Welcome to episode 371 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. This week we’re going to talk about Facebook Ads. Some major changes and updates happening that I’m actually really excited about because I think they will make it easier for those of you who maybe are not super in love with Power Editor or even Ads Manager and the idea that there are two spaces that do different things. You’re going to like today’s news.
Before we jump into that though, I do want to remind you Hit the Mic Backstage is the place to go for all things Facebook ads trainings. In fact, I’m currently working on and outlining some brand new Facebook Ads trainings that are actually doing to launch in just a couple of months in December, actually December 1st. Some brand new Facebook ads videos will launch inside the membership. Until then, the ones that are in there now are super awesome.
And we have a brand new opportunity to grab a Facebook Ads training all around a strategy that’s generally only available to Hit the Mic Backstage members, but I’ve made it available for you. If you head over to the show notes for this page you will see a link pointing you to the Facebook Ads strategy that will help you re-engage cold audience. I know, I know, you want to build a bigger audience. This is the first step to that. Get the people you already have interested actually talking to you. So head over and check that out. Again, thestaceyharris.com/episode371 to grab the show notes for this episode and while you’re there, just listen to all the episodes, okay? Fantastic. I can’t speak to the greatness of the first hundred, but since it’s been all uphill. Or downhill? It’s been all good, that’s what I’m trying to say here. All right? Okay. Let’s jump in.
Let’s talk about the three changes I want you to be paying attention to when it comes to your Facebook Ads. FYI, I know some of you right now, right this second, are self-selecting out saying, “You know what, I don’t want to know anything else. I want to hire someone to do this for me.” I get that. I think that’s fantastic. But I want you to make a good hiring decision. Good hiring decisions come from having just a little bit of information, so knowing and staying with me for the next 10-ish, 15-ish minutes, that’s what’s going to get you to a place where you can comfortably and confidently have these conversations so that you can make sure that you’re hiring well. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way when it comes to hiring. And, if you’re somebody who wants to DIY, what we’re going to talk about is really going to set you up for success, so stay with me. Don’t self-select out because you think Facebook ads are going to be boring. Stay with me, all right?
Number one thing I want you to know: the Power Editor and the Ads Manager are coming together.
The Power Editor is still available. However, the Ads Manager is getting a lot of the Power Editor features, meaning we can do some really, really cool things like duplicate ads or campaigns in a way that we could not previously in Ads Manager. On the bright side, we have a lot of those analytics so that you can see if your ad campaign is working, making sure that we’re getting that ever so important ROI, return on our investment, that comes from knowing our numbers. And so, an easy to read yet robust amount of information now resides in the Ads Manager so that you can check and make sure your ads are working.
Now, I want to throw this in there, four-and-a-half minutes after you launch your campaign, not the best time to check your numbers. In fact, ads tend to kind of work themselves out over the first probably 48 to 72 hours, so right around day two or three is when I start to make tweaks, unless something has gone horrendously wrong in the first 24 hours. If things are just kind of borderline, I’m like, “Okay, let’s stay with it. Let’s stay the course.” If by day three they’re not doing what I want them to be doing, that’s when we make changes.
You can do that now thanks to the Ads Manager. You can check all those numbers and get a really good understanding of what’s happening there. You can also set up rules. This isn’t a new feature, but it’s something worth knowing. We talk about it inside the trainings of Backstage. If you’re not keeping a helicopter parent-like eye on your Facebook Ads, you can automate some of that supervision. So if gets to a certain point, the emergency report is pulled and the ad is stopped. That’s really helpful. Or, if an ads going super killer and you want to double down, you can automate that double down and it to the budget. Okie dokie? Okie dokie.
Speaking of things you can see when you look at your analytics.
This is going to be our number two thing, I want you to be paying attention to that relevance score. Relevance scores are not new, however, they are wildly underutilized. That’s what I want to talk about next. Your relevance score matters because it shows you whether your ad is resonating with the audience seeing it or if it’s not. Relevance scores are based on negative feedback, so if your ads are hidden, your page is unlike due to the ad, those kinds of things. Also, what percentage of people seeing the ad is paying attention to the ad in the sense that they’re clicking or commenting or liking or sharing or engaging in some way? The more people you get to engage with the ads, the higher that relevance score is going to be. The more negative feedback you get, the lower that relevance score is going to be.
I really want to see you guys hitting a relevance score of six, seven, eight. If you’re hitting a relevance score of nine or 10, A, you’re probably targeting a really killer ad at a warm audience. The only time I’ve seen relevance scores of nine or 10 for us and our clients has been when we’ve been targeting an ad to an audience that sees us quite frequently, so retargeting an email list.
Over the summer we tested … We’re actually going to be rolling this out again in November and December … retargeting our membership base and saying, “Hey, there’s a new training,” or, “Don’t forget this training,” or basically just running an engagement sequence of ads to our active membership list. That’s one time that we see relevance scores of nine or 10. Generally what we’re seeing on our ads is seven or eight when we’re looking at a cold audience, and I can see immediately if I’ve got a relevance score of three or four, time to shut that ad off and look at what’s wrong with it. Maybe the call to action’s not clear. Maybe the targeting is wrong. Maybe the copy’s bad. Maybe the image is bad. Whatever. Then we can go back to the drawing board and diagnose that problem because we see really clearly, in a really easy way, “Hey, this is not connecting. This is not working. It’s time to adjust.”
