campaigns. Through systematic evaluation of various elements (such as messaging, creative assets, and targeting) you can fine-tune your approach to achieve maximum campaign effectiveness and drive your desired results.
   
   You need to follow a structured framework that prioritises variables based on their potential impact. Starting with the elements that yield the most significant impact and gradually moving towards those with smaller effects, each test should focus on altering a single variable at a time.
   
   Here is the testing framework I follow:
   
   1. Campaign structure: Assess the impact of different campaign structures on performance.
   2. Channels: Evaluate the quality and traffic volumes of different channels to identify the most effective ones for your campaign goals.
   3. Budget splits: Allocate budgets based on the results and frequency of performance to optimise resource allocation.
   4. Audiences: Compare the performance of previously successful audiences against challenger audiences, and consider different audience targeting.
   5. Creative: Experiment with various creative aspects, such as messaging, colours, CTAs, headlines, and formats (e.g., video vs. other formats).
   6. Post copy: Test the effectiveness of shorter versus longer post copy in driving engagement and conversions.

Once you’ve completed this testing cycle, analyse the results and insights gained to inform your next round of testing. Based on the learnings, define a new testing list and repeat the process to continuously refine and enhance your campaign performance.

6. Working with Meta
   
   Rejected ads
   
   Effectively managing rejected ads on Meta demands a strategic and meticulous approach to uphold the seamless execution of your campaigns. Automatic resubmission of rejected ads through the Ad Account can be detrimental to your Page Quality, leading to diminished visibility and reduced reach for your campaigns  — ultimately impacting their overall performance. I strongly recommend reaching out to Facebook Support and submitting your rejected ads for manual review through their dedicated help portal. This proactive measure will safeguard your page's ranking and fortify the success of your campaigns, ensuring optimal campaign results.
   
   Other page issues
   
   Working with Facebook Support to address issues and resolve them is an efficient and proactive approach. Engaging with the support team allows you to directly communicate your concerns, provide necessary clarifications and seek guidance on how to comply with Facebook's advertising policies effectively. Their expertise and assistance can help you navigate any potential hurdles and ensure that your ads are compliant, relevant and ready to deliver optimal results.

Conclusion

Throughout this blog, we’ve explored some of the various aspects of running successful Meta paid campaigns and provided some valuable insights and tips to elevate your strategies. As we’ve covered a lot here today, let's recap on the key takeaways:

1. Power of Audience Segmentation: Effective audience segmentation is the key to creating exceptional campaigns. By dividing your audience into smaller, targeted segments and customising your messaging you can enhance engagement and improve campaign outcomes.
    
2. Art of Messaging: Craft messaging that addresses your audience's pain points at each stage of the marketing funnel. Leverage social listening tools and analyse competitor ads to gain valuable insights and create personalised content that resonates with your audience.
    
3. Role of Creative: Compelling and captivating creative has a direct impact on audience engagement and campaign efficiency. Utilise videos, keep them concise, employ real people, use unique colours, and maintain consistent CTAs to enhance the performance of your campaigns.
    
4. Benchmarks: While campaign performance can and will vary, industry benchmarks provide a useful point of reference. Monitor metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), conversion rate (CVR) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) to assess your campaign's effectiveness.
    
5. Optimisations & Testing: Regularly optimise your campaigns based on your objectives and KPIs. Start optimising after your campaign reaches 8000 impressions and conduct systematic tests to fine-tune various elements and drive maximum campaign effectiveness.
    
6. Working with Meta: When dealing with rejected ads or other page issues, it’s essential to work with Facebook Support. Follow their guidelines to maintain Page quality and address any concerns to ensure compliance.

By implementing these pro tips and continuously refining your strategies based on data-driven insights, you can elevate the performance of your Meta paid campaigns, outpace your competitors, and achieve your campaign objectives. Stay agile, adapt to changes and leverage the power of the Meta platform to unlock success in your paid social campaigns.