Many people think that they can’t be successful with a small budget on Facebook and Instagram ads. Yes, you can, but you need to have a system of testing. We’re gonna share with you a testing protocol that ensures you’re not leaving any money on the table. And make sure to stick around to the end. We’ll tell you the three most important steps that you will take after you do your Facebook ad testing!
What to Expect When Testing Facebook Ads
You will be able to get your testing done within a seven to 10-day period. Typically you can get a really good ad with a budget of about $250 to $500 worth of testing. If you have a bigger budget, great, you can expand your testing timeline. And, of course, you can expand your testing budget. The caveat here would be if you have an ecommerce business. Then you might increase your timeline quite a bit, and you might increase the testing budget quite a bit as well.
Of all of the things that you could be testing, there are three that will really move the needle forward on your ads.
Test Your Body Copy
So the first thing to test is your copy. You should put to test three lengths of copy. The first is a short copy – one to two sentences and might even be a little bit punchy. The second length of copy is medium copy. So three to four sentences, maybe even a little bit longer. And the last copy length is a long copy. So a couple of paragraphs, or as long as it takes to tell the story.
Test Your Visuals
The next thing that you’re going to test are your visuals. We want you to think about images, GIFs and videos, any combination of these. Test three to five visuals for your first round of testing. If you have the capability to include video and GIFs we highly recommend doing that. If you don’t, that’s okay, just go with static imagery. You can choose from your own library of images or you can select from hundreds of thousands of free images that Facebook provides as well.
Test Your Headlines
The next thing that you’re going to test are your headlines. This is a big needle mover for your ads. We recommend that you test three to five headlines and see what works for you.
Now, there is a lot more you can test with your ads, but these three big tests here are going to give you the bulk of your results. So how do you logistically set this up?
How to Set Up Your Tests
We recommend that you set up your copy, then your imagery and then your headline tests. So when you set up these tests you’re going to set up your copy test first and make sure that they’re all going to the same audience, the same exact budget, the same start time, the same everything.
You’re also going to make sure that they have the exact same visual. So maybe you’re using a video or a static image, whatever you’re using you wanna make sure that it’s the same for all of these tests. Also the same headline. So the only thing that changes is the ad copy.
You might see results coming in immediately, but you want to give these a few days to really optimise. After a few days, you’ll start to see a clear winner. You need to have at least a few conversions on each and every ad set before you call your winners.
Once you have a winner, you can then move on to your image testing. You’re going to duplicate the ad that was the most effective. So you’re gonna have your combination of three to five images, videos, and gifs. Let each of those run for a few days, see which one is the most effective.
Finally, you’re going to test your three to five headlines and see which headline is going to be most effective. Wait a few days, make sure there’s at least a few conversions on each of your ad sets and by the end of that, although there is more that you could test you’re going to have an ad that is very effective for you.
How to Determine the Best Ads
How do you tell which ads are your winners? I want you to stay hyper-focused on your cost per conversion. This could be a lead that’s coming into your website, somebody that’s giving their email or their phone number or it could be a purchase. And wherever you’re getting the most value is where you should call your winners.
There’s also a couple of other key metrics that you should keep an eye on, such as CTR (clickthrough rate) and landing page conversion rate.
How to Scale Your Ads
Now that you’ve got a great ad, what do you do with it? Well, you’re probably excited to get this ad to new audiences. This is scaling your ad. We also want you to consider adding in retargeting, so bringing people back to your sales pages, your landing pages, et cetera and encouraging them to go down your funnel. And you might also consider warming up new audiences!
On the topic of scaling, there are two ways to do this. You can either scale horizontally or vertically. How to determine which one is going to be right for you? Stay tuned for our next post on Facebook for business and make sure to check out our post on Facebook ad mistakes to avoid!
