When running a Facebook ad campaign, one of the main skills you’ll need to master is lowering your cost per conversion.
Your cost per result can also be how much you are willing to get a desired campaign result
Cost per conversion can also be called COST PER RESULT, as your campaign case may be.
Cost per conversion is the cost for achieving the goal of an ad. For example, if your campaign objective is getting likes on your Facebook page, and you spent N1000 to get 100 fans, your cost per conversion is N10. In other words, it cost you N10 to get one Facebook page fan.
If your Facebook ad campaign objective is to get leads and you spent N20,000 to get 200 leads, then your cost per conversion is N100 In other words, it cost you N100 to get a single lead.
So if you run into a situation where your cost per result seems too high, here are the few steps you need to take to lower your cost per conversion.
Steps To Take To Lower Your Cost Per Result
1. Check If Your Ad Is “Active”
First thing first, make sure your ad is approved in the Facebook ads manager, or if the ad is approved make sure you haven’t mistakenly paused it. Sometimes, though, Facebook will turn off your ads because you’re not getting enough impressions, so make sure Facebook hasn’t turned off your ads.
2. Check Your Ad “Impressions”
If all your fb ads are active, then check your impressions in Facebook ads manager.
First off, you should understand that “Impressions” is different from “Reach”.
Reach indicates the number of unique individuals that have seen your ad
Impression on the other hand is the number of time people have seen your ad. Simply say the number of time your ad appeared on people’s newsfeed, which means one person can or could have seen your ad more than once or twice. You can on an average determine how often a person has seen your ad by dividing the number of impressions by the number of reach, which gives you what we call “Frequency”
So, if you have enough impressions but no conversions or very few conversions that are very costly, turn off the most underperforming ads or ad sets.
However, don’t turn off your ads too soon. Ideally, Facebook wants you to run your ads between 7 days so it gives enough time for the Facebook algorithm to figure out how to get you the best results at the lowest cost possible.
3. Check Your “Clicks” (Link clicks, CPC, CTR)
Next, check your clicks. In other words, check whether your Facebook ads are generating clicks. When you generate clicks, it’s an indication that your ad creative is good and is generating interest. Your ad creative here is your ad image/video and ad copy (primary text, headline, description). When your Facebook ads generate lots of clicks, Facebook will reward you by lowering your cost per click because it shows that your ad resonates with your audience, which is what Facebook wants. Facebook wants to show contents that people enjoy.
Note:
If your cost per conversion is high but your cost per click is low, it’s a very positive sign, because it means you’re still getting traffic cheaply, in other words, there’s an interest for what you’re advertising, all you need to do is improve the conversion and conversion cost.
On average, a high click through rate is anything over 1% and a low click though rate is anything below 1%. So you want to have a high click through rate, which is the percentage of people who click on your ads after they’ve seen them.
For example, if 1000 people see your ad and 10 of them click on your ad, that would be a 1% click through rate.
Determining a low cost per click can vary a lot among different industries. For an eCommerce product, physical product particularly, N40 cost per click is amazing but like i said earlier, it varies with your campaign objective and your industry. Between N50 and N60 is ok. Anything above calls for attention.
4. Check Your “Landing Page” (Landing page views, CPL)
Now, if your cost per conversion is too high while your cost per click is low and your click through rate is good, you need to check your landing page. It means that the problem is not from your ad or your targeting. The problem must be coming from your landing page.
You’ll have to create different variations of your landing page so you can test different elements of it. Make sure you test things that you know for sure can impact conversion. Test elements that impact your conversion rate and conversion cost, such as the headline or the overall message on the landing page.
You can hire a professional copywriter to create other variations for the headline and text on your landing page for you.
You might want to test a landing page with a video and one without. Make sure as well, that the layout of your landing page is not old-fashioned. Some landing pages are so old-fashioned that it turns people away and, as a result, affects your conversion rate.
There are plenty of tools available now that provide quality templates for landing pages such as lead pages, so make sure you use them or model them.
Also, make sure that everything works on your landing page, test all the buttons. If you’re selling something, make sure the “buy button” works. If you’re offering something for free, make sure the fields you ask people to fill in work as well.
Also, your website load speed matters. Make sure your landing page loads quickly. If people click on your ad and then the landing page takes too long to load, then they’ll abandon the landing page which affects your conversion rate.
Note:
Ideally, your landing page which requires people to fill in their information such as name and email should convert between 10 to 20%.
A conversion rate below 10% on a landing page which doesn’t require people to purchase anything is considered a bad conversion rate.
