1. Video ads
Video ads are less expensive and get more engagement than other formats – to warm up your audience. Tell your brand story, build trust and provide value in the videos such as how-tos and demos or share your brand purpose and values. This warms up and familiarizes your audience with your brand so they are more receptive to lead-gen ads later on.
2. Custom audiences
Only serve lead-gen ads (ads asking for a form completion) to those who have engaged with your ‘warm up’ ads. Don’t waste your budget blasting lead-gen ads to unfamiliar audiences. Use Custom Audiences to build your ‘lead-gen’ list. Offer something in return (free download etc.) for their email address.
3. Relevance Score
Use organic content that has had lots of shares, comments, likes and clicks as sponsored content to give your ads better odds of having high engagement levels. This will optimize your Relevance Score which, in turn, will give you cheaper ads.
4. Testing & Optimization
Test several sets of creative and messaging against several audience segments with your full budget for a short period. Then take the highest-performing combinations and dedicate the full budget to only those, discarding the others. This will give you more bang for your buck.
5. Retargeting
Use retargeting (install the pixel on your website) to show dedicated ads to those visitors who have visited certain pages of your website or have taken specific actions. Your retargeting audiences are a ‘special groups’ that deserves special treatment. Since they are already familiar with your brand they probably just need a slight nudge to take the next step. Retargeting audiences will convert at a much higher rate than other audiences.
These are tactics that I’ve seen reduce CPAs by up to 60%. Give them a try and see what they do for your marketing results!
