Facebook Advertising has been around since 2007. In that time, we’ve seen Facebook Ads evolve to become a $132-billion juggernaut that still brings in the bulk of parent company Meta’s ad revenue each year.
Along the way, we’ve also seen Facebook’s advertising arm expand to include mobile ads, dynamic ads, and carousel ads, to name a few. With each update, businesses have had to learn new techniques to ensure they reach the right consumers and maximize return on investment.
As the platform continues to evolve to take advantage of new technology—i.e., AI—and to keep pace with competitors, here’s a closer look at the features and ad types that can elevate your own Facebook advertising strategy in 2024 straight from the experts.
14 expert Facebook advertising tips to try
Get a deeper look at the top tips experts say you should try to see Facebook ads success.
1. Try Advantage+ placements
Previously known as automatic placements, Facebook’s Advantage+ is an automation tool that finds the best places for your ads across all of Meta’s apps and services in real time. The system was designed to automatically search for lower-cost placements first.
The tool uses machine learning to help streamline the process of finding high-intent customers and optimizing delivery for maximum return on investment.
“For Levy’s Fine Jewelry, using Advantage+ allows us to focus on showcasing our high-value items, like rare gemstones and diamond rings, to audiences most likely to purchase,” said Joseph Denaburg, a jeweler at Levy’s Fine Jewelry. “This not only increases the efficiency of our ad spend but also drives high-quality traffic to our website, ensuring that our marketing efforts are successful and our audience is confident in their purchase decisions.”
Plus, as Jacqy Peh, contributing editor of review site Smart Singapore, noted, if one placement is not performing well, the algorithm will automatically adjust.
It’s a good option for new advertisers who are unsure about how to select and target the right audience. That’s according to Sofia Perez, owner of CharacterCounter.com, who said Advantage+ campaigns helped to connect marketers, writers, and students to her website while minimizing cost.
“I observed a better ROI and decreased CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) for every specific ad by deploying the Advantage+ campaigns,” she added.
However, Brooke Webber, head of marketing at ecommerce site Ninja Patches, recommends waiting to use automated options like this until you have adequate audience data. That’s because Advantage+ needs data on audience behavior, past performance, and conversions to “do its thing.”
How do your Facebook ads results stack up to the competition? Find out in our 2024 Facebook Ads Benchmarks Report.
2. Look into Meta Lattice
In 2023, Meta introduced Meta Lattice, an AI model that learns to predict an ad’s performance across datasets and optimization goals. According to a blog post, it better understands data and optimization goals and can yield better performance.
“The system will now continuously learn the essential characteristics that improve ad performance across various surfaces, objectives, and ad types simultaneously,” the post said. “This new model architecture creates a more nimble system—one that is more adaptable to broader market changes, can quickly utilize new AI innovations, and operates more efficiently to deliver the results that help businesses grow.”
3. Take advantage of lookalike audiences with detailed targeting
Facebook has offered lookalike audiences for more than a decade to help advertisers reach new consumers who are likely to be interested in their products or services because they share similar characteristics to existing customers.
Now, however, you can also tap into a targeting option known as detailed targeting to refine the group of consumers who see your ads based on additional demographics, interests, and/or behaviors.
“Given our market, we can add music festival interests, rave culture, or famous EDM DJs and artists to our lookalike audience,” said Brian Lim, CEO of clothing brand iHeartRaves. “Doing this will enable your Meta ads to reach people who are similar to your best customers and optimize your budget by keeping it to those with relevant interests. This also increases the probability of engagement and conversions.”
Custom audiences can also include exclusion targeting, which prevents a particular audience—like current customers—from seeing an ad.
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4. Combine Facebook/Instagram Shops with custom audiences
Shops are online storefronts on Facebook and Instagram that allow consumers to browse and purchase products. By creating a custom audience of Facebook and Instagram users who interact with your products in these shopping experiences, you can also remarket your ads to interested consumers.
5. Use the Meta pixel with Google Tag Manager
The Meta pixel is a piece of code you can put on your website to better understand the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns by seeing what consumers actually do on your site. That includes putting a product in a cart, initializing checkout, and converting.
“Installing a pixel on your website is vital for improving ad delivery, reconnecting with former visitors, and creating bespoke audiences with precise targeting,” Peh said.
She also recommends using Google Tag Manager, a tag (or code snippet) management system that allows you to manage your site tags without having to change any site code. Like the Meta pixel, you simply add two snippets of code to each page of your website and Google Tag Manager is ready to go.
6. Perform cross-platform tracking with advanced matching
Setting up the Meta pixel and Google Tag Manager also allows you to take advantage of cross-platform tracking as the pixel works across devices and platforms.
With this strategy, you can observe how consumers interact with your ads on desktops, tablets, and smartphones, as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. Reports in Facebook Ads Manager will help you better understand which ads and platforms are driving conversions, as well as provide insights into behavior trends, which you can use to optimize Facebook ads further.
“Then utilize Facebook’s advanced matching feature, which enhances cross-device tracking accuracy by matching user actions to their Facebook profile based on identifiers like email addresses and phone numbers,” said Danielle Hu, founder of entrepreneurial site The Wanderlover.
