4 Tips to Save Money on Facebook Advertising Over 2 million advertisers have flocked to Facebook. Here's how to make the most of of the social networking giant.
By Jason Parks Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Facebook reported over $1 Billion in profits in its latest earnings call. $5.63 billion came from advertisements -- 80 percent of which came just from mobile ads alone.
There is no denying that advertisers have been flocking to the social networking giant, as Facebook reported it now has over two million active advertisers.
What Facebook does not report on is the number of advertisers who have not properly optimized their campaigns and are wasting money by not running an effective advertising strategy.
Related: 5 Tips on Creating a Killer Facebook Ad Campaign
Whether you are a small business owner, a new entrepreneur or an associate at a Fortune 100 company, anyone can master the four tips below to save money on your Facebook ads while improving performance.
1. Conversion pixel.
Every Facebook advertiser should create a conversion pixel with their ad campaigns. Whether your goal is to generate sales, new leads or capture email addresses, your conversion pixel will track your cost per acquisition (Total Advertising Cost / # of Conversions).
If you are running a Facebook campaign without tracking conversions, you might as well purchase a lottery ticket. You need to have hard numbers to determine whether or not your campaign is effective, and a conversion pixel will allow for you to do this.
Related: 3 Ways Facebook's 'Conversion Measurement' Can Help Improve Your Ad Strategy
2. Placement.
Within ads manager, under "breakdown," you can select "placement." I can't emphasize how important it is to analyze this metric.
Advertisers are able to gauge their performance on the news feed on desktop computers; news feed on mobile devices, right column ads on homepage on homepage for desktop computers and more.
Let's say you are an e-commerce men's clothing store and realize that you are generating more sales from desktop right column ads versus mobile desktop. After analyzing "placement," you can pause the underperformers, which will lead to more exposure for your top placement.
Tip: If you are trying to just generate page "Likes," target mobile newsfeed.
3. Time of day.
Are you a morning bird or a night owl? Just like you have a time of day when you are most productive, online shoppers having buying patterns that can be easily detected. Within Ads Manager, under "breakdown" and "By Time" you can start to segment your traffic by day, week, 2 week and monthly periods.
If you start to see that your traffic quality is low quality from midnight until 8 AM and generates hardly any conversions, adjust your ad schedule to only serve your advertisements at high performing times of the day.
Related: 5 Lessons Learned From Running 2,652 Facebook Ad Campaigns
4. Age and gender.
You might think your product is a hot seller with males and females, until you do a deep dive into the data and see that females are flocking over your flannel shirt, not guys.
The "Age and Gender" column underneath breakdown shows you how many website clicks, reach, cost and conversions you are getting by gender and by age group.
If you see that the 18-24 year old females love your flannel, you can invest more money into this type of targeting to help generate more sales. There is no need targeting 27-30 year old guys if you see a lackluster performance in this group.
Related: 7 Obscure Facts You Should Know About Facebook Advertising
We've all heard the saying "the devil is in the detail," but in this day and age of social advertising "the devil is in the data." The trick is to find him within your Facebook Ads Manager.