Now, again, we have to give it time for that relevance score to balance out. The relevancy score is not going to show up until a certain amount of people have seen the ad. I think it’s 1,000 people. And there is a reason for that, because when you look at the first five people, if five people see the ad and five people ignore the ad, they don’t click on it, they don’t do anything, then you would have a really poor relevancy score. But five people is not enough people to make a judgment call on. Again, give this 48 hours, 72 hours, and then look at it, and depending on how low that score is.
For me, if the score is two, three, four, we’re probably going to close it down and make a pretty sweeping changing, meaning we’re going to be looking at all of the copy. All of the audience. We’re going to be looking ground up because that’s a really low score for us. However, if we’re seeing something at five, six, it’s, “Okay. What can we tweak here to change it?” I’ll test a couple of things. I’ll say, “Okay. Let’s tweak the call to action and make sure it’s solid. Let’s tweak the image.”
When I’m making these tweaks, I’m changing one thing not everything, so that when I go to make the next ad campaign, I have information to work from. If I change six things about the ad, I don’t know what made the difference to improve it. However, if I duplicate that ad and run some tests with just one change, then I can go, “Okay, so this one performed really well.” Often times, what I’ll do is I’ll make six versions of the ad and I’ll test that. Now, I don’t get to accumulate the social proof on an ad on people liking and commenting, but I can do that later. What I want to know for the next few days is if I run these six ads to this ad set, which one’s going to perform the best? Now I can go about making an educated choice, get that out on a wider scale, and be building social proof with it. There’s a shift there in the way you’re thinking about it, but all of that stems from paying attention to that relevance score.
Now, to find your relevance score, you’re going to be looking at your analytics, so you’re going to be looking in your Ads Manager information. When you click on the Ad tab and then the Performance View, you’ll see the option that says Relevance. Again, we want to see that relevance score be in the neighborhood of eight, nine, 10, maybe a seven. If we’re seeing eight or nine, that’s awesome. If we’re seeing five or six, let’s start making some tweaks. If we’re seeing one, shut it down right now. If we’re seeing two, three, four, we need to make some probably more sweeping changes. I will straight up shut those ads off and start again because we’re clearly missing the mark. Again, if we’re seeing things closer to five, six, then let’s make some tweaks and see what we can do. Does that make sense? All right, so that’s number two, your relevance score.
The number three thing I want to talk about, you need to know the rules.
Now, I’m going to link in the show notes again, thestaceyharris.com/episode371, I’m going to link to two things. I’m going to link to the Facebook Ads policies, meaning these are the rules set forth by Facebook. They are telling you what you are not allowed to do. I’m also going to link to the Facebook Guide and Checklist. The guide and checklist is something we use in-house here at The Stacey Harris to make sure that all of our ad campaigns are checking a certain amount of boxes. It’s the checklist we go through to actually build ads, and then a guide as far as getting ads approved. Facebook is legit cracking down on ads that are not following the rules. Make sure your ads are not one of them. To do that, check out the policies. Now, there are also some things that are not necessarily stipulated in the policies as clearly as they could be. They are lessons learned, so I’m including that checklist and guide because that guide is where you’ll find that information.
Some examples, keeping your ad positive and keeping your ads not personal, meaning you do not want to say, “Are you struggling with …” No, you’re going to a pain point and you’re making it specific to them. You’re basically assuming that the viewer of that ad is having some sort of problem. That’s not what you want to do. Instead, you want to talk about possibilities in a general sense. I know that sounds super vague, but instead of saying, “Are you struggling with …” instead say, “What if every day started with … and what’s possible.”
For example, let’s use a health coach, because health coaches have the hardest time with this because you cannot speak to personal health problems in a Facebook ad and get it approved. No weight loss, no, “I’m tired,” no assuming symptoms of any kind. One of the things we do with our clients is we, again, focus on what’s possible. “Wake up every day rested and ready to go.” It’s positive and it’s not specifically about some problem I’m having or whoever is seeing the ad. “Wake up rested and ready to go.” “Skip the afternoon slow down,” or, “Make 2 PM as energetic as 9 AM.” Again, we’re talking about what’s possible.
And then we feed into that, “This is how.” You know what I mean? That’s where we’re then saying, “A change in diet could …” and you’re going to use the word diet, but, “Allowing what we consume to fuel our day.” Or something like that. But you have to be super careful. You want to keep it positive and you want to keep it general. Again, I know that seems vague, but with good targeting, with good ad copy, with good graphics, it becomes a no-brainer. It becomes a lot easier and a lot more clear. All right? All right.
So head to the show notes. This is one of those episodes where you’re going to want to make sure you go to the show notes, thestaceyharris.com/episode371. Go there, grab everything I mentioned in this episode. And then, honestly, your best next step, go the Hit the Mic Backstage. Hitthemicbackstage.com is the place to be to stay up to date with all things social. All of the changes happening with Facebook Ads, there’s been a ton of Instagram changes lately, all of those things are inside Hit the Mic Backstage. We’ve got two private communities, one right on the site for your question and network updates and things like that, plus a private Facebook group allowing us to connect and socialize and we do some Facebook Lives in there and ask questions and things like that. These are your resources to connect with me. Hitthemicbackstage.com. Don’t miss this opportunity. Again, thestaceyharris.com/episode371 links everything I mentioned today. I will see you next week.
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