Aim for a 20% conversion rate with cold traffic. In other words, try to have at least 20 people out of 100 to follow the call-to-action on your landing page.
If you’re sending people to a sales page, a 1 to 3% conversion for cold traffic is pretty standard across all major industries.
What this means is that if you’re advertising products to sell to people who don’t know you, from a Facebook ad, you should aim at making 1 to 3 sales per 100 visitors to your landing page.
5. Your “Ad” Must Match Your “Landing Page”
Another way to lower your cost per conversion is by looking at your fb ads and making sure that your fb ads match your landing page.
What usually happen is that so many Facebook ads look very different from their landing pages pitching the offer or whatever the objective of the landing page is. They use different people, different headlines, different graphics, different colours, different message, even different pictures which can make people think otherwise of what your Facebook ad copy and creative portrays and as a result, they click away as soon as they are on your landing page because they think they’ve gone to the wrong place.
So, check your ads in Facebook ads manager and make sure they match with your landing page. This will ensure more people stay on your landing page and therefore convert.
For example, if your ad is a video ad, of someone talking straight to the camera, to ensure there’s consistency between your ad and landing page, have a video with the same person on your landing page.
6. Check Your “Targeting”
Then, to lower your cost per conversion even further, check your targeting. Create different audiences and segment them to see whether one segment of your audience performs better.
For example, you could target women for some fb ads and target men for other ads to see which one performs better. You could do the same with age groups or locations.
Create ads for people in a specific location and create ads for people in another location for example.
Most businesses have various customer avatars, so make sure you target people based on the different customer avatars you have and create ads according to each customer avatar.
The more your ads are created to fit a specific customer avatar, the more likely they’ll convert which will lower your cost per conversion.
You can use “audience insights” to find out more about who your audience is and their interests so you can fine tune who you target accordingly. You can also create lookalike audiences.
Facebook allows you to create audiences that are similar to an audience that performs well. For example, if your Facebook ad campaign objective is to generate leads, then you can create a lookalike audience based on the leads you already acquired from your Facebook ads.
7. Check Your “Offer”
Another way to lower your cost per conversion is by looking at your fb ads and making sure that your fb ads match your landing page.
Another thing you should observe to lower your cost per conversion is your offer. Your cost per conversion could be high because your offer is not appealing enough. Your offer must be irresistible.
Many people does not understand the difference between selling a product and selling an offer. You can read about it here and here
Another thing about your offer is maybe the price is too high and it doesn’t feel like good value enough for such price, or maybe it’s not what your audience wants. If you suspect that’s the case, change your offer and test different offers.
You could be offering a free physical book, but your audience prefers consuming audio books or prefers consuming video content. Or you might be charging too much for a book, when everyone else is giving books for free and only charging for shipping.
So, you might have to test different offers in order to get to the bottom of what your audience really wants. You can ask questions from your customers or your audience, like “if you could have anything, what would it be?”. You’ll be surprised at the ideas you can get when your audience shares their wants and needs.
8. Check Your Ad “Frequency”
Frequency tells you the average number of times a person sees your ad and it’s usually calculated as “Impressions divided by Reach”. A frequency of 3.0 shows you that at least one person has seen your ad 3 times on an average. The person could have seen it more than 3 times or even less.
Considering all other things have been done correctly, yet your ad is not converting or has stopped converting well, then you want to make sure your frequency is not too high. Your frequency should not be more than 2.0, hence your Facebook ad will start experiencing ad fatigue which will result into higher cost per conversion. Ad fatigue is a situation where your ad has been seen too many times by your target audience, and in this case, you can do just 2 things. Either you change the ad creative (image or video), or you change your target audience in a case where you have a specific audience you are targeting. Facebook ad campaigns that use the broad targeting option tend not to experience ad fatigue early. This is why you have to constantly change your ad creative or research new target audiences if you use the specific audience targeting or layering option.
Conclusion
These are the important things you should check when you think your ad is not performing or you want to lower your cost per conversion
RECAP
Check if your ad is getting the Reach (e.g 10,000 people sees your ad)
Check if your ad gets the Impression (e.g 13,000 impressions)
Check if your ad is getting the Clicks at the lowest cost possible – CPC
Check if your ad is getting a High Click Through Rate/Percentage (1% of 10,000 Reach is 100 and it is considered high, below 1% is low and bad)
Check your Landing Page and make sure it’s converting according to the required and standard percentage
Check your Ad to match your Landing Page
Check your Targeting (explore Facebook audience tool)
Check your Offer (make an irresistible offer)
Check your Frequency (Keep it below an average of 2)