She also noted cross-platform monitoring helps you create more precise retargeting campaigns. For example, if a consumer engages with your ad on Facebook and then converts on mobile, you can retarget them on both platforms.
7. Track cross-device conversions with events data sources
The events data source feature in Meta Business Manager tracks actions like views and conversions on your site, app, or store. These data sources include the Meta pixel, as well as events datasets, properties, event source groups, and shared audiences.
Denaburg called out event source groups in particular as they help combine data from your site, app, and Facebook page for a more comprehensive view of the customer journey.
“This insight helps identify where users drop off and what encourages them to complete a purchase,” he said. “For instance, we’ve discovered that many customers start their search for vintage jewelry on mobile but finalize their purchase on desktop. With this knowledge, we optimize our ad placements and messaging to cater to this behavior, improving overall conversion rates.”
8. Combine dynamic content with Facebook’s dynamic creative tool
Here, Facebook takes multiple media types, like images and videos, and ad components like images, videos, text, audio, and calls-to-action, and then mixes and matches them to improve performance. You can even automatically create personalized variations for each person who sees your ad.
“Dynamic creative optimization allows you to automatically build and serve a number of ad combinations right into top performers,” said Oliver Smith, founder of the website VAT Calculators. “It means that relevant content will be shown to your audience, driving the engagement and conversion rates without manual A/B testing.”
9. Connect the Facebook Conversions API
The Meta Conversions API allows you to create a direct connection between your marketing data and Meta to help optimize targeting, measure outcomes, and decrease cost.
“Using Facebook’s Conversions API to optimize for conversions improves data accuracy and ad performance by linking directly to your server,” said Tushar Thakur, tech blogger at TechKV. “This has been a key part of making my campaigns more effective at getting conversions.”
10. Test out Facebook’s attribution settings
The attribution setting in Meta Ads Manager is the period—typically one or seven days—during which conversions can be credited to your ads and used for campaign optimization. You can choose the attribution setting when you create a campaign. Meta notes the ad delivery system may help improve performance by showing your ads to people who find them most relevant.
According to Lim, you can gain deeper insights into which ads truly drive results if you customize your attribution window.
“Consider using a longer attribution window if your customers tend to research before making a purchase,” he added. “Taking this step will help you understand the entire customer journey and allocate your budget more efficiently.”
11. Use Advantage+ catalog ads
Formerly known as dynamic ads, Advantage+ catalog ads deliver relevant product recommendations to consumers based on their interest, intent, and actions. To create an Advantage+ catalog ad, simply create a catalog with your products and a campaign that drives sales on your website or app. When a Facebook user expresses interest in an item from your catalog, Meta generates a dynamic ad for that person on mobile, tablet, and desktop.
“If a visitor has browsed our collection of vintage engagement rings, dynamic ads will highlight similar products they might like,” Denaburg said. “This personalization boosts relevance and conversions by ensuring customers see items tailored to their preferences. The automated nature of dynamic ads also saves time and effort, allowing us to focus on curating our unique collections.”
12. Implement Stories ads
Stories allow Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp users to share photos and videos that disappear within 24 hours unless saved. It’s a popular format—1 billion stories are shared every single day. Stories ads are full-screen image, video, or carousel ads that appear between stories.
“Use this inventory to share engaging and consumable full-screen, vertical multimedia,” Smith said.
13. Add poll ads to video ads
A poll ad allows you to integrate a two-answer poll into a video ad in Meta Ads Manager. These ads appear in the Facebook feed and Instagram Stories.
“One can ask questions using this ad format and get responses instantly, creating a two-way conversation with users that can increase the level of engagement a lot more,” Smith said.
14. Experiment with augmented reality ads
Facebook and Instagram have multiple ways to offer augmented reality ads. Ads Manager offers AR experience templates like face effects, mini-games, and product try-ons, which you can incorporate in ads, along with a URL to drive conversions.
This augmented reality Facebook ad promoted the release of Top Gun: Maverick.
You can also create custom AR camera effects for Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger with the Spark AR Studio tool and use ads to drive traffic to them.
Run Facebook ads like a pro
These tips can help you maximize the success of your Facebook ads to reach more customers and increase awareness for your business. Need help running Facebook ads? Reach out to get a demo to see how we can help.
Here are the top Facebook ads tips for success in 2024:
- Try Advantage+ placements
- Look into Meta Lattice
- Take advantage of lookalike audiences with detailed targeting
- Combine Facebook/Instagram Shops with custom audiences
- Use the Meta pixel with Google Tag Manager
- Perform cross-platform tracking with advanced matching
- Track cross-device conversions with events data sources
- Combine dynamic content with Facebook’s dynamic creative tool
- Connect the Facebook Conversions API
- Test out Facebook’s attribution settings
- Use Advantage+ catalog ads
- Implement Stories ads
- Add poll ads to video ads
- Experiment with augmented reality ads
The post The 14 Best Facebook Ads Tips – From the Experts! appeared first on LocaliQ.
